His Collected Works; his New Edition of the Church-Postils
Luther’s German writings were collected by Cruciger and Rörer and printed at Wittenberg. The second volume was published only in 1548, after Luther’s death. The compilation of the Latin writings was carried out with the aid of various friends, for instance, of Spalatin and Rörer, and also first saw the light at Wittenberg. Both these editions were eagerly sought after by the booksellers and a great sale was anticipated.
In the introductions which Luther prefixed to both collections he not only followed the then universal fashion of seeking to make a favourable impression on the reader by an extravagant display of humility, but also gave free play to his love for grotesque exaggerations. He had no intention of writing any “Retractations,” as St. Augustine had done, however much such might be called for. Instead of this he professes to repudiate his books wholesale—though only, of course, to bring them forward again all the more vigorously. Whoever is familiar with Luther’s ways will not need to be told how to interpret and appreciate what he here says. There is no doubt, however, that countless readers of these introductions fell into the trap and exclaimed: How great and yet how humble is the man who speaks in these pages!
Luther begins the prefaces to his German works[1858] with the wish, which we have heard him express before: “Gladly would I see all my books unwritten or destroyed.”[1859] Why? “That Holy Scripture might be read and studied the more,” that Word of God, “which so long lay forgotten under the bench.” Because, in the Church, “many books and large libraries” had been collected “apart from and in addition to Scripture,” and “without any discrimination,” the “true understanding of the Divine Word had at last been lost.” At any rate it was “good and profitable that the writings of some of the Fathers and Councils had remained as witnesses and histories.” I myself, he says, “may venture to boast without pride or lying that I do not fall far short of some of the Fathers in the matter of the making of books; my life, however, I would not dare to liken to theirs.” It is, however, his books that “provide the ‘pure knowledge’ of the Word.” Nevertheless, he seeks comfort in the thought, “that, in time, my books, too, will lie dusty and forgotten,” “particularly now that it has begun to rain and hail books.” But whoever reads them, “let him see well to it that they do not prove a hindrance to his studying Scripture itself.”
He then goes on to give some quite excellent directions as to how best to study Holy Scripture. He himself had pursued this method, and were the reader too to make it his own he would be able, “if necessary, to compose as good books as the Fathers and the Councils.”
In the first place you must “altogether renounce your own judgment and reason,” and rather beg God “humbly and earnestly to ... enlighten you”; but if anyone “falls on it with his reason” ... then the result is only a new crop of fanatics. Secondly, he recommends that the text of the Bible, i.e. “the literal words of the book, should be ever studied, read and re-read with diligent attention and reflection as to what the Holy Ghost means thereby.” Thirdly, temptations: “As soon as the Word of God is being made known to you, the devil will attack you, make a real doctor of you, and, by his temptations, teach you to seek and love God’s Word.” He, too, had to thank his Papists and the raging of the devil at their bidding for having made him “a pretty fair theologian.” Hence “oratio, meditatio, tentatio.”
But if anyone seeks to win praise by writing books, then let him pull his own ears and he will find “a fine long pair of big rough donkey’s ears”; these he may adorn with golden bells so that everyone may point at him and say: “There goes the elegant animal who writes such precious books.” No, so he concludes his preface, “in this book all the praise is God’s.”
In the preface to the first volume of his Latin works Luther seeks, not so much to enhance his knowledge of Scripture as he does in the German preface, but rather to explain in his own way how he was led to take up the position he did.
He represents the indulgence controversy as the sole cause of his breach with Catholicism and does so in language in which readers, unacquainted with the real state of the case, would detect simply a defence of his struggle against the “fury and wrath of Satan.” Of the real motive of the struggle, viz. his rupture with the doctrines of the Church even previous to the Leipzig Disputation, or, indeed, to the Theses against Tetzel, he says never a word. On the other hand, he launches out into a dissertation on his Popish views at that time, which he urges had been deeper and more ingrained than those of Eck and all his opponents, and, which, unfortunately, had disfigured his earliest writings. He had been terribly afraid of the Last Judgment but at the same time had longed ardently to be eternally saved. God knew that it was only by the merest chance that he had been drawn into public controversy (“casu, non voluntate nec studio”). Only when beginning his second exposition of the Psalms (1518-19) had the knowledge dawned upon him of that “Justice of God,” whereby we are justified; before this he had hated the term “Justice of God.”[1860] He is at great pains to impress on the reader that he had “gradually advanced, thanks to much writing and teaching,” and was not one of those, “who [like the fanatics], from nothing, become all at once the greatest of men ... without labour, or temptations, or experience.” No great stress need be laid on the statement he again makes at the commencement of this preface, viz. that he would fain see all his books “buried in oblivion,” and that only the urgent entreaties of friends had won his consent to their bringing out a complete edition of his “muddled books.”