Luther’s complaints elsewhere about the pride of the heretics throw still further light on the jealousy which was at work in him (above, p. 260).
“How is it that all the insurgents say ‘I am the man?’ They want all the glory for themselves and hate and are grim with all others, just like the Pope who also wants to stand alone.”[1020] Zwingli appears to be one of the foremost among those desirous of robbing him of his due glory. “He was ambitious through and through.”[1021] On hearing that Zwingli had said that, in three years, he would have France, Spain and England “on his side and for his share,” Luther became very bitter and several times complained of Zwingli’s intention to seize upon his harvest; such words seemed to him the “boasting of a braggart.”[1022] “Œcolampadius, too, fancied himself the doctor of doctors and far above me, even before he had ever heard me.” And in the same way Carlstadt said: “As for you, Sir Doctor, I don’t care a snap! Münzer, too, preached against two Popes, the old one and the new,[1023] said I must be a Saul, and that though I had made a good beginning, the Spirit of God had left me.… Hence let all the theologians and preachers look to it and diligently beware lest they seek their glory in Holy Scripture and in God’s Word; otherwise they will have a fall.”[1024]—“Mr. Eisleben [Johann Agricola] labours under great pride and presumption; he wants to be the only one, and, with his pride and his puffed-up spirit, to surpass all others.”[1025] “They are scamps,” so he abuses them in another passage, “fain would they get at us and surpass us, as though forsooth we were blind and could not see through their tricks.”[1026]
Elsewhere in the Table-Talk we read: “My best friends,” said Dr. Martin, with a deep sigh, “seek to stamp me under foot and to trouble and besmirch the Evangel; hence I am going to hold a disputation.” “Alas, that, in my own lifetime, I should see them strutting about and seeking to rule.” It was with him as with St. Paul to whom God wished to show how much he must suffer for His Name’s sake (Acts ix. 16). Some indeed were trying to persuade him that these foes in his own household were not really against Luther, but only against Cruciger, Rörer, etc. But this was false. “For the Catechism, the Exposition of the Ten Commandments and the Confession of Augsburg are mine, not Cruciger’s or Rörer’s.”[1027]
Of those near him “Mr. Eisleben” (Agricola) seemed to him his chief rival; those abroad troubled him less; for a while Luther was obsessed by the idea that Agricola, “with his cool head, was set on securing the reins and was seeking to become a great lord.”[1028]
Of Carlstadt Luther once said, referring to the rivalry between the pair: “He persuaded himself that there was no more learned man on earth than he; what I write that he imitates and seeks to copy me.” After a profession of personal humility, Luther concludes: “And yet, by God’s Grace, I am more learned than all the Sophists and theologians of the Schools.”[1029]
Though Luther never grows weary of insisting against the heretics at home on the “public, common doctrine,” and of instancing the fell consequences of pride and obstinacy, even going so far as to predict that they will in all likelihood never be converted because founders of sects rarely retrace their steps and recant,[1030] yet he never seems to have perceived that the point of all this might equally well have been turned against himself.
The blindness of such heretics he describes in a tract of 1526 dedicated to Queen Mary of Hungary:
“Here we may all of us well be afraid, and particularly all heretics and false teachers.… Such a temper [obstinacy in sticking to one’s own opinion] penetrates like water into the inmost recesses and like oil into the very bone, and becomes our daily clothing. Then it comes about that one party curses the other, and the doctrine of one is rank poison and malediction to the other, and his own doctrine nothing but blessing and salvation; this we now see among our fanatics and Papists. Then everything is lost. The masses are not converted; a few, whom God has chosen, come right again, but the others remain under the curse and even regard it as a precious thing.… Nor have I ever read of heresiarchs being converted; they remain obdurate in their own conceit, the oil has gone into the bone … and has become part of their nature. They allow none to find fault with them and brook no opposition. This is the sin against the Holy Ghost for which there is no forgiveness.”[1031]
In the same writing he describes the heretics’ way of speaking: “The heretics give themselves up to idle talk so that one hears of nothing but their dreams.… They overflow with words; all evildoers tend to become garrulous. As a boiling pot foams and bubbles over, so they too overflow with the talk of which their heart is full.… They stand stiff upon their doctrine about which there is no lack of ranting.”[1032]
The description (which seats so well on Luther himself) proceeds: “Those are heretics and apostates who follow their own ideas rather than the common tradition of Christendom, who transgress the teaching of their fathers and separate themselves from the common ways and usages of the whole of Christendom, who, out of pure wantonness, invent new ways and methods without cause, and contrary to Holy Writ.”[1033]—“They misread the Word of God according to their whim and make it mean what they please. In short they undertake something out of the common and invent a belief of their own, regardless of God’s Word.… God must put up with their doctrine and life as being alone holy and Godly.”[1034]