The first to relate anything concerning Luther’s diabolical parentage was, according to N. Paulus, Petrus Sylvius in his polemics of 1531-1534.[1291] He recounts with perfect seriousness the information which he says he had from an “honest, god-fearing woman,” who had heard it from some former female friends of Luther’s mother to whom the latter had herself disclosed the fact: “At night time, when the doors were locked, a beautiful youth dressed in red had frequently visited her before the Carnival,” etc. Some such idle tale may have reached the ears of the Legate Vergerio during his travels through Germany in that same decade. Possibly he may have expressed himself in private with greater credulity concerning this story than in his official report, for Contarini goes so far as to write that Vergerio “had found that Martin was begotten of the devil.”[1292]
The silly story ought to have made all Luther’s later critics more cautious, even with regard to the statements regarding Luther’s obsession by the Evil One. The few Catholic writers, who have ventured even in our own day to assert that Luther was possessed, should have been deterred from entering a region so obscure and where the danger of missing one’s way is so great. Even in the case of persons still living it is rash and often morally impossible to diagnose a case of possession; much more is this the case when the person in question has so long been dead.
[2. Voices of Converts]
Of the Catholic writers, those in particular were sure of a hearing amongst the educated, who for a long while and until it revealed itself in its true colours, had been inclined to Lutheranism. Such was, for instance, the case with several of the pupils and admirers of Erasmus. Among these were Ulrich Zasius and Silvius Egranus, who, though ready to criticise Luther severely, were not wanting in words of praise. The latter was a good type of the half-fledged convert.
Silvius Egranus (see vol. iii., p. 402), for instance, wrote: “I do not deny that Luther has spirit and inventive genius, but I find him utterly wanting in judgment, learning and prudence.... Luther’s foolhardy abuse, his defiance and violence, breed nothing but unutterable confusion. Nowhere do I see Christian godliness flourishing in the hearts of men, nay, owing to Luther, it is not safe even to speak of the Gospel of Christ or of Paul.”[1293] “I declare that Luther’s doctrine is a web of sophisms, is neither ecclesiastical nor Apostolic, but closely related to that sophistical buffoonery and strong language to which he is ever having recourse.”[1294]—Ulrich Zasius, a Humanist, and at the same time learned in the law, after changing his views, publicly took the field against Luther even in official academical discourses; he maintained nevertheless that he had been led by Luther to a deeper knowledge of the spirit of Christ; his skill and talent he never even questioned; he declared: “There is something in Luther’s spirit that meets with my approval.”[1295] What alienated him from Luther was not only his attack on the authority of the Pope—with the grounds of which Zasius was well acquainted from his study of Canon Law—but his denial of the merit of good works. This contention seemed to him diametrically opposed to Holy Scripture. “You reject [meritorious] good works,” he says to Luther’s followers, “and yet I know One Who says: Their works shall follow them.”[1296] He finds it necessary to reprove Luther sharply for his unmeasured, nay, shameless boasting of his gifts, for exciting enmity, strife, dissension and factions, and for inciting to ill-will and murder. “What shall I say,” he exclaims, “of the boldness and impudence with which Luther interprets the Testaments, both Old and New, from the first chapter of Genesis to the very end, as a tissue of menaces and imprecations against Popes, bishops and priests, as though through all the ages God had had nothing to do but to thunder at the priesthood.”[1297] Elsewhere he bewails with noble indignation the fate of his beloved fatherland: “Luther, the foe of peace, and the most worthless of men, has let loose the furies over Germany so that we must regard it as a real mercy if speedy destruction does not ensue. I should have much to write upon the subject if only my grief allowed me.”[1298]
Zasius and Egranus, however, like others in a similar walk of life and who were disposed to seek a compromise, never attacked the new teachers, their reputation and their supposed wisdom as decidedly as did those whose deeper knowledge of theology taught them how dangerous the errors were.
One well equipped for the literary struggle with Luther was the convert George Wicel, a priest who had married and settled down as a Lutheran pastor and then, after a thorough study of holy Scripture and the Fathers, had resigned his post and published an “Apologia” at Leipzig in 1533 to justify his return to the Church of his Fathers.
In a multitude of polemical treatises, often couched in caustic language, he exposed the untenability and the innate contradictions of the Wittenberg doctrines. Of this hated “apostate” Luther speaks in a characteristic letter of 1535.[1299] He writes to the Mansfeld Chancellor, Caspar Müller, about a new work of Wicel’s: This Masterlet, as he hears—for he himself “read none of their books”—has again been throwing sweetmeats to his swine, the Catholics. “Such guests are well served by such a cook.”
Owing to his stay at Wittenberg and Eisleben, Wicel was well fitted to paint a reliable picture of the morals there prevailing. He utilised his experiences in his “Retectio Lutheranismi” (1538), and summed up his case against Luther as follows: “The life of the great mass of Evangelicals is so little Evangelical that I have thousands and thousands of times felt most heartily ashamed of it.... Only too quickly have most of them sucked in the poisonous doctrine, that works are of no avail and that sin is not imputed to the believer.”[1300] Concerning one phenomenon, which Luther himself bewails as a very pest, viz. the fear of death, which had become the rule since the prevalence of the new teaching, Wicel had some severe things to say; this was strangely at variance with the confidence which Luther’s Evangel was supposed to impart. “Is it not a deep disgrace,” he says, “that those who, formerly, when they were the followers of Antichrist, to use their own Lutheran phrase, did not fear the plague at all, or at any rate not much, now, as ‘Christians,’ display such abject terror when it comes? Hardly anyone visits the sick and no one dares to assist those stricken with the plague. No one will even look at them from a distance, and all are seized with a strange panic. Where is that all-prevailing faith that is now so often extolled, where is their love for their neighbour? Tell me, I adjure you in the name of Christ, whether there has ever been less trust or less charity amongst Christians?”[1301]