Spangenberg, Aurifaber, Cordatus and other pupils were, so to speak, quite under his spell. Hieronymus Weller, whom Luther frequently sought to encourage in his fits of depression, remarked indeed on one occasion that the difference in age, and his reverence for Luther, prevented him from speaking and chatting as confidentially as he would have liked with the great man.[896] On the other hand, the Humanist, Peter Mosellanus, who was at one time much attached to him and never altogether abandoned his cause, says: “In daily life and in his intercourse with others he is polite and friendly; there is nothing stoical or proud about him; he is affable to everyone. In company he converses cheerfully and pleasantly, is lively and gay, always looks merry, cheerful and amiable however hard pressed by his opponents, so that one may well believe he does not act in such weighty matters without God’s assistance.”[897]
Melanchthon, particularly in his early days, as our readers already know, expressed great reverence and devotion for Luther. “You know,” he wrote to Spalatin during his friend’s stay at the Wartburg, “how carefully we must guard this earthen vessel which contains so great a treasure.... The earth holds nothing more divine than him.”[898] After Luther’s death, in spite of the previous misunderstandings, he said of him in a panegyric addressed to the students: “Alas, the chariot of Israel and the horseman thereof, who ruled the Church in these latter years of her existence, has departed.”[899]
Luther was often to prove that the strong impression made by his personality was alone able to gain the day in cases of difficulty, to break down opposition and to ensure the successful carrying out of hardy plans. Seldom indeed did those about him offer any objection, for he possessed that gift, so frequently observed in men of strong character, of exercising, in every matter great or small, a kind of suggestive influence over those who approached him. He possessed an inner, unseen power which seemed to triumph over all, ... even over the claims of truthfulness and logic;[900] besides this, he was gifted with an imposing presence and an uncanny glance. He was by no means curt in his answers, but spoke freely to everyone in a manner calculated to awaken the confidence and unlock the hearts of his hearers. Of his talkativeness he himself once said: “I don’t believe the Emperor [Charles V.] says so much in a year as I do in a day.”[901]
His “disinterestedness which led him to care but little about money and worldly goods”[902] increased the respect felt for him and his work. So little did he care about heaping up riches, that, when scolding the Wittenbergers on account of their avarice, he could say that “though poor, he found more pleasure in what was given him for his needs than the rich and opulent amongst them did in their own possessions.”[903] So entirely was he absorbed in his public controversy that he paid too little attention to his own requirements, particularly in his bachelor days; he even relates how, before he took a wife, he had for a whole year not made his bed, or had it made for him, so that his sweat caused it to rot. “I was so weary, overworked all the day, that I threw myself on the bed and knew nothing about it.”[904] He was never used to excessive comfort or to indulgence in the finer pleasures of the table. In every respect, in conversation and intercourse with others and in domestic life, he was a lover of simplicity. In this he was ever anxious to set a good example to his fellow-workers.
Although he frequently accepted with gratitude presents from the great, yet on occasion he was not above cautioning givers of the danger such gifts involved, when the “eyes of the whole world are upon us.”[905] In 1542, when there was a prospect of his receiving from his friend Amsdorf, the new “bishop” of Naumburg, presents out of the estates of the bishopric, he twice wrote to him to refrain from sending him anything, even a single hare, because “our courtly centaurs [the selfish and rapacious nobles] must be given no pretext for venting their glowing hate against us on the trumped-up charge that we were desirous of securing gain through you.” “They have gulped down everything without compunction, but still would blame us were we to accept a paltry gift of game. Let them feed in God’s or another’s [the devil’s] name, so long as we are not accused of greed.”[906] Döllinger speaks of Luther as “a sympathetic friend, devoid of avarice and greed of money, and a willing helper of others.”[907]
He was always ready to assist the poor with open-handed and kindly liberality, and his friends especially, when in trouble or distress, could reckon on his charity.
When his own means were insufficient he sought by word of mouth or by letter to enlist the sympathy of others, of friends in the town, or even of the Elector himself, in the cause of the indigent. On more than one occasion his good nature was unfairly taken advantage of. This, however, did not prevent his pleading for the poor who flocked to Wittenberg from all quarters and were wont to address themselves to him. Thus, for instance, in 1539 we have a note in which he appealed to certain “dear gentlemen” to save a “pious and scholarly youth” from the “pangs of hunger” by furnishing him with 30 Gulden; he himself was no longer able to afford the gifts he had daily to bestow, though he would be willing, in case of necessity, to contribute half the sum.[908]
Many of the feeble and oppressed experienced his help in the law. He reminds the lawyers how hard it is for the poor to comply with the legal formalities necessary for their protection. On one occasion, when it was a question of the defence of a poor woman, he says: “You know Dr. Martin is not only a theologian and the champion of the faith, but also an advocate of the poor, who troop to him from every place and corner and demand his aid and his intercession with the authorities, so that he would have enough to do even if no other burden rested on his shoulders. But Dr. Martin loves to serve the poor.”[909]
In 1527, when the plague reached Wittenberg, he stayed on in the town with Bugenhagen in order at least to comfort the people by his presence. The University was transferred for the time being to Jena (and then to Schlieben) and the Elector accordingly urged him to migrate to Jena with his wife and family. Luther however insisted on remaining, above all on account of the urgent need of setting an example to his preachers, who were too much preoccupied with the safety of their own families. It was then that he wrote the tract “Ob man fur dem Sterben fliehen muge” (Whether one may flee from death), answering the question in the negative so far as the ministers were concerned. In such dire trouble the flock were more than ever in need of spiritual help; the preachers were to exhort the people to learn diligently from the Word of God how to live and how to die, also, by Confession, reception of the Supper, reconciliation with their neighbours, etc., to “prepare themselves in advance should the Lord knock speedily.”[910] He displayed the same courage during the epidemic of the so-called “English sweat,” a fever which, in 1529, broke out at Wittenberg, and in other German towns, and carried off many victims. Again in 1538 and in 1539 he braved new outbreaks of the plague at Wittenberg. His wish was, that, in such cases, one or two preachers should be specially appointed to look after those stricken with the malady. “Should the lot fall on me,” he says in 1542, “I should not be afraid. I have now been through three pestilences and mixed with some who suffered from it ... and am none the worse.”[911] “God usually protects the ministers of His Word,” he writes in 1538, “if one does not run in and out of the inns and lie in the beds; confessions there is no need to hear, for we bring the Word of Life.”[912] The fact that he could boast of having braved the plague and remained at his post naturally tended to increase his influence with his congregation.[913]
He had passed through a severe mental struggle previous to the epidemic of 1529. Only by dint of despairing efforts was he able to overcome his terrors of conscience concerning his doctrine and his own personal salvation. This inner combat so hardened him that he was fearless where others were terrified and fled. Of his own qualms of conscience he wrote to a friend in April, 1529: If it be an apostolic gift to fight with devils and to lie frequently at the point of death, then he was indeed in this a very Peter or Paul, however much he might lack the other apostolic characters.[914] Here we have the idea of his Divine calling, always most to the front in times of danger, which both strengthens him and enables him to inspire others with a little of his own confidence. “I and Bugenhagen alone remain here,” he wrote during the days of the plague, “but we are not alone, for Christ is with us and will triumph in us and shelter us from Satan, as we hope and trust.”[915]