Thus in spite of everything he tries to buoy himself up with hope.
Yet his lamentations continue. “Hardly can I breathe for storms and faintheartedness.... My Katey, however, is strong in faith and in good health.... As for me, my body is whole but I am tempted” (Nov. 4).[1355]—“From several sides at once fears rush in on me. My temptations torment me ... for months storms and faintness of spirit have never left me; pray that my faith may not fail” (Nov. 7).—“I have surely troubles enough already, please do not add to them by crucifying me with your dissensions” (Nov. 9).—“Erasmus and the Sacramentarians are now come to stamp me under foot, to persecute a man already utterly worn out in spirit!”[1356]—“I endure God’s wrath because I have sinned against Him. My sins, death, and Satan with his angels all rage against me without a break; and now Pope and Emperor, Princes, Bishops and the whole world too storms in upon me, making common cause with the crew who vex me”; everything would be endurable provided only Christ—for Whose sake he, the “most abject of all sinners,” was hated—did not desert one “whom God has smitten”[1357] and whom they persecute (Nov. 10).—“I believe that it is no mere fiend from the ranks of the devil’s hosts who fights with me, but the Prince of the demons himself; so powerful is he and so armed to the teeth with Bible-texts that my knowledge of the Bible is left stranded and I am obliged to have recourse to the words of others; from this you may get some idea of the devil’s height, as they say” (Nov. 17).
“I am well in body, but as to how it stands with me in spirit I am not certain.... I seek only for a gracious Christ.... Satan wants to prevent me from writing and to drag me down with him to hell. May Christ tread him under foot, Amen!” (Nov. 22).[1358]
His work and his doctrine must, according to him, be pleasing to heaven; the difficulties and the attacks from without and from within, all these he attributes to Satan’s raging and sees in them proofs “that our word is the Word of God; this alone it is that makes him so furious against us” (Dec. 30).—It has been said that Luther held fast to this with a “bold faith”; it would, however, be more correct to say that he catches at such thoughts as a drowning man does at a straw, a phenomenon which of itself throws a lurid light on his delusions and the misty trend of his thoughts. He is determined to be sure of his cause—and at this very time, with the help of the State, he has a Coburg Zwinglian put to silence, because the latter “neither is nor can be sure of his cause.”[1359]
“I myself am weak and in wretchedness,” he again confesses. “If only Christ does not forsake me.... Satan expends his fury on me because I have attacked him by deed, and word, and writing; but I feel consoled when I boldly believe (‘fortiter credo’) that what I did was pleasing to the Lord and to His Christ. I am tossed about between the two warring princes [Christ and Satan] till all my bones are sore. Many works of Satan have I done and still do, nevertheless I hope to please my Christ Who is merciful and inclined to forgive; but from Satan I desire no forgiveness for what I have done against him and for Christ. He is a murderer and the father of lies.... I feel in the depths of my soul how, with unbelievable wrath, he plots against me, assuming even the guise of Christ, to say nothing of that of the angel of light” (Nov. 27, 1527).—The “guise of Christ” and of the “angel of light,” to which he here alludes, are sufficient to show those who look below the surface that what was troubling him was something not very different from the inner voice of conscience.
How far he could go in deluding himself the better to appease his conscience is plain from what he says in his letter “to the Christians at Erfurt”: During the whole time he had spent at Erfurt in his Catholic days he had longed in vain to hear “a Gospel or even a little Psalm”; there, as was everywhere the case in Popery, Holy Scripture lay buried deep, and “no one had even thought of preaching a really Christian sermon.”[1360]
No less vain than this consolation from the past was that which he sought in the future. He clung wildly to his delusion that the end of all was at hand; “Satan,” he cries, “has but a short respite before being completely overthrown, therefore does he make such furious and incredible efforts” (Dec. 31).
“Now that the Word is preached Satan plainly comes off second best; hence he persecutes me secretly; he is unchained, and, with all his engines he seeks to tear Christ from me.” Thus (on Nov. 28).—“I am the wretched ‘off-scourings of Christ’” (Nov. 29).—“I am to all intents and purposes dead, as the Apostle calls it, yet still I live” (Dec. 10).
The long and terrible year was drawing to a close. He had almost grown accustomed to his inward troubles. “I have not yet shaken off my temptation, nor do I desire to be free if it is to God’s glory. The devil rages against me simply because Christ has vanquished him through me, his most wretched of vessels” (Dec. 14).—“Well in body, in soul I am as Christ wills, to Whom I am now bound only by a slender thread. The devil on the other hand is moored to me with mighty cords, nay, real cables; he drags me down into the depths, but the weak Christ has still the upper hand owing to your prayers, or at least He puts up a brave fight” (Dec. 29).