He intended to show by these examples how helpful Hebrew learning and Bible study can be in defending Scripture against the attacks of unbelievers; he also wanted to establish that neither Jews nor Papists possessed the real key to the Bible, viz. the knowledge of Christ; “for in this all sticks, and lies, and rests: Whosoever has not or will not have this man called Jesus Christ, the Son of God, whom we Christians preach [the new Evangel undefiled], let him avoid the Bible; such is my conscientious advice, else he will certainly come a cropper, and become ever blinder and more crazy the more he studies.”[1652]
In David’s final words on the Messias, Luther saw something peculiarly solemn; David, when “about to die and depart,” gives his parting injunction and adds: “This is my firm belief; on this I stand fast and immoveable.... Hence I am joyful, and will gladly live or die as and when God wills.”[1653]
“Whoever can boast [like David] that the Spirit of the Lord speaks through him, and that His word is on his tongue, must indeed be very sure of his cause.”[1654]
In this writing the Jews are not attacked in such unmeasured language as in the two others just considered; the tone of the whole is much calmer, indeed comparatively kind. It may be that the representations made to him concerning his violence had not been without some effect.
The end, like the beginning, expresses the wish that, without suffering ourselves to be led astray by the false readings of the Jews, we should “plainly and clearly find and recognise our dear Lord and Saviour in Holy Writ.”[1655] This is what leads Melanchthon to praise the work as enjoyable reading, because there is nothing sweeter to the pious than to deepen their knowledge of the God-man and to learn the art of real prayer so different from that of the heathen, the Jew and the Turk.[1656]
Against the Turks
The honour of Christianity and of its Divine Founder was also what Luther had at heart in the two books which in his later years he was instrumental in publishing against the Turks, viz. his “Vermanunge zum Gebet wider den Türcken” (1541) and his new edition (1542) of an old work against the Koran, the “Verlegung des Alcoran Bruder Richardi.”
In one passage of the Vermanunge he even couches this thought in the form of a prayer:
“Yes, indeed, this is our offence against them [the Turks], that we preach, believe and confess Thee, God the Father, as the only True God, and Thy Beloved Son our Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost as one eternal God.” “Thou knowest, God the Father Almighty, that we have not sinned in any other way against the devil, Pope or Turk and that they have no right or power to punish us.” Most fervently, as in the very presence of God, he declares that he must withstand the devil who is helping the Turk to set up “his Mahmed in the stead of Jesus Christ Thy Beloved Son.”[1657] Speaking of prayer against the Turk he makes every Christian say to God: “Thou tellest, nay, compellest, me to pray in the name of Thy Beloved Son Our Lord Jesus Christ.”[1658]
In this writing he strongly reprobates both the public disorders on the side of the new Evangel and the Papists’ obstinate resistance to the Word of God; both would be terribly punished by means of the Turks unless people set about amending their lives and giving themselves up to earnest prayer. Now, after the Evangel had been preached for so many years, “everyone knew, thank God, what each class and individual man should do or leave undone, which, alas, formerly we did not know, though we would gladly have done it.”[1659] Should our prayer fail to achieve the desired object, “then let us say a longer and a better one.” “How happy should we be were our prayers against the Turk again to prove of no avail, but, instead, the Last Day came—which indeed cannot any longer be far off—spelling the end of both Turk and Pope as I do not for a moment doubt.”[1660]