As a last straw Luther in the “Treue Warnung” goes on to declare, that, unless Christians mend their life, are converted to the Evangel and live up to it, it is to be hoped that the Turkish arms will prove victorious.
For amongst those who “pretend to be Christians and to constitute the holy Church” there are, so he declares, so many who “knowingly and wantonly despise and persecute the known truth and vindicate their open and notorious idolatry, lying and unrighteousness.” Such Christians, of whom the forces that had been raised chiefly consisted, formed, so he thought, an army which might itself well be styled Turkish. “If then two such ‘Turkish’ armies were to advance against one another, the one called Mahmetish and the other dubbing itself Christian, then, good friend, I should suggest you might give Our Lord God some advice, for He would assuredly need it, as to which Turks He is to help and carry to victory. I, the worst of advisers, would counsel Him to give the victory to the Mahmetish Turks over the Christian Turks, as indeed He has done hitherto without any advice from us and even contrary to our prayers and complaints. The reason is, that the Mahmetish Turks have neither God’s Word nor those who might preach it.... Had they preachers of the Godly Word they might perhaps, some of them at least, be presently changed from swine into men. But our Christian Turks have the Word of God and preachers, and yet they refuse to listen, and from men become mere swine.”[1671]
The public danger which threatened owing to the advance of the Turks caused Luther, however, about this time to promote the sale of the Latin translation and confutation of the Koran brought out under Melanchthon’s auspices by Bibliander (Buchmann) of Zürich. In a popular hymn which he composed he also took care to couple the Turkish danger with that to be apprehended from the Papists. This short hymn, “which became a favourite with the German Evangelicals” (Köstlin), begins:
“In Thy Word preserve us, Lord,
Ward off Pope and Turkish sword.”
The picture which Luther incidentally paints of himself in his effusions against the Jews and the Turks, receives its final touch in his last great and solemn pronouncement against Popery which the lines just quoted may serve to introduce.
The Hideous Caricatures of “Popery Pictured”
One cannot contemplate without sadness Luther’s last efforts against the Papacy.
Fortunately for literature the projected continuation of the frightful book “Wider das Bapstum vom Teuffel gestifft” never saw the light; Luther’s intention had been to make it even worse than the first part.
His final labours, aimed directly at the Pope and the Council of Trent, consisted in suggesting the subjects and drafting the versified letterpress for a number of woodcuts, designed expressly to ridicule and defame the Papal office in the eyes of the lower classes. Even apart from the verses the caricatures were vulgar enough in all conscience. Nudities in the grossest postures alternate with comicalities the better to ensure success with the populace.