In his confusion of mind Luther does not perceive to what his proviso “so long as” amounts. It was practically the same as committing the decision concerning what was good for salvation to the hands of every man, however ignorant or incapable of sound judgment. Luther’s real criterion remained, however, his own opinion. “If anyone teaches another Gospel,” he says in this very sermon,[874] “contrary to that which we have proclaimed to you, let him be anathema” (cp. Gal. i. 8). The reason why people will not listen to him is, as he here tells them, because, by means of the filth of his arch-knaves and liars, “the devil in the world misleads and fools all.”
Luther was convinced that he was the “last trump,” which was to herald in the destruction, not only of Satan and the Papacy, but also of the world itself. “We are weak and but indifferent trumpeters, but, to the assembly of the heavenly spirits, ours is a mighty call.” “They will obey us and our trump, and the end of the world will follow. Amen.”[875]
Meanwhile, however, he notes with many misgivings the manifestations of the evil one. He even intended to collect in book form the instances of such awe-inspiring portents (“satanæ portenta”) and to have them printed.
For this purpose he begged Jonas to send him once more a detailed account of the case of a certain Frau Rauchhaupt, which would have come under this category; he tells his friend that the object of his new book is to “startle” the people who lull themselves in such a state of false security that not only do they scorn the wholesome marvels of the Gospel with which we are daily overwhelmed, but actually make light of the real “furies of furies” of the wickedness of the world; they must read such marvellous stories, for “they are too prone to believe neither in the goodness of God nor in the wickedness of the devil, and too set on becoming, as indeed they are already, just bellies and nothing more.”[876]—Thus, when Lauterbach told him of three suicides who had ended their lives with the halter, he at once insisted that it was really Satan who had strung them up while making them to think that it was they themselves who committed the crime. “The Prince of this world is everywhere at work.” “God, in permitting such crimes, is causing the wrath of heaven to play over the world like summer lightning, that ungrateful men, who fling the Gospel to the winds, may see what is in store for them.” “Such happenings must be brought to the people’s knowledge so that they may learn to fear God.”[877] Happily the book that was to have contained these tales of horror never saw the light; the author’s days were numbered.
The outward signs, whether in the heavens or on the earth, “whereby Satan seeks to deceive,” were now scrutinised by Luther more superstitiously than ever.
Talking at table about a thunder-clap which had been heard in winter, he quite agreed with Bugenhagen “that it was downright Satanic.” “People,” he complains, “pay no heed to the portents of this kind which occur without number.” Melanchthon had an experience of this sort before the death of Franz von Sickingen. Others, whom Luther mentions, saw wonderful signs in the heavens and armies at grips; the year before the coming of the Evangel wonders were seen in the stars; “these are in every instance lying portents of Satan; nothing certain is foretold by them; during the last fifteen years there have been many of them; the only thing certain is that we have to expect the coming wrath of God.”[878] Years before, the signs in the heavens and on the earth, for instance the flood promised for 1524, had seemed to him to forebode the “world upheaval” which his Evangel would bring.[879]
Luther shared to the full the superstition of his day. He did not stand alone when he thus interpreted public events and everyday occurrences. It was the fashion in those days for people, even in Catholic circles, superstitiously to look out for portents and signs.
In 1537[880] Luther relates some far-fetched tales of this sort. The most devoted servants of the devil are, according to him, the sorcerers and witches of whom there are many.[881] In 1540 he related to his guests how a schoolmaster had summoned the witches by means of a horse’s head.[882] “Repeatedly,” so he told them in that same year, “they did their best to harm me and my Katey, but God preserved us.” On another occasion, after telling some dreadful tales of sorcery, he adds: “The devil is a mighty spirit.” “Did not God and His dear angels intervene, he would surely slay us with those thunder-clubs of his which you call thunderbolts.”[883] In earlier days he had told them, that, Dr. “Faust, who claimed the devil as his brother-in-law, had declared that ‘if I, Martin Luther, had only shaken hands with him he would have destroyed me’; but I would not have been afraid of him, but would have shaken hands with him in God’s name and reckoning on God’s protection.”[884]
According to him, most noteworthy of all were the diabolical deeds then on the increase which portended a mighty revulsion and a catastrophe in the world’s history. Everything, his laboured calculations on the numbers in the biblical prophecies included, all point to this. Even the appearance of a new kind of fox in 1545 seemed to him of such importance that he submitted the case to an expert huntsman for an opinion. He himself was unable to decide what it signified, “unless it be that change in all things which we await and for which we pray.”[885]
The change to which he here and so often elsewhere refers is the end of the world.