Amidst the trials of increasing bodily ailments and in other temporal hardships he knows how to encourage his life’s partner, Catharine Bora, whose anxiety distressed him: “You want to provide for your God,” he says to her in one of his letters, “just as though He were not all-powerful and able to create ten Dr. Martins should your old one get drowned in the Saale, or smothered in the coal-hole or elsewhere. Do not worry me with your cares; I have a better caretaker than even you or all the angels. He lies in the crib and sucks at a Virgin’s breast, but nevertheless is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. Hence be at peace, Amen.”[715] “Do you pray,” he admonishes her not long after, “and leave God to provide, for it is written: ‘Cast thy care upon the Lord and He shall sustain thee,’ Ps. lv.”[716]
Such ready words of encouragement do not however prevent him, when dealing with other more stout-hearted friends who were aware of the precarious state of the cause, from giving full voice to the depression, nay despair, which overwhelmed him. The following example from his correspondence with the “bishop” of Naumburg is characteristic.
After an attempt to parry the charge brought against him of being responsible for the public misfortunes which had arisen through the religious revolt, and to reassure Amsdorf, and incidentally himself too, he goes on gloomily to predict the coming chastisement: “Were we the cause of all the evils that have befallen us [and others], how much blood should we have already shed!... It is, however, Christ’s business to see to this, since He Himself by His Word has called forth so much evil and such great hatred on the part of the devil. All this, so they fancy, is a scandal and a disgrace to our teaching! Nevertheless ingratitude for God’s proffered grace is so great, the contempt for the Word goes such lengths, vice, avarice, usury, luxury, hatred, perfidy, envy, pride, godlessness and blasphemy are increasing by such leaps and bounds that it is hard to believe God can much longer deal indulgently and patiently with Germany. Either the Turk will chastise us [‘while we brood full of hate over the wounds of our brethren’] or some inner misfortune [civil war] will break over us. It is true we feel the chastisement, we pay the penalty in grief and tears, but yet we remain sunk in terrible sins whereby we grieve the Holy Ghost and rouse the anger of God against us.”
What faithful Catholics feared for him owing to his obstinacy, this, in his sad blindness, he now predicts for the foes of his Evangel. “Who can wonder,” he cries, “should God, as Holy Scripture says, laugh at our destruction in spite of the weeping and sighing of the guilty.... The worst end awaits the impenitent.”
“Let none of us expect the least good of the future. Our sins cry aloud to heaven and on earth and there is no hope of any good. Now, in a time of peace, Germany affords the eye a terrible spectacle, seeing that God’s honour is outraged everywhere by so many wicked men and that the churches and schools are being destroyed.... Meanwhile, we at least [the despised preachers of the truth] will bewail our own sins and those of Germany; we will pray and humble our souls, devote ourselves to our office, teaching, exhorting and consoling. What else can we do? Germany has become blind and deaf and rises up in insolence; we cannot hope against hope.”
“But do you be brave and give thanks to the Lord for the holy calling He has deigned to bestow upon us; He has willed to sunder us from these reprobates, who are bent on ruining others too, to preserve us clean and blameless in His pure and holy Word, and will continue so to preserve us. Let us, however, weep for the foes of the cross of Christ, even though they mock at our tears. Though we be filled with grief on account of their misery still our grief will be assuaged by the holy joy which will attend the again-rising of the Lord on the day of our salvation, Amen.”
He concludes this curious letter, written on Easter Sunday, with the following benediction: “May the Lord be with you to support and comfort you together with us. Outside of Christ, in the kingdom of the raging devil, there is nothing but sadness to be seen or heard.” Thus, at the close, he returns to the opening thought suggested by the very object of the letter. Amsdorf had deplored the warlike acts undertaken by Duke Maurice of Saxony against the Elector. Luther, in turn, had informed him, that “here, we are quite certain that what the Duke is doing is the direct work of Satan.”[717]