This doctrine I learnt in my “temptations,” during which “I had to ponder ever more and more deeply.” “What is lacking to the fanatics and the mob is that they have not that real foeman who is the devil; he certainly teaches a man thoroughly.”[1564]
The hostility met with, particularly from false brethren, is also “God’s sure seal upon us”; by such “we have become like St. Paul, nay, like the whole Church.”[1565]
The chief thing for me, however, so he continues, is conscience and conviction. “Take heed,” such is my axiom, “not to make mere play of it. If you wish to begin it, then begin it with such a clear conscience that you may defy the devil.... Be a man and do everything that goes against and vexes them [the opponents] and omit everything that might please them.”[1566]
To those who ask whether his conscience did not upbraid him for breaking the peace and for overthrowing all order, he replies: It is quite true “Satan makes my conscience to prick me for having by false doctrine thrown the world into confusion and caused revolts.... But I meet him with this: The doctrine is not mine, but the Son of God’s; whole worlds are nothing to God, even should ten of them be rent by rebellion and go headlong to destruction. It is written in Holy Scripture [Mt. xvii. 5], ‘Hear ye Him’ (Christ), or everything will fall into ruins, and again [Ps. ii. 10], ‘Hearken, ye kings,’ or else ye shall perish. It was thus that Paul too had to console himself, when, in the Acts, he was accused of treason against God and Cæsar. God wills that the article of Justification shall stand, and if men accept it then no State or government will perish, but, if not, then they alone are the cause of their misfortune.”[1567]
With no less confidence is he prepared to counter the other objections. My doctrine breeds evil? “After the proclamation of the Evangel it is true we see in the world great wickedness, ingratitude and profanation; this followed on the overthrow of Antichrist [which I brought about]; but in reality it is only, that, formerly, before the dawn of the Evangel, we did not see so plainly these sins which all were already there, but now that the morning star has risen the whole world awakens, as though from a drunken sleep, and perceives the sins which previously, while all men were asleep and sunk in the gloom of night, they had failed to recognise. But [in view of all the wickedness] I set my hopes on the Last Day being not far distant; things cannot go on for more than a hundred years; for the Word of God will again grow weaker; owing to lack of ministers of the Word darkness will arise. Then the whole world will grow savage and so lull itself into a state of security. After this the voice will resound (Mt. xxv. 6): ‘Behold, the bridegroom cometh.’ Then God will not be able to endure it any longer.”[1568]
Is our own life any objection? It is no question of life but of doctrine, “and, as to the doctrine, it is indubitable that it is the Word of God. ‘The words that I speak,’ saith the Lord [John xiv. 10], ‘are not mine but the Father’s.’” Certainly “I should not like God to judge me by my life.”[1569]—“My doctrine is true and includes the forgiveness of sins, because my doctrine is not mine; Christ also says, ‘My doctrine is not Mine.’ My doctrine stands fast, be my life what it may.”[1570] “True enough, it is hard when Satan comes and upbraids us saying: You have laid violent hands on this marvellous edifice of the Papacy,” you, “a man full of error and sin.” “But Paul also, according to Rom. ix., had at times to endure similar reproaches.” “We answer: We do not attack the Pope on account of his personal errors and trespasses; we must indeed condemn them, but we will overlook them and forgive them as we ourselves wish to be forgiven. Thus it is not a question for us of the Pope’s personal faults and sins, but of his doctrine and of submission to the Word. The Pope and his followers, quite apart from their own sins, offend against the glory and the grace of God, nay, against Christ Himself, of whom the Father says: Hear ye Him. But the Pope would have men’s ears attentive only to what he says!”[1571]
But, because my doctrine is true, so he concludes, this had to come about, “as I had long ago foreseen; in spite of the purity of my theology I [like Paul] was alleged to have preached ‘scandal’ to the holy Jews and ‘foolishness’ to the sapient heathen.”[1572]—Nevertheless, “whoever teaches otherwise than I have taught, or condemns me, condemns God and must remain a child of hell.”[1573]—“For the future I will not do the Papists the honour,” of permitting them, “or even an angel from heaven, to judge of my doctrine, for we have had too much already of foolish humility.”[1574]
With what wonder and perplexity at so unaccountable an attitude would the foreign bishops have listened to words such as these!