The Trouble Continues
Even his lectures on the 1st Epistle of St. John testify to Luther’s inward excitement during that unhappy year (1527). The Preface to the commentary as preserved in the Vatican MS. (Palat., 1825) is dated Aug. 19, and begins: “You know that we are so placed by God in this life as to be exposed to all the darts of Satan. And not Satan alone storms against us, but also the world, and our heart, and our flesh. Hence we must despair of peace so long as we remain here below. Against all these evils God has given us no other weapon than His Word which He commands us to preach, who live in the midst of wolves.... Thus, since we are exposed to all these dangers, to death, sin, heretics and the whole might of Satan, I have undertaken to expound this Epistle.”
Amidst all this inward woe there was a cheerier side of things to look at. A little daughter had been born to him at the end of 1527. He and his family had happily been spared by the plague. He had succeeded in imposing silence on most of his opponents among the preachers of the new faith. His sovereign too was more than ever resolved to support him in his work. In the German lands, and even beyond, the Evangel was daily gaining new ground. Hence there was every reason for self-gratulation. In spite of all this what he says to his friends retains a tone of bitterness and apprehension: “Help me in my agony!” “At times indeed the temptation becomes less severe, but then again it overwhelms me more relentlessly than before” (Dec. 30).—“We are all well excepting Luther himself, who, though he feels well in body, is tormented outwardly by the whole world and inwardly by the devil and all his angels.” “Satan gnashes his teeth furiously all around us” (Dec. 31).—“I have been well acquainted with such temptations from my youth upwards, but that they could assume such dimensions I had never dreamed. Christ holds His own with the utmost difficulty, yet so far He has been victorious. I commend myself to your prayers and those of your brethren. I have saved others and cannot save myself. Praised be my Christ,” he adds, convinced in spite of all that he was in the right, “praised be He in the midst of despair, death and blasphemy.... It is our glory to have lived in the world agreeably with the will of Christ, forgetful of our former very evil life. Let it suffice that Christ is our life and our righteousness, though this is indeed a hard truth and one which the flesh knows not. It is a bitter chalice that I must drink as the end of the world draws nigh” (Jan. 1, 1528).
After this sad New Year’s letter Luther’s complaints of his pains of soul cease for a while, though, not long after, they reappear at intervals in an even more startling form.
That bodily sickness was not entirely responsible is clear from his frequent allusions to his good state of health even during such spells of stress; in the end, too, he got the better of these fears, not as the result of any improvement in bodily health, but thanks to the defiant spirit with which he clung to what he deemed was his Divine mission. Everybody knows how much a forceful will is able to do, even in the profoundest depths of the soul. Nevertheless the unhappy victory he ultimately succeeded in gaining over his own self has a right to be accounted something quite out of the common, something of which few in his position would have been capable. Hardly ever has a man had such Titanic forces at his disposal as Luther. He neither could nor would go back, the gap was already too wide; the inward voices spoke in vain which urged him to put away the “hard truth” of the doctrine he had discovered, and to return to the Church which he had spurned.
On the contrary, quite in his own fashion, he declared, on Jan. 27, 1528, that “he was determined still further to provoke Satan, who was raging against him with the utmost fury,” and thus make an end once for all of his struggles and fears. “But after I am dead,” so he begs his friends, “then do you who survive me avenge me on Satan and his apostles” (Jan. 6).
In the same year, on the strength of his own experience, he gave his friend Wenceslaus Link detailed directions for those followers of the Evangel who are “tempted in faith and hope.” They are to make the “greatest efforts” against the devil who is so plainly to be discerned; they are to build blindly on the certainty that all thoughts to the contrary are mere devil’s treason. Further, they are to cling to the Word of a good man as to a voice from God in Heaven, just as he himself had often found strength by revolving in mind Bugenhagen’s simple words: “You must not despise our consolation.”[1361] Luther seems to have sent Link several such letters on the means of escaping from “despair.”[1362] He knew only too well the fears which many underwent in the new Evangel.[1363]
“Our conscience tells us,” so he says in one of his sermons, “I am a sinner, it goes ill with me, and this I have richly deserved. Then the conscience begins to quake and says: It will not be well with me when I die. Such is fear of death.”[1364]
The return of his friends to Wittenberg in 1528 and social intercourse with his own circle gradually changed his frame of mind. He was very susceptible to the influence of cheerful conversation and to the exhilarating effects of drink. The new and important tasks which confronted him also tended to take his mind from the trouble that reigned within him.
“My Satan,” he was able to write on Feb. 25, 1528, “is now rather more bearable; your prayers are taking effect.”[1365]