Elsewhere too Luther discerns the work of the devil; for instance, when Satan sends a number of strange caterpillars into his garden,[1078] pilfers things, hampers the cattle and damages the stalls[1079] and interferes with the preparation of the cheese and milk.[1080] “Every tree has its lurking demon.[1081] You can see how, to your damage, Satan knocks down walls and palings that already totter;[1082] he also throws you down the stairs so as to make a cripple of you.”[1083]
In cases of illness it is the devil who enables the Jews to be so successful in effecting cures, more particularly in the case of the “great and those of high standing”;[1084] on the other hand he is also able maliciously to hinder the good effect of any medicine, as Luther himself had experienced when he lay sick in 1537. He can alter every medicine or medicament in the boxes, so that what has served its purpose well once or twice no longer works at all; “so powerful is the devil.”[1085] Luther, as his pupils bear witness, had frequently maintained that many of his bodily ailments were inflicted on him solely by the devil’s hatred.
Satan is a great foe of marriage and the blessing of children. “This is why you find he has so many malicious tricks and ways of frightening women who are with child, and causes such misfortune, cunning, murder, etc.”[1086] “Satan bitterly hates matrimony,” he says in 1537,[1087] and, in 1540, “he has great power in matrimonial affairs, for unless God were to stand by us how could the children grow up?”[1088] In matrimonial disputes “the devil shows his finger”; the Pope gets along easily, “he simply dissolves all marriages”; but we, “on account of the contentions instigated by the devil,” must have “people who can give advice.”[1089]
Not him alone but many others had the devil affrighted by the “noisy spirits.”[1090] These noisy spirits were, however, far more numerous before the coming of the Evangel. They were looked upon, quite wrongly, as the souls of the dead, and Masses and prayers were said and good works done to lay them to rest;[1091] but now “you know very well who causes this; you know it is the devil; he must not be exorcised[1092], we must despise him and waken our holy faith against him;[1093] we must be willing to abide the ‘spooks and spirits’ calmly and with faith if God permits them to ‘exercise their wantonness on us’ and ‘to affright us.’”[1094] Nevertheless, as he adds with much truth, “we must not be too ready to give credence to everyone, for many people are given to inventing such things.”[1095]
At the present time the noisy spirits are not so noticeable; “among us they have thinned”;[1096] the chief reason is, that the devils now prefer the company of the heretics, anabaptists and fanatics;[1097] for Satan “enters into men, for instance into the heretics and fanatics, into Münzer and his ilk, also into the usurers and others”;[1098] “the fanatic spirits are greatly on the increase.”[1099] The false teachers prove by their devilish speech how greatly the devil, “clever and dangerous trickster that he is,” “can deceive the hearts and consciences of men and hold them captive in his craze.” “What is nothing but lies, idle error and gruesome darkness, that they take to be the pure, unvarnished truth!”[1100]
If the devil can thus deceive men’s minds, surely it is far easier for him to bewitch their bodily senses. “He can hoax and cheat all the senses,”[1101] so that a man thinks he sees something that he can’t see, or hears what isn’t, for instance, “thunder, pipes or bugle-calls.” Luther fancies he finds an allusion to something of the sort in the words of Paul to the Galatians iii. 1: “Who hath bewitched you before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been set forth [that you should not obey the truth]?”[1102] Children can be bewitched by the evil eye of one who is under a spell, and Jerome was wrong when he questioned whether the illness of children in a decline was really due to the evil eye.[1103] It is certain that “by his great power the devil is able to blind our eyes and our souls,” as he did in the case of the woman who thought she was wearing a crown, whereas it was simply “cow dung.”[1104] He tells how, in Thuringia, eight hares were trapped, which, during the night, were changed into horses’ heads, such as we find lying on the carrion heap.[1105] Had not St. Macarius by his prayers dispelled the Satanic delusion by which a girl had been changed into a cow in the presence of many persons, including her own parents? The distressed parents brought their daughter in the semblance of a cow to Macarius “in order that she might recover her human shape,” and “the Lord did in point of fact dissolve the spell whereby men’s senses had been misled.” Luther several times relates this incident, both in conversation and in writing.[1106]
There is certainly no lack of marvellous tales of devils either in his works or in his Table-Talk.[1107]
The toils of the sorcerer are everywhere. Magic may prove most troublesome in married life, more particularly where true faith is absent; for, as he told the people in a sermon on May 8, 1524, “conjugal impotence is sometimes produced by the devil, by means of the Black Art; in the case of [true] Christians, however, this cannot happen.”[1108]
On the Abode of the Devil; his Shapes and Kinds
It is worth while to glance at what Luther says of the dwelling-places of the devil, the different shapes he is wont to assume, and the various categories into which demons may be classed.