Do you say such teaching leads to disregard of duty? All doctrines, when petrified into formulas, lead to that. But, as Luther said, 'where real faith is, a good life follows, as light follows the sun; faint and clouded, yet ever struggling to break through the mist which envelopes it, and welcoming the roughest discipline which tends to clear and raise it.
'The barley,' he says, in a homely but effective image—'the barley which we brew, the flax of which we weave our garments, must be bruised and torn ere they come to the use for which they are grown. So must Christians suffer. The natural creature must be combed and threshed. The old Adam must die, for the higher life to begin. If man is to rise to nobleness, he must first be slain.'
In modern language, the poet Goethe tells us the same truth. 'The natural man,' he says, 'is like the ore out of the iron mine. It is smelted in the furnace; it is forged into bars upon the anvil. A new nature is at last forced upon it, and it is made steel.'
It was this doctrine—it was this truth rather (the word doctrine reminds one of quack medicines)—which, quickening in Luther's mind, gave Europe its new life. It was the flame which, beginning with a small spark, kindled the hearth-fires in every German household.
Luther's own life was a model of quiet simplicity. He remained poor. He might have had money if he had wished; but he chose rather, amidst his enormous labour, to work at a turning-lathe for his livelihood.
He was sociable, cheerful, fond of innocent amusements, and delighted to encourage them. His table-talk, collected by his friends, makes one of the most brilliant books in the world. He had no monkish theories about the necessity of abstinence; but he was temperate from habit and principle. A salt herring and a hunch of bread was his ordinary meal; and he was once four days without food of any sort, having emptied his larder among the poor.
All kinds of people thrust themselves on Luther for help. Flights of nuns from the dissolved convents came to him to provide for them—naked, shivering creatures, with scarce a rag to cover them. Eight florins were wanted once to provide clothes for some of them. 'Eight florins!' he said; 'and where am I to get eight florins?' Great people had made him presents of plate: it all went to market to be turned into clothes and food for the wretched.
Melancthon says that, unless provoked, he was usually very gentle and tolerant. He recognised, and was almost alone in recognising, the necessity of granting liberty of conscience. No one hated Popery more than he did, yet he said:—
'The Papists must bear with us, and we with them. If they will not follow us, we have no right to force them. Wherever they can, they will hang, burn, behead, and strangle us. I shall be persecuted as long as I live, and most likely killed. But it must come to this at last—every man must be allowed to believe according to his conscience, and answer for his belief to his Maker.'
Erasmus said of Luther that there were two natures in him: sometimes he wrote like an apostle—sometimes like a raving ribald.