“On rising from the table he said cheerfully: I will not give the devil and the Papists the satisfaction of thinking that I am troubled about the matter. God will see to it. To Him we commend the whole.”
In thus shifting the responsibility from his own shoulders and putting it on God—Whose chosen instrument, even at the most critical juncture, he would still persuade himself he was—he finds the most convenient escape from anxiety and difficulty. It has all been laid upon us by God: “We must put up with the devil and his filth as long as we live.” Therefore, forward against the Papists, who seek to conceal their “sodomitic vices” behind this bigamy! “We may not and shall not yield. Let them do their dirty work and let us lay odds on.”[116] With these words he is again quite himself. He is again the inspired prophet, oblivious of all save his mission to champion God’s cause; all his difficulties have vanished and even his worst moral faults have disappeared. But in this frame of mind Luther was not always able to persevere.
“All I hope for is that it may never grow worse.” The depressing thought implied in these words lingered in the depths of his soul in spite of all his forced merriment and bravado. “Alas, my God, what have we not to put up with from fanatics and scandals! One follows on the heels of the other; when this [the bigamy] has been adjusted, then it is certain that something else will spring up, and many new sects will also arise.... But God will preserve His Christendom.”[117]
Meanwhile the remarkably speedy recovery of his friend Melanchthon consoled him. Soon after the arrival of the letters mentioned above Luther set out for Weimar. His attentions to the sick man, and particularly his words of encouragement, succeeded, so to say, in recalling him to life. Luther speaks of it in his letters at that time as a “manifest miracle of God,” which puts our unbelief to shame.[118] The fanciful embellishment which he gave to the incident when narrating it, making it into a sort of miracle, has left its traces in his friend Ratzeberger’s account.[119]
Confident as Luther’s language here seems, when it is a question of infusing new courage into himself, still he admits plainly enough one point, concerning which he has not a word to say in his correspondence with strangers or in his public utterances: A sin, over and above all his previous crimes, now weighed upon the Hessian and his party owing to what had taken place. He repeatedly uses the words “sin,” “scandal,” “offence” when speaking of the bigamy; he feels the need of seeking consolation in the “unpardonable” sins of the Catholics for the moral failings of his own party, which, after all, would be remitted by God. Nor does the Landgrave’s sin consist in his carelessness about keeping the matter secret. Luther compares his sin to David’s, whose adultery had been forgiven by God, and reckons Philip’s new sin amongst the sins of his co-religionists, who, for all their failings, were destined, with God’s help, to overthrow the Papal Antichrist. “Would that I could alter it!” Such an admission he would not at any price make before the princely Courts concerned, or before the world. Still less would he have admitted publicly, that they were obliged “to put up with the devil’s filth.” It is therefore quite correct when Köstlin, in his Biography of Luther, points out, speaking of the Table-Talk: “That there had been sin and scandal, his words by no means deny.”[120] Concerning the whole affair Köstlin moreover remarks: “Philip’s bigamy is the greatest blot on the history of the Reformation, and remains a blot in Luther’s life in spite of everything that can be alleged in explanation or excuse.”[121]
F. W. Hassencamp, another Protestant, says in his “Hessische Kirchengeschichte”: “His statements at that time concerning his share in the Landgrave’s bigamy prove that, mentally, he was on the verge of despair. Low pleasantry and vulgarity are mixed up with threats and words of prayer.” “Nowhere does the great Reformer appear so small as here.”[122]—In the “Historisch-politische Blätter,” in 1846, K. E. Jarcke wrote of the Table-Talk concerning the bigamy: “Rarely has any man, however coarse-minded, however blinded by hate and hardened by years of combat against his own conscience, expressed himself more hideously or with greater vulgarity.”[123]
“After so repeatedly describing himself as the prophet of the Germans,” says A. Hausrath, “he ought not to have had the weakness to seek a compromise between morality and policy, but, like the preacher robed in camels’ hair, he should have boldly told the Hessian Princelet: It is not lawful for you to have her.” Hausrath, in 1904, is voicing the opinion of many earlier Protestant historians when he regrets “that, owing to weariness and pressure from without,” Luther “sanctioned an exception to God’s unconditional command.” “The band of Protestant leaders, once so valiant and upright,” so he says, “had for once been caught sleeping. Evening was approaching and the day was drawing in, and the Lord their God had left them.”[124]
Luther at the Conference of Eisenach.
The Landgrave’s Indignation.
An official conference of theologians and Councillors from Hesse and the Electorate of Saxony met at Eisenach at the instance of Philip on July 15, 1540, in order to deliberate on the best means of escaping the legal difficulty and of satisfying Philip’s demand, that the theologians should give him their open support. Luther, too, put in an appearance and lost no time in entering into the debate with his wonted bluster.
According to one account, on their first arrival, he bitterly reproached (“acerbissimis verbis”)[125] the Hessian theologians. The report of the Landgrave’s sister says, that his long talk with Philip’s Chancellor so affected the latter that the “tears streamed down his cheeks,” particularly when Luther rounded on the Hessian Court officials for their too great inclination towards polygamy.[126] Though these reports of the effect of his strictures and exhortations may be exaggerated, no less than the remark of Jonas, who says, that the “Hessians went home from Eisenach with long faces,”[127] still it is quite likely that Luther made a great impression on many by his behaviour, particularly by the energy with which he now stood up for the cause of monogamy and appealed to the New Testament on its behalf.