It is worth while ascertaining how Luther—who has so often been represented as the embodiment of German integrity and uprightness—behaved in general as regards the obligation of speaking with truth and honesty. Quite recently a Protestant author, writing with the sole object of exonerating his hero in this particular, bestowed on him the title of “Luther the Truthful.” “Only in one single instance,” so he has it, “did Luther advise the use of a lie of necessity at which exception might be taken.” In order not to run to the opposite extreme and make mountains out of mole-hills we shall do well to bear in mind how great was the temptation, during so titanic a struggle as his, for Luther to ignore at times the rigorous demands of truth and justice, particularly when he saw his opponents occasionally making light of them. We must likewise take into consideration the vividness of Luther’s imagination, the strength of the ideas which dominated him, his tendency to exaggeration and other mitigating circumstances.
There was a time when Luther’s foes were ready to describe as lies every false statement or erroneous quotation made by Luther, as though involuntary errors and mistakes due to forgetfulness were not liable to creep into his works, written as they were in great haste.
On the other hand, some of Luther’s admirers are ready enough to make admissions such as the following: “In point of fact we find Luther holding opinions concerning truthfulness which are not shared by every Christian, not even by every evangelical Christian.” “Luther unhesitatingly taught that there might be occasions when it was a Christian’s duty to depart from the truth.”[218]
To this we must, however, add that Luther, repeatedly and with the utmost decision, urged the claims of truthfulness, branded lying as “the devil’s own image,”[219] and extolled as one of the excellencies of the Germans—in which they differed from Italians and Greeks—their reputation for ever being “loyal, truthful and reliable people”; he also adds—and the words do him credit—“To my mind there is no more shameful vice on earth than lying.”[220]
This, however, does not dispense us from the duty of carefully examining the particular instances which seem to militate against the opinion here expressed.
We find Luther’s relations with truth very strained even at the beginning of his career, and that, too, in the most important and momentous explanations he gave of his attitude towards the Church and the Pope. Frequently enough, by simply placing his statements side by side, striking falsehoods and evasions become apparent.[221]
For instance, according to his own statements made in private, he is determined to assail the Pope as Antichrist, yet at the same time, in his official writings, he declares any thought of hostility towards the Pope to be alien to him. It is only necessary to note the dates: On March 13, 1519, he tells his friend Spalatin that he is wading through the Papal Decretals and, in confidence, must admit his uncertainty as to whether the Pope is Antichrist or merely his Apostle, so miserably had Christ, i.e. the truth, been crucified by him in the Decretals.[222] Indeed, even in the earlier half of Dec., 1518, he had been wondering whether the Pope was not Antichrist; on Dec. 11, writing to his friend Link, he said he had a suspicion, that the “real Antichrist” of whom Paul speaks ruled at the Court of Rome, and believed that he could prove that he was “even worse than the Turk.”[223] In a similar strain he wrote as early as Jan. 13, 1519, that he intended to fight the “Roman serpent” should the Elector and the University of Wittenberg allow him so to do;[224] on Feb. 3,[225] and again on Feb. 20, 1519,[226] he admits that it had already “long” been his intention to declare war on Rome and its falsifications of the truth.—In spite of all this, at the beginning of Jan., 1519, he informed the Papal agent Miltitz that he was quite ready to send a humble and submissive letter to the Pope, and, as a matter of fact, on Jan. 5 (or 6), 1519, he wrote that strange epistle to Leo X in which he speaks of himself as “the dregs of humanity” in the presence of the Pope’s “sublime majesty”; he approaches him like a “lambkin,” whose bleating he begs the Vicar of Christ graciously to give ear to. Nor was all this merely said in derision, but with a fixed purpose to deceive. He declares with the utmost solemnity “before God and every creature” that it had never entered his mind to assail in any way the authority of the Roman Church and the Pope; on the contrary, he “entirely admits that the power of the Church extends over all, and that nothing in heaven or on earth is to be preferred to her, except Jesus Christ alone, the Lord of all things.” The original letter still exists, but the letter itself was never despatched, probably because Miltitz raised some objection.[227] Only through mere chance did the Papal Curia fail to receive this letter, which, compared with Luther’s real thought as elsewhere expressed, can only be described as outrageous.[228]
In his dealings with his Bishop, Hieronymus Scultetus the chief pastor of Brandenburg, he had already displayed a like duplicity.
In May, 1518, he wrote assuring him in the most respectful terms, that he submitted unconditionally to the judgment of the Church whatever he was advancing concerning Indulgences and kindred subjects; that the Bishop was to burn all his scribbles (Theses and Resolutions) should they displease him, and that he would “not mind in the least.”[229]—And yet a confidential letter sent three months earlier to his friend Spalatin mentions, though for the benefit of him “alone and our friends,” that the whole system of Indulgences now seemed to Luther a “deluding of souls, good only to promote spiritual laziness.”[230]