LUTHER'S MERRIMENT.
But the Reformer was soon drawn away from these pleasing images. About this time he learnt that his father had gently fallen asleep in the faith which is in Jesus Christ. "Alas!" exclaimed he, shedding tears of filial love, "it is by the sweat of his brow that he made me what I am."[389] Other trials assailed him; and to bodily pains were added the phantoms of his imagination. One night in particular he saw three torches pass rapidly before his eyes, and at the same moment he heard claps of thunder in his head, which he ascribed to the devil. His servant ran in at the moment he fainted, and after having restored him to animation, read to him the Epistle to the Galatians. Luther, who had fallen asleep, said as he awoke: "Come, and despite of the devil let us sing the Psalm, Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord." They both sang the hymn. While Luther was thus tormented by these internal noises, he translated the prophet Jeremiah, and yet he often deplored his idleness.
He soon devoted himself to other studies, and poured out the floods of his irony on the mundane practices of courts. He saw Venice, the Pope, and the King of France, giving their hands to Charles V. to crush the Gospel. Then, alone in his chamber in the old castle, he burst into irresistible laughter. "Mr. Par-ma-foy, (it was thus he designated Francis I.), Innomine-Domini (the Pope), and the Republic of Venice, pledge their goods and their bodies to the Emperor......Sanctissimum fœdus. A most holy alliance truly! This league between these four powers belongs to the chapter Non-credimus, Venice, the Pope, and France become imperialists!......But these are three persons in one substance, filled with unspeakable hatred against the Emperor. Mr. Par-ma-foy cannot forget his defeat at Pavia; Mr. In-nomine-Domini is, 1st, an Italian, which is already too much; 2d, a Florentine, which is worse; 3d, a bastard—that is to say, a child of the devil; 4th, he will never forget the disgrace of the sack of Rome. As for the Venetians, they are Venetians: that is quite enough; and they have good reason to avenge themselves on the posterity of Maximilian. All this belongs to the chapter Firmiter-credimus. But God will help the pious Charles, who is a sheep among wolves. Amen."[390] The former monk of Erfurth had a surer political foresight than many diplomatists of his age.
CONDITION OF SAXONY.
Impatient at seeing the diet put off from day to day, Luther formed his resolution, and ended by convoking it even at Coburg. "We are already in full assembly," wrote he on the 28th April and the 9th May. "You might here see kings, dukes, and other grandees, deliberating on the affairs of their kingdom, and with indefatigable voice publishing their dogmas and decrees in the air. They dwell not in those caverns which you decorate with the name of palaces; the heavens are their canopy; the leafy trees form a floor of a thousand colours, and their walls are the ends of the earth. They have a horror of all the unmeaning luxury of silk and gold; they ask neither coursers nor armour, and have all the same clothing and the same colour. I have neither seen nor heard their emperor; but if I can understand them, they have determined this year to make a pitiless war upon——the most excellent fruits of the earth.—Ah! my dear friends," said he to his messmates,[391] to whom he was writing, "these are the sophists, the Papists, who are assembled before me in a heap, to make me hear their sermons and their cries."—These two letters, dated from the "empire of ravens and crows," finish in the following mournful strain, which shows us the Reformer descending into himself after this play of his imagination: "Enough of jesting!—jesting which is, however, sometimes necessary to dispel the gloomy thoughts that prey upon me."[392]
TRAVAIL OF THE GOSPEL.
Luther soon returned to real life, and thrilled with joy at beholding the fruits that the Reformation was already bearing, and which were for him a more powerful "apology" than even the confession of Melancthon. "Is there in the whole world a single country to be compared to your highness's states," wrote he to the Elector, "and which possesses preachers of so pure a doctrine, or pastors so fitted to bring about the reign of peace? Where do we see, as in Saxony, boys and girls well instructed in the Holy Scriptures and in the Catechism, increasing in wisdom and in stature, praying, believing, talking of God and of Christ better than has been done hitherto by all the universities, convents, and chapters of Christendom?"[393] "My dear Duke John, says the Lord to you, I commend this paradise to thee, the most beautiful that exists in the world, that thou mayst be its gardener." And then he added: "Alas! the madness of the Papist princes changes this paradise of God into a dirty slough, and corrupting the youth, peoples every day with real devils their states, their tables, and their palaces."
Luther, not content with encouraging his prince, desired also to frighten his adversaries. It was with this intent that he wrote at that time an address to the members of the clergy assembled at Augsburg. A crowd of thoughts, like lansquenets armed cap-a-pié, "rushed in to fatigue and bewilder him;"[394] and in fact there is no want of barbed words in the discourse he addresses to the bishops. "In short," said he to them in conclusion, "we know and you know that we have the Word of God, and that you have it not. O Pope! if I live I shall be a pestilence to thee; and if I die, I shall be thy death!"[395]
Thus was Luther present at Augsburg, although invisible; and he effected more by his words and by his prayers than Agricola, Brenz, or Melancthon. These were the days of travail for the Gospel truth. It was about to appear in the world with a might that was destined to eclipse all that had been done since the time of St. Paul; but Luther only announced and manifested the things that God was effecting: he did not execute them himself. He was, as regards the events of the Church, what Socrates was to philosophy: "I imitate my mother (she was a midwife)," this philosopher was in the habit of saying; "she does not travail herself, but she aids others." Luther—and he never ceased repeating it—has created nothing; but he has brought to light the precious seed, hidden for ages in the bosom of the Church. The man of God is not he who seeks to form his age according to his own peculiar ideas, but he who, distinctly perceiving God's truth, such as it is found in his Word, and as it is hidden in his Church, brings it to his contemporaries with courage and decision.
HUMAN HOPES FAIL.