Further untruths are found in this booklet: Hitherto, the monks, not the bishops, had “governed the churches”; it was merely his peaceable teaching and the power of the Word that had “destroyed” the monks; this the bishops, “backed by the might of all the kings and with all the learning of the universities at their command had not been able to do.”[429] Let no one accuse him of “preaching sedition,” so he goes on; he had merely “taught the people to keep the peace”;[430] he would much rather have preferred to end his days in retirement; “for me there will be no better tidings than to hear that I had been removed from the office of preacher”; better and more pious heretics than the Lutherans had never before been met with; he cannot deny that there is nothing lacking in his doctrine and in that of his “followers ... whatever their life may be.”[431]
We have here a row of instances of the honesty of his polemics and of the way in which he treated with the State authorities concerning the deepest matters of the Church’s life. Often enough his polemics consist solely of unwarrantable statements concerning his own pacific intentions and salutary achievements, supported by revolting untruths, misrepresentations and exaggerations tending to damage his opponents’ case.
Beyond this we frequently find him having recourse to low and unworthy language, and to filthy and unmannerly abuse. (Vol. iv., p. 318 ff.)
“When they are most angry I say to the Papists,” he cries in his “Warnunge an seine lieben Deudschen,” “My dear sirs, leave the wall, relieve yourselves into your drawers and sling it round your neck.... If they do not care to accept my services, then the devil may well be thankful to them!” etc.[432] “Oh, the shameful Diet, such as has never before been held or heard of ... an everlasting blot on the whole Empire! What will the Turk say ... to our allowing the accursed Pope with his minions to fool and mock at us, to treat us as children, nay, as clouts and blocks, to our behaving contrary to justice and truth, nay, with such utter shamelessness in open Diet as regards their blasphemies, their shameful and Sodomitic life and doctrines?”[433] These were the words in which he described the Diet of Augsburg in 1530.
We may here recall the saying of Valentine Ickelsamer the Anabaptist. At one time he had thought of espousing Luther’s cause, but “owing to the diabolical abuse” which he piled on “erring men” it was possible to regard him only “as a non-Christian.” Luther wanted to overthrow his opponents simply by words “of abuse”; these “Saxon rogues of Wittenberg,” “when unable to get what they want by means of a few kind words, invoke on you all the curses of the devil.”
Heinrich Bullinger complains repeatedly, and quite as bitterly, of the frightful storm into which Luther’s eloquence was apt to break out. It is noteworthy that he applies what he says to Luther’s polemics, not merely against the Swiss, but against other opponents. “Here all men have in their hands Luther’s King Harry of England, and another Harry as well, in his unsavoury Hans Worst; item, they have Luther’s book on the Jews with its hideous letters of the Bible dropped from the posterior of the pig, which the Jews may swallow, indeed, but never read; then, again, there is Luther’s filthy, swinish Schemhamphorasch, for which some small excuse might have been found had it been written by a swine-herd and not by a famous pastor of souls.”[434]
“And yet most people,” so Bullinger says, “even go so far as to worship the houndish, filthy eloquence of the man. Thus it comes that he goes his way and seeks to outdo himself in vituperation.... Many pious and learned people take scandal at his insolence, which really is beyond measure.” He should have someone at his side to keep a check on him, so Bullinger tells Bucer, for instance, his friend Melanchthon, “so that Luther may not ruin a good cause with his wonted invective, his bitterness, his torrent of bad words and his ridicule.”[435]
And yet Luther at this very time, in his “Warnunge,” calls himself “the German Prophet” and “a faithful teacher.”[436]
The following words of Erasmus contain a general censure: “You wish to be taken for a teacher of the Gospel. In that case, however, would it not better beseem you not to repel all the prudent and well-meaning by your vituperation nor to incite men to strife and revolt in these already troubled times?”[437]—“You snarl at me as an Epicurean. Had I been an Epicurean and lived in the time of the Apostles and heard them proclaim the Gospel with such invective, then I fear I should have remained an Epicurean.... Whoever is conscious of teaching a holy doctrine should not behave with insolence and delight in malicious misrepresentation.”[438]—“To what class of spirits,” he had already asked him, “does yours belong, if indeed it be a spirit at all? And what unevangelical way is this of inculcating the holy Gospel? Has perchance the risen Gospel done away with all the laws of public order so that now one may say and write anything against anyone? Does the freedom you are bringing back to us spell no more than this?”[439]