In spite of Antichrist and “all that is mighty” the Article concerning Holy Scripture and the Cross still holds the field. And, so Luther proceeds in the Table-Talk, “I, a poor monk, had to come,” with “an unfortunate nun” [Catherine Bora who doubtless was present], and “seize upon it and hold it. Thus ‘verbum’ and ‘crux’ are the conquerors; they make us confident.”[500]
The reason why Luther longed with such ardour for the coming of the Last Day has already been shown to have been his growing pessimism and the depression resulting from the sad experiences with which he had met (above, vol. v., p. 245 ff.). In his elastic way he, however, manages, when preaching to the people, to give a rather different reason for his prediction of the fall of Antichrist and the coming of the end. In Popery, he declares, we were not allowed to speak of the Last Judgment; “how we dreaded it”; “we pictured Christ to ourselves as a Judge to Whom we had to give account. To that we came, thanks to our works.” But now it is quite otherwise. “Now on the contrary I should be glad if the Last Day were to come, because there is no greater consolation.”[501] Here he speaks as though inspired solely by the purest of intentions when he looked forward to the coming of the vanquisher of Antichrist.
The wickedness of his opponents and the weapons to be used against them constitute a second group of ideas. Here, once again, the psychological or pathological appreciation of Luther’s strange and morbid train of thought makes imperative a further investigation of certain points already discussed in other connections.
Often Luther seems unable to stem the torrent of charges and insults that streams from him as soon as adversaries appear in his field of vision. Frequently it almost looks as though some superhuman agency outside himself had opened the sluice-gates of his terrible eloquence. He is determined to rage against them “even to the very grave”; his wrath against them “refreshes his blood.” It is actually when expressing his hatred in the most incredible language that he is most sensible of the “nearness of God.” Do not his Popish foes deserve even worse than he, a mere man, is able to heap on them? Those scoundrels who “only seek a pretext for telling lies against us and misleading simple folk, though quite well aware that they are in the wrong.”[502] Their palpable obstinacy, in spite of their better judgment, was so great, so he argued, that it was only because Luther advocated it that they refused to hear of any moral reform, for instance, of the clergy marrying, etc., otherwise they would have held it “quite all right.” He does not shrink from demanding that such roguery should “be hunted down with hounds,” no less than the wickedness of these “most depraved of brothel-keepers, open adulterers, stealers of women and seducers of maidens.”[503]
The most curious thing, however, one, too, that must weigh heavily in the balance when judging of his mental state, is that, as shown elsewhere, by dint of repeating this he actually came to believe that his caricature of Catholicism was perfectly true to fact. The calumnies become part of his mental framework, the very frequency and heat of his charges blinding him to all sense of their enormity, and clouding his outlook. What is even worse is, that, even when he occasionally glimpses the truth he yet believes it lawful to deviate from it where this suits his purpose. Thus he came to formulate the dangerous theory of the lie of necessity and the useful lie which we have already described in his own words. He goes so far as to say, that the nature of his foes was utterly devilish (above, p. 155, n. 4), and, when assailing the wickedness of Popery, he considers “everything lawful for the salvation of souls” (“omnia nobis licere arbitramur”).[504] Our “tricks, lies and stumblings” may “easily be atoned for, for God’s Mercy watches over us.”[505]
On other occasions his opponents become “a pack of fools”; they deserve nothing but scorn and no heed should be paid to their objections. Even should the world write against him he will only pity them. All earlier ages and “a thousand Fathers and Councils of the Church” cannot rob him of the golden grains of truth which he alone possesses.
No sooner does he speak of the Papists and their religion, than, irresistibly, there rises up before his mind the picture of the “tonsures, cowls, frocks and bawling in the choir,” in short the so-called holiness-by-works, on which he seizes to load ridicule on all that is Popish.
This Luther is apt to do even when treating of subjects quite alien to this sort of polemics.
In his “Von den Conciliis und Kirchen” (1539) he has a lengthy dissertation on the marks of the Church; the subject being a wide one he is anxious to get on with it, yet, even so, his pen again and again wanders off into vituperation. He apostrophises himself incidentally as follows: “But how is it that I come again to speak of the infamous, filthy menials of the Pope? Let them begone, and, for ever,” etc. With these words he breaks off a wild outburst in which he had declared that the Pope and his men were persecuting the Word of God, i.e. Luther’s doctrine, “though well aware of its truth; very bad Apostles, Evangelists and Prophets must they be, like the devil and his angels.”[506]