“May God preserve you all and cast down Satan under your feet with all his crew, viz. the monsters of the Roman Curia.”[1456]
On his arrival at Gotha, the journey having proved toilsome and exhausting, and the malady again threatening to grow worse, he made his so-called “First Will.” It commences with the words: “I know, God be praised, that I have done rightly in storming the Papacy with the Word of God, for Popery spells blasphemy against God, Christ and the Gospel.” In his name they were to tell the Elector, our sovereign, and also the Landgrave, that “they were not to allow themselves to be disturbed at the howls of their opponents, who charged them with stealing the possessions of the Church; they do not rob like some others do; indeed, I see [such at least was his hope] how, with these goods, they provide for the welfare of religion. If a little of it falls to their share, who has a better right to it than they? Such possessions belong to the Princes rather than to the rascally Papists. Both sovereigns were to do confidently on behalf of the Evangel whatever the Holy Ghost inspired them to do.... If they are not pure in all things, but in some respects sinners, as our foes allege, yet they must trust in God’s mercy.... I am now ready to die if the Lord so will, but I should like to live at least till Whitsun, in order, before all the world, to write against the Roman beast and its Kingdom with a heavier fist.... If I recover I intend to do far worse than ever before. And now I commend my soul into the hands of the Father and my Lord Jesus Christ, Whom I have preached and confessed upon earth.”[1457]
His friends related that at Gotha he made his confession, and received “absolution” from Bugenhagen. After his state of health had greatly improved he was able to continue his journey to Wittenberg, where he arrived safely. Thence, a week later, he was able to announce to Spalatin the progress of his “convalescence, by God’s grace,” commending himself likewise to his prayers.[1458]
His anger against the Pope, to which hitherto he had not been able to give free rein, he now utilised to stimulate and refresh his exhausted bodily and mental powers. He once said, that, to write, pray or preach well, he had first to be angry. In Mathesius we find Luther’s own description of the effects of his anger: “Then my blood is refreshed, my mind becomes keen and all my temptations vanish.”[1459]
Here we must revert once more to his maledictory prayer against the Pope and the Papists, and to certain other of his sayings.[1460]
“If I am so cold at heart that I cannot pray,” so he said on one occasion to Cordatus, “I call to mind the impiety and ingratitude of my foes, the Pope and King Ferdinand, in order to inflame my heart with righteous hate, so that I can say: Hallowed be Thy Name, etc., and then my prayer glows with fervour.”[1461] As given in the German edition of the Table-Talk, his words are briefer, but none the less striking: “I conjure up the godlessness of the Pope with all his ulcers and parasites, and soon I grow warm and burn with anger and hate.”[1462] As already related, in his maledictory Paternoster, he accompanies the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer with a commentary of curses.[1463] He would fain see others too, “cursing the Papacy with the Our Father, that it may catch St. Vitus’s Dance.”[1464] Concerning his Paternoster he assures us, “I say this prayer daily with my lips, and in my heart without intermission.” And yet he does not shrink from adding: “Nevertheless I preserve a friendly, peaceable and Christian spirit towards everyone; this even my greatest enemies know.”[1465]
In 1538, the year after his serious illness, an amended edition of his “Unterricht der Visitatorn an die Pharhern” was issued by him. Although he exhorts the pastors to “refrain from abusive language” in the pulpit, yet he expressly tells them to “damn the Papacy and its followers with all earnestness as already damned by God, like the devil and his kingdom.”[1466]
Luther’s character presents many psychological problems which seem to involve the observer in inextricable difficulty; certain phenomena of his inner life can scarcely be judged by common standards. The idea of the devil incarnate in Popery distorts his judgment, commits him to statements of the maddest kind, and infects even his moral conduct. It is not easy to say how far he remained a free agent in this matter, or whether the quondam Catholic, priest and monk never felt the prick of conscience, yet such questions obtrude themselves at every step. For the present we shall merely say that his freedom, and consequently his actual responsibility, were greater at the time he first gave such ideas a footing in his mind, than when he had fallen completely under their spell.[1467]
4. Luther’s Spirit in Melanchthon
During the spring of 1537, when Luther was at Schmalkalden writhing under bodily anguish and the influence of his paroxysm of hate, a notable change took place in Melanchthon’s attitude towards the older Church. The earlier spiritual crisis, if we may speak of such a thing, ended in his case in an almost inexplicable embitterment against the Church of his birth.