In fact, he is determined not “to bother much,” not merely about the “ceremonies,” but about the whole question of Church organisation, for of what use doing so when the signs of the general end of all are increasing at such a rate? “To set up laws” is, according to him, quite impracticable; let everything settle itself “according to the law of God by means of the inspection.”[916]
“To Luther the end which Christ was about to put to this wicked world seemed so near,” so we read in Köstlin-Kawerau’s biography,[917] “that he never contemplated any progressive development and expansion of Christendom and the Church, nor was he at all anxious about the possible ups and downs which might accompany such development.... It is just in his later years that we find him more firmly established than ever in the belief, that the world will always remain the world and that it must be left to the Lord to take what course He pleases with it and with His Christendom, until the coming of the ‘longed-for Last Day.’”
At any rate, since the sectarians in his own camp and the various centrifugal forces inherent in his creation made impossible any real organisation, he was all the more ready to welcome the thought of the end of the world in that it distracted his mind from the sad state of things.
On the top of the schisms and immorality of the people there was also the avarice of those in high places, which roused his hatred and contributed to make him sigh for the coming of the Day.
“They all rage against God and His Messias.” “This is the work of those centaurs, the foes of the Church, kept in store for the latter days. They are more insatiable than hell itself. But Christ, Who will shortly come in His glory, will quiet them, not indeed with gold, but with brimstone and flames of hell, and with the wrath of God.”[918] It was his displeasure against some of the authorities which wrung from him the words: “But the end is close at hand,” the end which will also spell the end of “all this seizing—or rather thieving greed for Church property—of the Princes, nobles and magistrates, hateful and execrable that it is.”[919] Taking this in conjunction with the attitude of the Catholic rulers he could say with greater confidence than ever: “Nothing good is to be hoped for any more but this alone, that the day of the glory of our great God and our Redeemer may speedily break upon us.” “From so Satanic a world” he would fain be “quickly snatched,” longing as he does for the Day and for the “end of Satan’s raging.”[920]
The End of the World in the Table-Talk
In the above we have drawn on Luther’s letters. If we turn to his Table-Talk, particularly to that dating from his later years, we find that there, too, his frequent allusions to the approaching end of the world are as a rule connected with his experience of the corruption in his surroundings, especially at Wittenberg. The carelessness of the young is sufficient to make him long for the Last Day, which alone seemed to promise any help.
To Melanchthon, who, with much concern, had drawn his attention to the lawlessness of the students, Luther poured out his soul, as we read in Lauterbach’s Diary: As the students were growing daily wilder he hoped that, “if God wills, the Last Day be not far off, the Day which shall put an end to all things.”[921] “The ingratitude and profanity of the world,” he also says, “makes me apprehend that this light [of the Evangel] will not last long.” “The refinement of malice, thanklessness and disrespect shown towards the Gospel now revealed” is so great “that the Last Day cannot be far off.”[922]
In his Table-Talk, where Luther is naturally more communicative than in his letters, we see even more plainly how deeply the idea of the approaching Day of Judgment had sunk into his mind and under how curious a shape it there abides. “Things will get so bad on this earth,” he says, for instance, “that men will cry out everywhere: O God, come with Thy Last Judgment.” He would not mind “eating the agate Paternoster” (a string of beads he wore round his neck) if only that would make the Day “come on the morrow.”[923] “The end is at the door,” he continues, “the world is on the lees; if anyone wants to begin something let him hurry up and make a start.”[924] “The next day he again spoke much of the end of the world, having had many evil dreams of the Last Judgment during the previous six months”; it was imminent, for Scripture said so; the present hangs like a ripe apple on the tree; the Roman Empire, “the last sweet-william” would also soon tumble to the ground.[925]
In 1530 Luther was disposed to regard the Roman Empire under Charles V with a rather more favourable eye. His impression then was that the Empire, “under our Emperor Carol, is beginning to look up and becoming more powerful than it was for many a year”; yet strange to say he knew how to bring even this fact into connection with the Judgment Day; for this strengthening of the Empire “seems to me,” so he goes on, “like a sort of last effort; for when a light or wisp of straw has burnt down and is about to go out it sends up a flame and seems just about to flare up bravely when suddenly it dies out; this is what Christendom is now doing thanks to the bright Evangel.”[926] Hence all he could see was the last flicker both of the Empire and of the new teaching before final extinction.