The stress Luther lays on miracles as a proof of doctrine is another trait to add to the picture of his psychology. Again and again he repeated anew what he had already, in 1524, said of Münzer and some of the preachers: They must be told to corroborate their mission by signs and wonders, or else be forbidden to preach; for whenever God wills to change the order of things He always works miracles.[1050] There is something almost tragic in the courage with which he appealed to miracles in this connection, when we bear in mind his own difficulties, in accounting for their absence in his own case.[1051] Here it is enough to recall Hier. Weller’s words: “I still remember right well,” Weller writes, “how he once said that he had never thought of asking God for the gift of raising the dead, or of performing other miracles, though he did not doubt he might have obtained such of God had he wished; he had, however, preferred to be content with the rich gift of Scripture-interpretation; he further said that he had raised two persons from the dead, one of them being Philip Melanchthon and the other a God-fearing man.”[1052]
As against the sects and fanatics, Luther urges that he himself laid no claim to any extraordinary mission; as they, however, did make such a claim, they must vindicate it by miracles. “I have never preached or sought to preach unless I was asked and called for by men, for I cannot boast as they do that God has sent me from heaven without means; they run of their own accord, though no one sends them, as Jeremias writes [xxiii. 21]; for this reason they work no good.”[1053] Neither here nor elsewhere does he explicitly state by whom it is necessary to be “asked” or “called.” His account of the source whence he derives his mission also varies, being now the Wittenberg magistrates, now his Doctor’s degree, now the sovereign, now the enthusiastic hearers and readers of his word.[1054]
Such was his confidence that Luther forgot that it was by no means difficult for the “false brethren” within his camp to pick out the weak spots in his doctrine. He refused to recognise that much of their criticism was valid; on the negative side it even took the place of miracles. It was not every Catholic polemic who succeeded in demonstrating so clearly and convincingly the anomalies in Luther’s views, for instance, on the Law and Gospel, as the Antinomian, Johann Agricola.
On the other hand, Luther could well note with satisfaction the inability of the heretics to bring forward anything positive of importance. They were dwarfs compared with him. With his knowledge of the Bible it was child’s play to him to overthrow the fanatics’ often ludicrous applications of Scripture. Of Zwingli, too, it was easy for him to get the better by dint of sticking to the literal sense of Christ’s words of institution: “This is My Body.” Luther was not slow in pointing out the blemishes of the “fanatics,” their vanity and blind obedience to ambition and self-will, and the impracticability of their fantastic, and often revolutionary, theories. The very truth of his strictures, for all his lack of miracles, raised him in his own eyes, far above these clumsy teachers; this perhaps enables us to understand better the utter contempt he expresses for them.
His Anger with Lemnius and Others
One had but to praise those whom he condemned to call forth Luther’s implacable anger.
This was the experience in 1538 of the humanist, Simon Lemnius (Lemchen) of Wittenberg, a man otherwise kindly disposed to the new teaching. A humanist above all, he had won Melanchthon’s favour on account of his talent.
Lemnius had thoughtlessly dared to publish two books of epigrams in which he not only attacked with biting sarcasm certain Wittenberg personages, but actually ventured to praise Archbishop Albert of Mayence, Luther’s powerful opponent. The poet, no doubt, was anxious to curry favour with the Archbishop so as to find in him a Mæcenas; he even went so far as to extol him as the man who “had kept alive the olden faith.” The censorship for which Melanchthon as Rector of the University was then responsible, was caught napping. Lemnius was indeed arrested by the University, but he escaped and fled from Wittenberg. On Trinity Sunday, June 16th, Luther read out from the pulpit a Mandate in which he abused Archbishop Albert in disgraceful terms, and scourged as a criminal act the praise bestowed in the “shameful, shocking book of lies” on Bishop Albert, “a devil out of whom it made a saint.” In it he also declared that, “by every code of law, and no matter whither the fugitive knave had fled, his head was forfeit.”[1055] Thus Lemnius was as good as outlawed—though no Court of Justice had yet sentenced him. On July 4th Melanchthon formally expelled him from the University on account of “faithlessness, perjury and slander.”[1056] The “perjury” consisted in his having fled, in defiance of the obedience he owed to the University, so as to evade the harsh penalties he had reason to apprehend. The whole edition of the Epigrams was destroyed.
“It is the devil who hatches out such knaves,” remarked Luther, “particularly among the Papists, through whom he attacks and thwarts us.… Because we preach Christ alone he persecutes us in every way he can.” The bishops deserve to be called “lost and godless knaves and foes of God,” hence “those must not be tolerated here who praise them in verse and prose.”[1057]