“This hymn came from the very bottom of his heart,” says Köstlin, “being written with a bold faith under stress of temptation.” The first trace of the hymn is now believed to be found in a recently discovered Leipzig hymnbook, which is supposed to be a reprint of the Wittenberg “Gesangbüchlein” of 1528, in which this hymn may have figured.[1375]
A Protestant researcher, P. Tschackert, has pointed out, that, in that same year (1528), the Wittenbergers went in fear of an attack on the Evangelicals by the Catholic Estates. Luther’s attitude towards the supposed menace, intensified as it was by his inward struggles about that time, calls for some further remarks.
The alleged disclosures of Otto von Pack to the Landgrave of Hesse concerning the secret plans of the Catholics to dethrone the Protestant Princes by force of arms had proved to be a mere fabrication.[1376] Luther, nevertheless, stormed against the Duke of Saxony who was supposed to be implicated most deeply in the business. He wrote: “Duke George is a foe of my doctrine, hence he rages against the Word of God; I must therefore believe he rages against God Himself and His Christ. But if he rages against God, then, privily, I must believe him to be possessed of the devil. If he is possessed of the devil, then in my heart I must believe that he cherishes the worst of intentions.”[1377] Thanks to such dialectics, Luther again formulates the charges embodied in the Pack disclosures. As Tschackert points out, Luther persisted in crediting his opponents with all that was worst.
In 1528 he preached on John xvii.; in the tone of these sermons, printed in 1530, we find several remarkable echoes of Luther’s hymn “Ein’ feste Burg.”[1378]
The preacher speaks to his hearers both of inward temptations and of outward hardships, and uses words which recall, now his complaints of his experiences with the devil, now the trustful defiance he voices in his hymn on the “Safe stronghold.”
“We must know that there is no way of resisting the devil’s temptations than by holding fast to the plain word of Scripture and not thinking or speculating further.... Whoever does not do this will be disappointed, and err, and have a fall.”[1379] If you do not simply believe in the Word, he repeats to the people, you will “rush in headlong and be overthrown; for the devil is able to persuade our heart that he is God, and to disguise himself in great splendour and majesty”; “in the assumption of prudence, holiness and majesty no one in the world excels him”; “hence no one can cheat him better than by tying himself to the tree where God has placed him; otherwise, if he seizes you, you are lost and he will carry you off as the hawk does the chick from under the wing of the clucking hen.”[1380]
In the same sermon, however, he also prophesies the shame and destruction of “our wrathful foes who seek to stifle the Evangel and to stamp out the Christians, many of whom they have already burned and murdered; for even prouder kings and lords—in comparison with whom our princes and lords are the merest beggars[1381]—have come to grief over the Evangel and been wrecked by it.” Speaking of the Catholic princes headed by the Emperor Charles V, he exclaims: “Our furious tyrants, when they abuse the Evangel, and persecute, murder and burn all our people are termed Christian princes, and defenders of the Church; this exonerates whatever shameful and wicked practices they may commit against both God and man.”[1382]
Again he extols the Word, making Christ say: “I have given them the Word whereby Thy Name has been made known to them” (“Das Wort sie sollen lassen stahn,” as the original of the hymn runs); “but neither the Papacy nor any other fanatics will accept it,” i.e. the knowledge of Christ; “for this reason we are forced unceasingly to wrangle, grapple and fight with them and the devil.”[1383] Still, “all our protection, our redemption from sin, death, the world and the devil’s power is comprised in the Word alone”; holding fast to this we have all the prophets, martyrs, apostles and the whole of Christendom on our side. But Christendom is a “powerful lady, Empress of heaven and earth, at whose feet devil, world, death and hell must fall as soon as she drops a word.” “For,” so he continues, thinking of himself, “who can check or harm a man who has so defiant a spirit?” “Whether the devil attacks singly a weak member of Christendom and fancies he has gobbled him up [cp. the use of this same word below, p. 347] or even Christendom as a whole,” he must nevertheless “tremble and fall to the ground.” “If a sin attacks him [the Christian], and seeks to affright, gnaw, and oppress his conscience and threaten him with devil, death and hell, then God and His multitude [the saints and angels] will say: ‘Good sin, let him be; death, do not slay him; hell, do not swallow him!’”[1384]