A LIFE FULL OF STRUGGLES OF CONSCIENCE
[1. On Luther’s “Temptations” in General]
An account given by Luther himself in 1537 and taken down by his pupils from his own lips is the best introduction to the subject now to be considered.
“He spoke of his spiritual sickness (‘morbus spiritualis’). For a fortnight he had tasted neither food nor drink and had had no sleep. ‘During this time,’ so he said, ‘I wrestled frequently with God and impatiently upbraided Him with His promises.’” While in this state he had been forced to complain, with the sick and troubled Job, that God was killing him and hiding His countenance from him; like Job, however, he had learnt to wait for His assistance, for here too his case was like that of the “man crushed, and delivered over to the gates of death” and on whom the devil had poured forth his wrath. How many, he adds, have to wrestle like he and Job until they are able to say “I know, O God, that Thou art gracious.”[1287]
Other statements of Luther’s at a later period supply us with further information. Lauterbach notes, on Oct. 7, 1538, the complaint already quoted: “I have my mortal combats daily. We have to struggle and wrangle with the devil who has very hard bones, till we learn how to crack them. Paul and Christ had hard work enough with the devil.”[1288] On Aug. 16 of the same year Lauterbach takes down the statement: “Had anyone else had to undergo such temptations as I, he would long since have expired. I should not of my own have been able to endure the blows of Satan, just as Paul could not endure the all-too-great temptations of Christ. In short, sadness is a death in itself.”[1289]
With the spiritual sickness above mentioned was combined, as has been already pointed out (above, p. 226 f.), a growing state of depression: “I have lived long enough,” he said in 1542; “the devil is weary of my life and I am sick of hating the devil.”[1290] Terrible thoughts of the “Judgment of God” repeatedly rose up before him and caused him great fear.[1291]
Before this, according to other notes, he had said to his table companions, that he was daily “at grips with Satan”;[1292] that during the attacks of the devil he had often not known whether he were “dead or alive.”[1293] “The devil,” so he assures them, “brought me to such a pitch of despair that I did not even know if there was a God.”[1294] “When the devil finds me idle, unmindful of God’s Word, and thus unarmed, he assails my conscience with the thought that I have taught what is false, that I have rent asunder the churches which were so peaceful and content under the Papacy, and caused many scandals, dissensions and factions by my teaching, etc. Well, I can’t deny that I am often anxious and uneasy about this, but, as soon as I lay hold on the Word, I again get the best.”[1295]
To the people he said, in a sermon in 1531: “The devil is closer to us than we dream. I myself often feel the devil raging within me. Sometimes I believe and sometimes I don’t, sometimes I am cheerful and sometimes sad.”[1296]—A year later he describes in a sermon how the devil, who “attacks the pious,” had often made him “sweat much and his heart to beat,” before he could withstand him with the right weapon, viz. with God’s Word, namely, the office committed to him and the service he had rendered to the world, “which it was not his to belie!”[1297] Some ten years before this he had spoken still more plainly to his hearers at Wittenberg, telling them, strange to say, of his experience in early days of the good effects of confession: “I would not for all the treasures of the world give up private confession, for I know what strength and comfort it has been to me. No one knows what it can do unless he has fought often and much with the devil. Indeed, the devil would long ago have done for me, had not confession saved me.” In fact whoever tells his troubles to his brother, receives from him, as from God, comfort “for his simple conscience and faint heart”; seldom indeed did one find a “strong, firm faith” which did not stand in need of this; hardly anyone could boast of possessing it. “You do not know yet,” he concludes, “what labour and trouble it costs to fight with and conquer the devil. But I know it well, for I have eaten a mouthful or two of salt with him. I know him well, and so does he know me.”[1298]
After all these remarkably frank admissions there can remain no doubt that a heavy mist of doubts and anxieties overshadowed Luther’s inner life.
A closer examination of this darker side of his soul seems to promise further information concerning his inner life. Here, too, it is advisable to sum up the phenomena, retracing them back to their very starting-point. Though much of what is to be said has already been mentioned, still, it is only now, towards the end of his life, that the various traits can in any sense be combined so as to form something as near a complete picture as possible. We have to thank Luther’s communicativeness, talkativeness and general openness to his friends, that a tragic side of his inner life has been to some extent revealed, which otherwise might for ever have been buried in oblivion.