Luther, vol. 4 of 6

by Hartmann Grisar

Among the Lutheran preachers the expected end of the world was made to play a part and to explain the increase of faint-heartedness and despair.

Mathesius says in his Postils: “Many pine away and lose hope; there is no more joy or courage left among the people; therefore let us look for the end of the world, and prepare, and be ready at any moment for our departure home!” “For the end is approaching; heaven and earth and all government now begin to crack and break.”[756]

Luther’s example proved catching, and the end of the world became a favourite topic both in the pulpit and in books, one on which the preachers’ own gloom could aptly find vent. The end of all was thought to be imminent. Such forebodings are voiced, for instance, in the following: “No consolation is of any help to consciences”;[757] “many pine away in dejection and die of grief”;[758] “in these latter days the wicked one by his tyranny drives men into fear and fright”;[759] “many despair for very dejection and sadness”;[760] “many pious hearts wax cowardly, seeing their sins and the wickedness of the world”;[761] “the people hang their heads as though they were walking corpses and live in a constant dread”;[762] “all joy is dead and all consolation from God’s Word has become as weak as water”;[763] the number of those “possessed of the devil body and soul” is growing beyond all measure.[764]

Though the special advantage claimed for the new Evangel lay in the sure comfort it afforded troubled consciences, many found themselves unable to arouse within them the necessary faith in the forgiveness of their sins. Luther’s own experience, viz. that “faith won’t come,”[765] was also that of many of the preachers in the case of their own uneasy and tortured parishioners; their complaints of the fruitlessness of their labours sound almost like an echo of some of Luther’s own utterances.

“There are many pious souls in our churches,” says Simon Pauli, of Rostock, “who are much troubled because they cannot really believe what they say they do, viz. that God will be gracious to them and will justify and save them.”[766]

The widespread melancholy existing among the parishioners quite as much and sometimes more so than among the pastors, explains the quantity of consolatory booklets which appeared on the market during the second half of the 16th century, many of which were expressly designed to check the progress of this morbid melancholy.[767] Selnecker’s work, mentioned above, is a specimen of this sort of literature. The Hamburg preacher, J. Magdeburgius, wrote: “Never has there been such need of encouragement as at this time.”[768] The Superintendent, Andreas Celichius, laments that people “are quite unable to find comfort in the sanctuary of the Evangel, but, like the heathen who knew not God, are becoming melancholy and desperate,” and this too at a time when “God, by means of the evangelical preaching, is daily dispensing abundantly all manner of right excellent and efficacious consolation, by the shovelful and not merely by the spoonful.”[769]—It was, however, a vastly more difficult matter to find comfort in the bare “Sola Fides” than it had been for the ancestors of these Evangelicals to find it in the Church’s way. Thanks to their co-operation, it was given to them to experience the vivifying and saving strength of the Sacraments and of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, to find example and encouragement in the veneration of the Saints and in the ritual, to be led to display their faith by the performance of good works in the hope of an eternal reward, and to enjoy in all the guidance and help of pastors duly called and ordained. In spite of all the abuses which existed, their Catholic forebears had never been deprived of these helps.

Many Protestants were driven by such considerations to return to the Church. Of this Nicholas Amsdorf complained. Many, he says, “have fallen away from Christ to Antichrist in consequence of such despair and doubts,” and the uncertainty in matters of faith is nourished by the want of any unity in teaching, so that the people “do not know whom or what to believe”;[770] this was also one of the reasons alleged by Simon Pauli why “many in the Netherlands and in Austria are now relapsing into Popery.”[771]

“We find numerous instances in our day,” Laurence Albertus said in 1574, “of how, in many places where Catholics and sectarians live together, no one was able to help a poor, deluded sectarian in spiritual or temporal distress, save the Catholic Christians, and especially their priests; such persons who have been helped admit that they first found real comfort among the Catholics, and now refuse to be disobedient to the Church any longer.” Albertus wrote a “Defence” of such converts.[772]

Johann Schlaginhaufen, Luther’s pupil, with the statements he makes concerning his own sad interior experiences, brings us back to his master.[773] Schlaginhaufen himself, even more than the rest, fell a prey to sadness, fear and thoughts of despair on account of his sins. Luther, to whom he freely confided this, told him it was “false that God hated sinners, otherwise He would not have sent His Son”; God hated only the self-righteous “who didn’t want to be sinners.” If Satan had not tried and persecuted me so much, “I should not now be so hostile to him.” Schlaginhaufen, however, was unable to convince himself so readily that all his trouble came from the devil and not from his conscience. He said to Luther: “Doctor, I can’t believe that it is only the devil who causes sadness, for the Law [the consciousness of having infringed it] makes the conscience sad; but the Law is good, for it comes from God, consequently neither is the sadness from Satan.” Luther was only able to give an evasive answer and fell back on the proximity of the Last Day as a source of consolation: “In short, why we are so plagued, vexed and troubled is due to the Last Day.... The devil feels his kingdom is coming to an end, hence the fuss he makes. Therefore, my dear Turbicida [i.e. Schlaginhaufen], be comforted, hold fast to the Word of God, let us pray.” Such words, however, did not suffice to calm the troubled man, who only became ever more dejected; his inference appeared to him only too well founded: “The Law with its obligations and its terrifying menaces is just as much God’s as the Gospel.”