He also advises people to awaken some “stronger emotion so as to counteract the disquieting thoughts.”[1428] For instance, it is a good thing “to break out into scolding,”[1429] or to give vent to a “brave outburst of anger.”[1430]
Further, animal pleasures are, according to him, of advantage; he himself, on his own admission, sought to distract his thoughts by sensual joys of the most material kind.[1431] In the case of gloomy thoughts “a draught of beer” was, so he avers, of much greater use than, e.g. astrology.[1432]
Sensuality, however, is not always sufficiently powerful or effective. It is better to have recourse from the beginning to religious remedies. “If I but seize the Scripture [text] I have gained the day,”[1433] but, unfortunately, the verse wanted often won’t come. In general, what is required is prayer, much patience and the arousing of confidence.[1434] One’s patience may be fortified by the thought that “perhaps, thanks to these temptations, I shall become a great man,” as he himself had actually become, thanks largely to his temptations.[1435]
Further, the words of “great and learned men to one who is tempted may serve him as an oracle or prophecy, which indeed they may really be.”[1436] To hold fast to a single word spoken by a stranger had often proved very helpful. We may recall how he compared Bugenhagen’s words to him: “You must not despise our consolation,” to “a voice from heaven.”[1437] Another saying of his same friend and confessor, had, so he declares, greatly strengthened him. “Surely enough, God thinks: ‘What more can I do for this man [Luther]? I have given him such excellent gifts and yet he despairs of my grace!’”[1438]
In these “temptations,” whether in his own case or in that of others, he hardly gives a thought to penance and mortification, such as olden Churchmen had always recommended and employed. On the contrary, ascetic remedies of the sort would, according to him, only make things worse. Needless to say, even Catholics were anxious that such remedies should not be applied without discretion, since lessening of the bodily powers might conceivably weaken the resistance of the spirit, nay, even promote fears and temptations. Luther says, in 1531: “Were I to follow my inclination I should [when in this state] go three days without eating anything. This then is a double fasting, to eat and drink without the least appetite. When the world sees it, it looks on it as drunkenness, but God will judge whether it is drunkenness or fasting. They will have fasts, but not as I fast. Therefore keep head and belly full. Sleep also helps.”[1439] Sleep seemed to him especially important, not merely as a condition for hard work, but also to enable one to resist low spirits. It was when unable to sleep, that, as he tells us, “the devil had annoyed him until he said: ‘Lambe mihi nates,’ etc. We have the treasure of the Word; God be praised.”[1440]
His practice and teaching with regard to inward sources of troubles were indeed miles apart from those of earlier Catholic times, and even from what in his own day Catholic masters of the first rank in the spiritual life had written for the benefit of posterity. Everybody knows how these writers are, above all, desirous to provide their readers with a method whereby they may discern between, on the one hand, the voice of conscience, whether it warns us to desist from wrong or encourages us to do what is good, and, on the other, the promptings of the Evil Spirit. They say that it is the devil’s practice alternately to disquiet and to cheer, though in a way very different from that of the spirits from above. It was unfortunate for Luther that he chose to close his eyes to any such “discerning of the spirits.” He resolutely steeled his conscience once for all against even wholesome disquietude and anxiety, and of set purpose he bore down all misgivings. Of one thing he was determined to be convinced: “Above all hold fast to this, that thoughts bad and sad come, not from God, but from the devil;” “make it your wont at once to tell all inward reproaches: ‘You were not sent by God.’”
“At first,” he adds, as though describing his own case, “this struggle is hard, but practice makes it easier.”[1441]
He claimed that, owing to the amount of practice he had had in inward combats, his “faith had been much strengthened”; the “temptations” had won for him a “wealth of Divine gifts,” had taught him humility and qualified him for his task, nay, had set a Divine seal on his mission;[1442] his “theologia” he had learnt in the school of the devil’s temptations; without such a devil to help, one remains a mere speculative theologian.[1443]
Such sayings lead us to ask whether his life of faith really underwent a strengthening as he advanced in years.