The devil, so he teaches in his Church-postils, a new edition of which he brought out in 1543 towards the end of his life, could either of himself or by the agency of others “raise storms, shoot people, lame and wither limbs, harrow children in the cradle, bewitch men’s members, etc.”[1055] Thanks to him, “those who ply the magic art are able to give to things a shape other than their own, so that what in reality is a man looks like an ox or a cow; they can make people to fall in love, or to bawd, and do many other devilish deeds.”[1056]
How accustomed he was to enlarge on this favourite subject in his addresses to the people is plain from a sermon delivered at the Coburg in 1530, which he sent to the press the following year: “The devil sends plagues, famines, worry and war, murder, etc. Whose fault is it that one man breaks a leg, another is drowned, and a third commits murder? Surely the devil’s alone. This we see with our own eyes and touch with our hands.” “The Christian ought to know that he sits in the midst of demons and that the devil is closer to him than his coat or his shirt, nay, even than his skin, that he is all around us and that we must ever be at grips with him and fighting him.” In these words there is already an echo of his fancied personal experiences, particularly of his inward struggles at the time of the dreaded Diet of Augsburg, to which he actually alludes in this sermon; the subjective element comes out still more strongly when he proceeds in his half-jesting way: “The devil is more at home in Holy Scripture than Paris, Cologne and all the godless make-believes, however learned they may be. Whoever attempts to dispute with him will assuredly be pitched on the ash heap, and when it comes to a trial of strength, there too he wins the day; in one hour he could do to death all the Turks, Emperors, Kings and Princes.”[1057] “Children should be taught at an early age to fear the dangers arising from the devil; they should be told: ‘Darling, don’t swear, etc.; the devil is close beside you, and if you do he may throw you into the water or bring down some other misfortune upon you.’”[1058] It is true that he also says children must be taught that, by God’s command, their guardian angel is ever ready to assist them against the devil; “God wills that he shall watch over you so that when the devil tries to cast you into the water or to affright you in your sleep, he may prevent him.” Still one may fairly question the educational value of such a fear of the devil. Taking into account the pliant character of most children and their susceptibility to fear, Luther was hardly justified in expecting that: “If children are treated in this way from their youth they will grow up into fine men and women.”
According to an odd-sounding utterance of Luther’s, every bishop who attended the Diet of Augsburg brought as many devils to oppose him “as a dog has fleas on its back on Midsummer Day.”[1059] Had the devil succeeded in his attempt there, “the next thing would have been that he would have committed murder,”[1060] but the angels dispatched by God had shielded him and the Evangel.
When a fire devastated that part of Wittenberg which lay beyond the Castle gate, Luther was quite overwhelmed; watching the conflagration he assured the people that, “it was the devil’s work.” With his eyes full of tears he besought them to “quench it with the help of God and His holy angels.” A little later he exhorted the people in a sermon to withstand by prayer the work of the devil manifested in such fires. One of his pupils, Sebastian Fröschel, recalled the incident in a sermon on the feast of St. Michael. After the example and words of the “late Dr. Martin,” he declares, “the devil’s breath is so hot and poisonous that it can even infect the air and set it on fire, so that cities, land and people are poisoned and inflamed, for instance by the plague and other even more virulent diseases.... The devil is in and behind the flame which he fans to make it spread,” etc.[1061] This tallies with what Luther, when on a journey, wrote in later years to Catherine Bora of the fires which were occurring: “The devil himself has come forth possessed with new and worse demons; he causes fires and does damage that is dreadful to behold.” The writer instances the forest fires then raging (in July) in Thuringia and at Werda, and concludes: “Tell them to pray against the troublesome Satan who is seeking us out.”[1062]
Madness, in Luther’s view, is in every case due to the devil; “what is outside reason is simply Satanic.”[1063] In a long letter to his friend Link, in 1528, dealing with a case raised, he proves that mad people must be regarded “as teased or possessed by the devil.” “Medical men who are unversed in theology know not how great is the strength and power of the devil”; but, against their natural explanations, we can set, first, Holy Scripture (Luke xiii. 16; Acts x. 38); secondly, experience, which proves that the devil causes deafness, dumbness, lameness and fever; thirdly, the fact that he can even “fill men’s minds with thoughts of adultery, murder, robbery and all other evil lusts”; all the more easily then was he able to confuse the mental powers.[1064] In the case of those possessed, the devil, according to Luther, either usurps the place of the soul, or lives side by side with it, ruling such unhappy people as the soul does the body.[1065]
Thus it is the devil alone who is at work in those who commit suicide, for the death a man fancies he inflicts on himself is nothing but the “devil’s work”;[1066] the devil simply hoodwinks him and others who see him. To Frederick Myconius he wrote, in 1544: “It is my habit to esteem such a one as killed ‘simpliciter et immediate’ by the devil, just as a traveller might be by highwaymen.... I think we must stick to the belief that the devil deceives such a man and makes him fancy that he is doing something quite different, for instance praying, or something of the sort.”[1067] In the same sense he wrote to Anton Lauterbach, in 1542, when the latter informed him of three men who had hanged themselves: “Satan, with God’s leave, perpetrates such abominations in the midst of our congregation.... He is the prince of this world who in mockery deludes us into fancying that those men hanged themselves, whereas it was he who killed them. By the images he brought before their mind, he made them think that they were killing themselves”—a statement at variance with the one last given.[1068] Whereas in this letter he suggests that the people should be told of such cases from the pulpit so that they may not despise the “devil’s power from a mistaken sense of security,” previously, in conversation he had declared, that it ought not to be admitted publicly that such persons could not be damned not having been masters of themselves: “They do not commit this wilfully, but are impelled to it by the devil.... But the people must not be told this.”[1069] Speaking of a woman who was sorely tempted and worried, he said to his friends, in 1543: “Even should she hang herself or drown herself through it, it can do her no harm; it is just as though it all happened in a dream.” The source of this woman’s distress was her low spirits and religious doubts.[1070]
On all that the Devil is able to do
Many, in Luther’s opinion, had been snatched off alive by the devil, particularly when they had made a compact or had dealings with him, or had given themselves up to him.
For instance, he had carried off Pfeifer of Mühlberg, not far from Erfurt, and also another man of the same name at Eisenach; indeed, the devil had fetched the latter away in spite of his being watched by the preacher Justus Menius and “many of his clergymen,” and though “doors and windows had been shut so as to prevent his being carried away”; the devil, however, broke away some tiles “round the stove” and thus got in; finally he slew his victim “not far from the town in a hazel thicket.”[1071] Needless to say it is a great crime to bargain with the devil.[1072] This Dr. Eck had done and likewise the Elector Joachim I of Brandenburg († 1535), who wanted to live another fifteen years; this, however, the devil did not allow.[1073] Amsdorf too was dragged into the diabolical affair; one night at an inn two dead men appeared to him, thanks to some “Satanic art,” and compelled him to draw up a document in writing and hand it over to Joachim. Two spirits assisted on the occasion, bearing candles.[1074]
During battles the devil is able to carry men off more easily, but then the angels also kill by Divine command, as the Old Testament bears witness, for there “one angel could cause the death of many persons.”[1075] In war the devil is at work and makes use of the newest weapons “which indeed are Satan’s own invention,” for these cannon “send men flying into the air” and that “is the end of all man’s strength.”[1076] It is also the devil who guides the sleep-walkers “so that they do everything as though wide awake,” “but still there is something wanting and some defect apparent.”[1077]