When Lemnius had a second edition of the Epigrams printed at Wittenberg this also was suppressed. He had added a third book, devoted to abuse of Luther and containing the famous “Merd-Song” on Luther, who was then ailing from diarrhœa. Luther retorted with a “Merd-Song” of his own on Lemnius. His verses he read aloud to his friends and they became public property through being incorporated in Lauterbach’s notes of the Table-Talk.[1058]
Lemnius, whose career had been wrecked by Luther’s anger and revenge, then wrote an “Apologia against the unjust and lying decree” which the Wittenberg University had published against him at the instigation (“imperio et tyrannide”) of Martin Luther and Justus Jonas. He still retained his loose humanistic style after his return in 1538 to his native Switzerland, where he obtained a position as schoolmaster at Coire.
The above Apologia was printed at Cologne, it would seem in 1539, but very few copies survive owing to the energy shown in their suppression. It is only of recent years that the complete text has become generally known;[1059] till then Protestants like Schelhorn and Hausen had only ventured to give fragments of the work. In it the writer complains bitterly that Luther “has published a pamphlet against him [the mandate read aloud in the church] in which, playing both the judge and the sovereign, Luther had condemned and abused him.” “Such authority in civil matters” does this soul-herd arrogate to himself. He robs the bishops of their secular power, but he himself is a tyrant. The charges against Luther’s private life made in this work are glaring, and they come, moreover, from a man who knew his Wittenberg, but it must not be forgotten that he was now a bitter foe of Luther.[1060] He goes so far as to declare that Luther’s shameless attacks on the sovereigns, for instance on the Elector of Mayence, gave grounds for apprehending contempt of all authority and the outbreak of a war that would spell the ruin of Germany.
Meanwhile “Luther sits like a dictator at Wittenberg and rules; what he says must be taken as law.”[1061] He calls his opponent the “Wittenberg Pope” (“Papa Albiacus”), who had been faithless to his Vows.
In order rightly to appreciate, from their psychological side, Luther’s angry outbursts against the heretics in his party we must above all remember his fears of a coming collapse of theology among his following; that he foresaw something of the sort has already been shown above.[1062]
He was also keenly alive to the harm these dissensions were doing to his reputation. Nor must we forget the threatening and highly insulting behaviour of many of these heretics. Taking all things together, it is easy to understand how a temper such as his was lashed to fury when denouncing the “presumption and foolhardiness” of his foes.[1063]
“A muddled and obstinate head” sits on the neck of the fanatics’ ringleader; “his horns must be blunted.”[1064]—“Carlstadt and Zwingli behave with insolence and defiance”; “We must needs decry the fanatics as damned”; “they actually dare to pick holes in our doctrine; ah, the scoundrelly rabble do a great injury to our Evangel even in the outland and enable our foes to scoff at us.”[1065]—“Their pride and audacity will bring about their downfall.”[1066]
In truth, he says, “Carlstadt blasphemed himself to death.”[1067]—Œcolampadius saw the “curse” of God fulfilled in himself, “and withered away with fear the night after Zwingli had been struck down” (at Cappel).[1068] Zwingli himself, like the rest, was urged on merely by “his boundless ambition.”[1069]—Egranus (Johann Wildenauer) was a “proud donkey.”[1070]—Bucer is a “gossip,”[1071] “a miscreant through and through, in every case, inflection and rule of grammar; I trust him not at all, for Paul says [Titus iii. 10] ‘A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, avoid.’”[1072]—Sebastian Franck is a “wicked, venomous knave and it is a wonder to me that those at Ulm care to keep him.”[1073] “He only loved to do harm, is inconstant and boasts of the spirit; but his wife has plenty of spirit and it is she who inspirits him with her spirit.”[1074]—Schwenckfeld deserves as little as Franck to be written against. “Agricola is only puffed up with hatred and ambition.”[1075]
He “is and should be called a godless man who denies God, which is what the Sacramentarians do.”[1076]—“Of false brethren we must above all things beware.”[1077]—With such a one “there is no hope of repentance; he is bold, impudent.”[1078]—“He remains obdurate,” he says of one of these heretics, “a cunning, evil-minded scoffer”; he betrays us as “Judas betrayed Christ.”[1079]
The depth of the yawning abyss between the heretics and Luther and also the hatred they bore him on account of his treatment of them is plain from the words of Münzer and Ickelsamer already quoted.[1080]