Duke George of Saxony unfeelingly pointed out to the innovator that his fear, that many, very many indeed, would say: “Do we not also possess the Spirit and understand Scripture as well as you?” would only too surely be realised.
“What man on earth,” wrote the Duke in his usual downright fashion, “ever hitherto undertook a more foolish task than you in seeking to include in your sect all Christians, especially those of the German nation? Success is as likely in your case as it was in that of those who set about building a tower in Babylonia which was to reach the very heavens; in the end they had to cease from building, and the result was seventy-two new tongues. The same will befall you; you also will have to stop, and the result will be seventy-two new sects.”[616]
Luther’s letters speak throughout in a similar strain of the divisions already existing and the gloomy outlook for the future; in the ‘forties his lamentation over the approaching calamities becomes, however, even louder than usual in spite of the apparent progress of his cause. Much of what he says puts us vividly in mind of Duke George’s words just quoted.
Amidst the excitement of his struggle with the fanatics he wrote as early as 1525 to the “Christians at Antwerp”: “The tiresome devil begins to rage amongst the ungodly and to belch forth many wild and mazy beliefs and doctrines. This man will have nothing of baptism, that one denies the Sacrament, a third awaits another world between this and the Last Day; some teach that Christ is not God; some say this, some that, and there are as many sects and beliefs as there are heads; no peasant is so rude but that if he dreams or fancies something, it must forsooth be the Holy Spirit which inspires him, and he himself must be a prophet.”[617]
After the bitter experiences of the intervening years we find in a letter of 1536 this bitter lament: “Pray for me that I too may be delivered from certain ungodly men, seeing you rejoice that God has delivered you from the Anabaptists and the sects. For new prophets are constantly arising against me one after the other, so that I almost wish to be dissolved in order not to see such evils without end, and to be set free at last from this kingdom of the devil.”[618]
Even in the strong pillars of the Evangel, in the Landgrave of Hesse and Bucer the theologian, he apprehended treason to his cause and complains of them as “false brethren.” At the time of the negotiations at Ratisbon, in 1541, he exclaims in a letter to Melanchthon: “They are making advances to the Emperor and to our foes, and look on our cause as a comedy to be played out among the people, though as is evident it is a tragedy between God and Satan in which Satan’s side has the upper hand and God’s comes off second best.... I say this with anger and am incensed at their games. But so it must be; the fact that we are endangered by false brethren likens us to the Apostle Paul, nay, to the whole Church, and is the sure seal that God stamps upon us.”[619]
In spite of this “seal of God,” he is annoyed to see how his Evangel becomes the butt of “heretical attacks” from within, and suffers from the disintegrating and destructive influence of the immorality and godlessness of many of his followers.
This, for instance, he bewails in a letter of condolence sent in 1541 to Wenceslaus Link of Nuremberg. At Nuremberg according to Link’s account the evil seemed to be assuming a menacing shape. Not the foe without, writes Luther, but rather “our great gainsayers within, who repay us with contempt, are the danger we must fear, according to the words of the common prophecy: ‘After Antichrist has been revealed men will come who say: There is no God!’ This we see everywhere fulfilled to-day.... They think our words are but human words!”[620]
About this time he often contemplates with sadness the abundance of other crying disorders in his Churches,[621] the wantonness of the great and the decadence of the people; he cries: “Hasten, O Jesus, Thy coming; the evils have come to a head and the end cannot be delayed. Amen.”[622] “I am sick of life if this life can be called life.... Implacable hatred and strife amongst the great ... no hopes of any improvement ... the age is Satan’s own; gladly would I see myself and all my people quickly snatched from it!”[623] The evil spirit of apostasy and fanatism which had raged so terribly at Münster, was now, according to him, particularly busy amongst the great ones, just as formerly it had laid hold on the peasants. “May God prevent him and resist him, the evil spirit, for truly he means mischief.”[624]
And yet he still in his own way hopes in God and clings to the idea of his call; God will soon mock at the devil: “The working of Satan is patent, but God at Whom they now laugh will mock at Satan in His own time.”[625]