Even this did not suffice and Luther again adds: “I have written the above because it seems better than nothing. Farewell, and teach the Church to pray for the Day of the Lord; for there is no hope of a better time coming. God will listen only when we implore the quick advent of our redemption, in which all the portents agree.”[809]
The outpourings of bitterness and disgust with life, which Antony Lauterbach noted while a guest at Luther’s table in 1538, find a still stronger echo in the Table-Talk collected by Mathesius in the years subsequent to 1540.
In Lauterbach’s Notes he still speaks of his inner struggles with the devil, i.e. with his conscience; this was no longer the case when Mathesius knew him: “We are plagued and troubled by the devil, whose bones are very tough until we learn to crack them. Paul and Christ had enough to do with the devil. I, too, have my daily combats.”[810] He had learnt how hard it was “when mental temptations come upon us and we say, ‘Accursed be the day I was born’”; rather would he endure the worst bodily pains during which at least one could still say, “Blessed be the Name of the Lord.”[811] The passages in question will be quoted at greater length below.
But according to Lauterbach’s Notes of his sayings he was also very bitter about the general state of things: “It is the world’s way to think of nothing but of money,” he says, for instance, “as though on it hung soul and body. God and our neighbour are despised and people serve Mammon. Only look at our times; see how full all the great ones, the burghers too, and the peasants, are with avarice and how they stamp upon religion.... Horrible times will come, worse even than befell Sodom and Gomorrha!”[812]—“All sins,” he complains, “rage mightily, as we see to-day, because the world of a sudden has grown so wanton and calls down God’s wrath upon its head.” In these words he was bewailing, as Lauterbach relates, the “impending misfortunes of Germany.”[813]—“The Church to-day is more tattered than any beggar’s cloak.”[814] “The world is made up of nothing but contempt, blasphemy, disobedience, adultery, pride and thieving; it is now in prime condition for the slaughter-house. And Satan gives us no rest, what with Turk, Pope and fanatics.”[815]
“Who would have started preaching,” he says in the same year, oppressed by such experiences, “had he known beforehand that such misfortune, fanatism, scandal, blasphemy, ingratitude and wickedness would be the sequel?”[816] To live any longer he had not the slightest wish now that no peace was to be hoped for from the fanatics.[817] He even wished his wife and children to follow him to the grave without delay because of the evil times to come soon after.[818]
In the conversations taken down by Mathesius in the ‘forties Luther’s weariness of life finds even stronger expression, nor are the words in which he describes it of the choicest: “I have had enough of the world and it, too, has had enough of me; with this I am well content. It fancies that, were it only rid of me, all would be well....” As I have often repeated: “I am the ripe shard and the world is the gaping anus, hence the parting will be a happy one.”[819] “As I have often repeated”; the repulsive comparison had indeed become a favourite one with him in his exasperation. Other sayings in the Table-Talk contain unmistakable allusions to the bodily excretions as a term of comparison to Luther’s so ardently desired departure from this world.[820] The same coarse simile is met in his letters dating from this time.[821]
The reason of his readiness to depart, viz. the world’s hatred for his person, he elsewhere depicts as follows; the politicians who were against him, particularly those at the Dresden court, are “Swine,” deserving of “hell-fire”; let them at least leave in peace our Master, the Son of God, and the Kingdom of Heaven also; with a quiet conscience we look upon them as abandoned bondsmen of the devil, whose oaths though sworn to a hundred times over are not the least worthy of belief; “we must scorn the devil in these devils and sons of devils, yea, in this seed of the serpent.”[822]
“The gruff, boorish Saxon,”[823] as Luther calls himself, here comes to the fore. He seeks, however, to refrain from dwelling unduly on the growing lack of appreciation shown for his authority; he was even ready, so he said, “gladly to nail to the Cross those blasphemers and Satan with them.”[824]
“I thank Thee, my good God,” he once said in the winter 1542-43 to Mathesius and the other people at table, “for letting me be one of the little flock that suffers persecution for Thy Word’s sake; for they do not persecute me for adultery or usury, as I well know.”[825] According to the testimony of Mathesius he also said: “The Courts are full of Eceboli and folk who change with the weather. If only a real sovereign like Constantine came to his Court [the Elector’s] we should soon see who would kiss the Pope’s feet.” “Many remain good Evangelicals because there are still chalices, monstrances and cloistral lands to be taken.”[826] That a large number, not only of the high officials, but even of the “gentry and yokels,” were “tired” of him is clear from statements made by him as early as 1530. Wishing then to visit his father who lay sick, he was dissuaded by his friends from undertaking the journey on account of the hostility of the country people towards his person: “I am compelled to believe,” so he wrote to the sick man, “that I ought not to tempt God by venturing into danger, for you know how both gentry and yokels feel towards me.”[827] “Amongst the charges that helped to lessen his popularity was his supposed complicity in the Peasant War and in the rise of the Sacramentarians.”[828]
“Would that I and all my children were dead,” so he repeats, according to Mathesius,[829] “Satur sum huius vitae”; it was well for the young, that, in their thoughtlessness and inexperience, they failed to see the mischief of all the scandals rampant, for else “they would not be able to go on living.”[830]—“The world cannot last much longer. Amongst us there is the utmost ingratitude and contempt for the Word, whilst amongst the Papists there is nothing but blood and blasphemy. This will soon knock the bottom out of the cask.”[831] There would be no lack of other passages to the same effect to quote from Mathesius.