At any rate Luther might have used better weapons against the Turks than he actually did in this so-called admonition.
About the time he wrote it we hear Luther occasionally expressing a hope that the Turks may be converted to the Evangel, now shining so brightly and convincingly.
“I should like to see the Evangel make its way amongst the Turks, which may indeed very well happen.” “It is quite in God’s power to work a miracle and make them listen to the Evangel.... If a ‘Wascha’ [Pasha] were to accept the Gospel we should soon see what effect it would have on the Grand Turk; and as he has many sons it is quite likely one of them might reach it.”—He despaired of the overthrow of the Turkish empire, but was fond of dreaming of the coming of a “good man who should withstand the dogma of Mohamed.”[1661]
“The Turk rules more mightily by his religion than by arms”; such was Luther’s opinion. He had to be confronted with the belief in Christ, that belief which Luther had learnt “amidst the bitter pangs of death,” viz. “that Christ is God”; in great temptations nothing could help us but this faith, “the most powerful consolation that is bestowed on us”; this same article of faith God was vindicating, even by miracles, against Turk and Pope. To this he too would cleave in spite of any objections of reason.[1662]
He did not, however, patiently wait till the “good man” came who was to oppose the dogma of the Turks; he himself set about this undertaking in March, 1542.[1663] After having, shortly before, become acquainted with the Koran in a poor translation, he proceeded himself to translate into German a work against the Koran, written in 1300, by the Dominican Richardus (Ricoldus). To it he appended a preface of his own and a “Treue Warnung.”[1664]
He had undertaken, so he says, to disclose and answer the devil-inspired “infamies” contained in the Alcoran, “the better to strengthen us in our Christian faith.”[1665]—This out-of-date book of a mediæval theologian was, however, hardly the work to furnish an insight into the Koran, particularly as it built far too much on badly read texts and doubtful stories uncritically taken for granted; from such defects the refutation was bound to suffer.
Some of Luther’s own additions are characteristic.
Here he gives up all hope of any conversion of the Moslem; he likewise despairs of the success of the Christian armies.[1666]—“Mahmet,” so he teaches, “leads people to eternal damnation as the Pope also did and still does.” He reigns “in the Levant” as the Pope does “in the land of the setting sun,” thanks to a system of “wilful lying.”[1667] “Oh, Lord God! Let all who can, pray, sigh and implore that of God’s anger we may see an end,” as Daniel says (Dan. xi. 36).[1668]
Bad as Mahmet was, Luther was loath to see in him Antichrist; “the Pope, whom we have with us, he is the real Antichrist, with his ‘Drecktal,’ Alcoran and man-made doctrines.” “The chaste Pope takes no wife, but all women are his.... Obscene Mahmet at least makes no pretence of chastity.... As for the other points such as murder, avarice and pride, I will not enumerate them, but here again the Pope far outdoes Mahmet.” “May God give us His grace and punish both the Pope and Mahmet together with their devils. I have done my part as a faithful prophet and preacher.”[1669]
Words such as these were certainly as little calculated to further the common cause of the Christians against the Turks as had been the somewhat similar thoughts which, at an earlier date, he had been wont to weave into his exhortations to resist the Turks.[1670]