“My time is entirely taken up,” so he says, “with affairs which do not in the least interest me; I must serve the belly and the table.”[1324] Already at the beginning of October these matters had induced him, with Melanchthon and Jonas, to proceed to Mansfeld. As soon as his course of lectures was finished, viz. at Christmas, he again repaired thither, in spite of the severity of the weather, again accompanied by Melanchthon, who was inclined to grumble at being called upon to listen to the squabbles of quarrelsome people. Luther, however, as he wrote to Count Albert, wished to see the “beloved lords of his native land reconciled and on good terms” before “laying himself to rest in his coffin.”[1325] He returned to Wittenberg shortly after Christmas, owing to Melanchthon’s falling ill.
These two journeys to Mansfeld, afterwards to be followed by a third and last, have, by controversialists, wrongly been made out to have been due to Luther’s desire to escape from Wittenberg on account of his bitter experiences there.
2. Last Troubles and Cares
Theological Disruption
“The sad controversies of the last few years had made Luther recognise that a race of theological fighting-cocks, gamesters and idle rioters had arisen, and that dissensions of the worst sort might be anticipated in the future. The nation in which each one obstinately followed his own way was beyond help.… The Swiss refused to have anything to do with the German Reformation; the Bucerites held themselves aloof from both Lutherans and Swiss, the Brandenburgers wanted to belong neither to the Church of Rome nor to that of Wittenberg; at Wittenberg itself the Martinians and the Philippists (so-called after Luther and Melanchthon) were hostile to each other, and finally the Princes and magistrates all went their own way. ‘Things will fare badly when I am dead,’ such was Luther’s repeated prediction. Whether he looked at this Prince of the Church, at that Landgrave, or that other Duke Maurice, there was not one in whom he could entirely trust. More than one Mene Tekel was written on the wall, yet none perceived it save the old man at Wittenberg at whom they all shrugged their shoulders.”[1326]
Such is the description by Luther’s latest Protestant biographer of the “sad decline of the Evangelical party.”
The Zwinglians had received a severe blow from Luther in his “Kurtz Bekentnis” of Sep., 1544;[1327] but the Swiss, who were hardy and independent fellows, soon prepared a furious counter-reply.[1328] The “old man at Wittenberg” was not deceived as to the profound and irremediable breach, yet he succeeded, at least outwardly, in driving away his annoyance and cares by the use of ridicule. Early in 1546, to one of his confidants who had bewailed the new step taken by the Swiss, he wrote the following, which forms his last utterance against the Zwinglians: “If they condemn me, it is a joy to me. For by my writing I wished to do nothing else than force them to declare themselves my open foes. I have succeeded in this, hence so much the better. To adapt the words of the Psalmist: ‘Blessed is the man who hath not sat in the council of the Sacramentarians, nor stood in the way of the Zwinglians, nor sat in the chair of the men of Zürich.’”[1329] To another intimate, Amsdorf, the “Bishop” of Naumburg, who was allowed a deeper insight into his soul than others, Luther confided that one of the principal reasons of his hatred of his competitors in Switzerland and South-West Germany was that “they are proud, fanatical men, and also idlers. At the beginning of our enterprise, when I was fighting all alone in fear and dread against the fury of the Pope, they were bravely silent and waited to see how things would go. Later on they suddenly posed as victors, and as though, forsooth, they alone had done it all. So it ever is: one does the work and another seeks to enjoy his labour. Now they even go so far as to attack me, who won their freedom for them.… But they will find their judge. If I answer them at all it will be nothing more than a brief recapitulation of the sentence of condemnation irrevocably passed upon them.”[1330]—No such answer was, however, to be forthcoming.
Against Melanchthon Luther’s ardent followers, the Martinians, were, as we know, highly incensed for attempting to modify the doctrines of the Master. Melanchthon’s sufferings on this account have already been described (vol. v., p. 252 ff.). With a grudging silence Luther bore with his friend’s Zwinglian leanings on the doctrine of the Supper, and with their other differences.
Both, moreover, were surrounded by an atmosphere of theological bickerings, “where individuals, who, had it not been for these squabbles, would never have achieved notoriety, gave themselves great airs.”[1331]
We may recall how Melanchthon had even thought of leaving Saxony, where, as he wrote to Camerarius, he was bound down by undignified fetters; such was his weakness, however, that he could not bring himself to do even this. Luther’s coarseness, lack of consideration and dictatorial bearing it was that led Melanchthon to say that he who ruled at Wittenberg was not a Pericles, but a new Cleon and an unsufferable tyrant.[1332]