Such were Luther’s temptations, of which, afterwards, he did not scruple to boast. “Often did they bring us to death’s door,” he says of the mental struggles in which his new doctrine and practice of sheltering himself behind the merits of Christ involved him. But, nevertheless, “I will hold fast to that Man alone, even though it should bring me to the grave!”[484]
Again, in 1532, we hear him making his own the words: “Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord” (Ps. cxxix. 1). The prophet is not complaining of any mere “worldly temptations,” but of “that anguish of conscience, of those blows and terrors of death such as the heart feels when on the brink of despair and when it fancies itself abandoned by God; when it both sees its sin and how all its good works are condemned by God the angry Judge.… When a man is sunk in such anxiety and trouble he cannot recover unless help is bestowed on him from above.… Nearly all the great saints suffered in this way and were dragged almost to the gates of death by sin and the Law; hence David’s exclamation: ‘Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord!’”—The whole trend of what he says, likewise the counsels he gives on the remedies that may bring consolation, show plainly his attachment to this dark night of the soul and his conviction that he is but treading in the footsteps of the “great Saints” and “Prophets.”[485]
At any rate there is no room for doubt that this opened out a rich field for delusion; what he says depicts a frame of mind in which hallucinations might well thrive; we shall, however, leave it to others to determine how far pathological elements intervene.
In the certainty that his cause was inspired he calmly awaits the approach of the fanatics; they can serve only to strengthen in him his sense of confidence. Of them and their “presumptuous certainty” he makes short work in a conversation noted down by Cordatus:[486] Marcus Thomae (Stübner) he requests to perform a miracle in proof of his views, warning him, however, that “My God will assuredly forbid your God to let you work a sign”; he also hurls against him the formula of exorcism: “God rebuke thee, Satan” (Zach. iii. 2).[487] Nicholas Storch and Thomas Münzer, so he assures us, openly show their presumption. A pupil of Stübner was anxious to set himself up as a teacher, but the fellow had only been able to talk fantastic rubbish to him. Of people such as these he had come across quite sixty. Campanus, again, is simply to be numbered among the biggest blasphemers. Carlstadt, who wanted to be esteemed learned, was only distinguished by his arrogant mouthing. Nowhere was there profundity or truth. “Not one of you has endured such anxieties and temptations as I.”[488] “And yet Carlstadt wanted us to bow to his teaching.… Like Christ, however, I say: ‘My doctrine is not mine but his that sent me’ (John vii. 16). I cannot betray it as the world would have me do. The malice of all these ministers of Satan only serves my cause and exercises me in indomitable firmness.”[489] Hence he derives equal benefit from the malice of his opponents within the fold and from the inward apprehensions of which Satan was the cause.
The manifold errors which had sprung from the seed of his own principles, in any other man would have elicited doubts and scruples; Luther, however, finds in them fresh support for his dominating conviction: My glorious sufferings at the devil’s hands are being multiplied and, thereby, too, the witness on behalf of my doctrine is being strengthened.
The mystical halo of the “man of suffering” certainly made a great impression on some of his young followers and admirers such as Spangenberg, Mathesius, Cordatus and Veit Dietrich. On others of his circle the effect was not so lasting.
Melanchthon, for instance, was well acquainted with Luther’s fits of mystic terror, yet how severe is the criticism he passes on Luther’s ground-dogmas, particularly after the latter’s death.
The doctrine of man’s entire unfreedom in doing what is good may serve as an instance.
This palladium of the new theology had been discovered by Luther when overwhelmed with despair; by it he sought to commit himself entirely into God’s hands and blindly and passively to await salvation from Him; this he regarded as the only way out of inward trials; no man could face the devil with his free will; he himself, so he wrote, “would not wish to have” free-will, even were it offered him (“nollem mihi dari liberum arbitrium”), in order that he might at least be safe from the devil; nay, even were there no devil, free-will would still be to him an abomination, because, with it, his “conscience would never be safe and at rest.” The words occur in the work he declared to be his very best and a lasting heirloom for posterity.[490] This particular doctrine, Melanchthon was, however, so far from regarding as a “revelation,” that he wrote in 1559: “Both during Luther’s lifetime and also later, I withstood that Stoical and Manichæan delusion which led Luther and others to write, that all works whether good or evil, in all men whether good or bad, take place of necessity. Now it is evident that this doctrine is contrary to God’s Word, subversive of all discipline and a blasphemy against God.”[491] Melanchthon did not even scruple to call upon the State to intervene and prohibit such things being said. In his Postils, dealing with the question whether heretics should be put to death, he declares: “By divine command the public authorities must proceed against idolaters and also interdict blasphemous language, as, for instance, when a man teaches that good or evil takes place of necessity and under compulsion.”[492]
He could not well have said anything more deadly against the foundation on which Luther’s whole edifice was reared.