But, in the following year (1529), it became apparent that the storm was not yet over. As early as Feb. 12 he again asks his friend Amsdorf for the help of his prayers that he may not “be delivered into Satan’s hand.”[1366]—Curiously enough, on the very day that the famous Protest of Spires was made (April 19, 1529), Luther was again passing through one of the worst bouts of his “wrestling with the devil”; he poured out his heart and conscience to his friend Jonas: If it was really an apostolic attribute to be “in deaths often” (2 Cor. xi. 23) then indeed he was in this respect a “very Peter or Paul”; but, unfortunately, he had other less apostolic qualities, “qualities better fitting robbers, publicans, whores and sinners.”[1367]—Elsewhere he indeed compares himself with the Apostle Peter, but with Peter while still weak in the faith and wavering, as he was before the descent of the Holy Ghost: “Though I feel fairly well in body yet I am weak in the spirit, and, like Peter’s, my faith is shaky”[1368] (July 31).
When he wrote this he had already consented to take part in the Marburg Conference with Zwingli. We already know how, outwardly at least, he triumphed over Zwingli at Marburg; yet, when returning home in good health and spirits, the “temptations” suddenly came upon him again at Torgau in Oct., 1529, with such violence, that he admitted he had “only with difficulty (‘vix et ægre’) continued his journey to Wittenberg, after having given up all hope of again seeing his family.”[1369] Very likely apprehension of danger from the Turks contributed to this. He himself says: “It may be that, by this combat (‘agon’), I myself am doing my bit in enduring and conquering the Turk, or at least his god, viz. the devil.”[1370] Just before this, however, and on this very journey home, he had composed the so-called Articles of Schwabach, which contain not a trace of his doubts and self-reproaches, but, on the contrary, are full of that firm defiance which characterises his other writings. They insist most strongly on his views as against those of both Zwinglians and Catholics.
Before reaching Torgau Luther preached several sermons, including one at Erfurt.
Outbursts and Relief
At Erfurt, as though to relieve his fears, Luther stormed against the Evangelical fanatics, and likewise against the monks and the holy-by-works. Maybe the sight of the town where he had passed his youth set him thinking of the zealous and peaceful years he had spent in the monastery and thus added to his sense of disquiet. Nor was this the first time that his anger had gushed forth on Erfurt in one of those outbursts by which he was wont to forestall the reproaches of his conscience.
One such eruption of an earlier date may serve as an instance of the fits of rage to which he was liable when battling with his temptations.
The Erfurt Evangelicals had failed to silence the Franciscan preacher, Dr. Conrad Kling. That this valiant friar, the ablest priest at Erfurt and a powerful pulpit orator, should continue to attract large crowds, annoyed Luther exceedingly. In his writing to the “Christians at Erfurt” of Jan. or Feb., 1527, he invoked “God’s anger and judgments” upon them and threatened all with Christ’s warnings against “Capharnaum, Chorozain and Bethsaida” unless at the order of their Councillors they expelled the preacher and in this way safeguarded the “great fulness and wealth of the Word” which he himself had proclaimed to them. Satan, verily, was not asleep in their midst, as they could very well see from the working of that “doctor of darkness,” the shameless monk.[1371]
Kling, who was much esteemed by the Catholics, and was seeking to save the last remnants of the faithful, was pictured by the fanatism of his furious opponent as a glaring example of that most dreadful of all sins, viz. the sin against the Holy Ghost. Now that the world, by the preaching of the Evangel, has been delivered from the lesser sins of “blindness, error and darkness,” so Luther told the people of Erfurt, “why do we rage with the other sin against the Holy Ghost and provoke God’s wrath to destroy us in time and for all eternity? God will not forgive this sin, nor can He endure it; there is no need to say more.” “When they start wantonly fighting against the plain, known truth, then there is no further help or counsel.”[1372]
Such action can only be explained by a quite peculiar mental state. Boundless irritation, probably not unconnected with his struggles of conscience, combined with a positive infatuation for his own ideas, was the cause of the following outbursts, which almost remind us of the ravings of a maniac.
In 1528, in the preface to a book of Klingenbeyl, he inveighs against the celibacy of the clergy: “They are devils in human skins and so are all who knowingly and wilfully hold with them.” “Amongst themselves they are the worst of all whoremongers, adulterers, women-stealers and girl-spoilers, so that their shameless record of sins fills the heaven and the earth.” Their wickedness is matched only by their stupidity. “The people [the Papists] have become a Pope-Ass, so that they are and remain donkeys however much we may boil them, roast them, flay them, turn them over, baste them, or break them; all they can do is abuse Luther.... And because I have driven them to Scripture and they can neither understand nor make use of it, God help us what a wild bawling and outcry I have caused. Here one howls about the sacrament under one kind, there another bellows against the marriage of the clergy; one shrieks about the Mass, and another yells about good works.” “The vermin and the ugly crew I have rounded up understands not a bit even its own noise and howling.” “Hence you may see how they love justice, viz. their own tyranny.”