His consciousness of all that he had accomplished against the Pope, combined with his hatred of Catholicism, seems often to cloud his mind.
[2. Luther’s Excuse: “We MUST Curse the Pope and His Kingdom”][987]
In Luther’s polemics against the Pope and the Papists it is psychologically of importance to bear in mind the depth of the passion which underlies his furious and incessant abuse.
The further we see into Luther’s soul, thanks especially to his familiar utterances recorded in the Table-Talk, the more plainly does this overwhelming enmity stand revealed. In what he said privately to his friends we find his unvarnished thought and real feelings. Far from being in any sense artificial, the intense annoyance which rings throughout his abuse seems to rise spontaneously from the very bottom of his soul. That he should have pictured to himself the Papacy as a dragon may be termed a piece of folly, nevertheless it was thus that it ever hovered before his mind, by day and by night, whether in the cheery circle of his friends or in his solitary study, in the midst of ecclesiastical or ecclesiastico-political business, when engaged in quiet correspondence with admirers and even when he sought in prayer help and comfort in his troubles.
In Lauterbach’s Diary we find Luther describing the Pope as the “Beast,”[988] the “Dragon of Hell” towards whom “one cannot be too hostile,”[989] as the “Dragon and Crocodile,” whose whole being “was, and still is, rascality through and through.”[990] “Even were the Pope St. Peter, he would still be godless.”[991] “Whoever wishes to glorify the Blood of Christ must needs rage against the Pope who blasphemes it.”[992] “The Pope has sold Christ’s Blood and the state of matrimony, hence the money-bag [of this Judas] is chock-full of the proceeds of robbery.... He has banned and branded me, and stuck me in the devil’s behind. Hence I am going to hang him on his own keys.”[993] This he said when a caricature was shown him representing the Pope strung up next to Judas, with the latter’s money-bag.
“I am the Pope’s devil,” so he declared to his companions, “hence it is that he hates and persecutes me.”[994]
And yet the chief crime of this execrated Papacy was its non-acceptance of Luther’s innovations. The legal measures taken against him agreeably with the olden law, whether of the State or of the Church, were no proof of “hatred,” however much they might lame his own pretensions.
In other notes of his conversations we read: “Formerly we looked at the Pope’s face, now we look only at his posterior, in which there is no majesty.”[995] “The city of Rome now lies mangled and the devil has discharged over it his filth, i.e. the Pope.”[996] It is a true saying, that, “if there be a hell, Rome is built upon it.”[997]
“Almost all the Romans are now sunk in Epicurism; they trouble themselves not at all about God or a good conscience. Alack for our times! I used to believe that the Epicurean doctrine was dead and buried, yet here it is still flourishing.”[998]
At the very commencement of the Diary of Cordatus, Luther is recorded as saying: “The Pope has lost his cunning. It is stupid of him still to seek to lead people astray under the pretence of religion, now that mankind has seen through the devil’s trickery. To maintain his kingdom by force is equally foolish because it is impracticable.”[999]—He proceeds in a similar strain: “The Papists, like the Jews, insist that everyone who wishes to be saved must observe their ceremonies, hence they will perish like the Jews.”[1000]—He maliciously quotes an old rhyme in connection with the Pope, who is both the “head of the world” and “the beast of the earth,” and, in support of this, adduces abundant quotations from the Apocalypse.[1001]—When Daniel declared that Antichrist would trouble neither about God nor about woman (xi. 37), this meant that “the Pope would recognise neither God nor lawful wives, that, in a word, he would despise religion and all domestic and social life, which all turned on womankind. Thus may we understand what was foretold, viz. that Antichrist would despise all laws, ordinances, statutes, rights and every good usage, contemn kings, princes, empires and everything that exists in heaven or on earth merely the better to extol his fond inventions.”[1002]—It is difficult to assume that all this was mere rhetoric, for, then, why was it persisted in? Intentionally hyperbolical utterances are as a rule brief. In these conversations, however, the tone never changes, but merely becomes at times even more emphatic.