Pamphlets, both anonymous and pseudonymous, were circulated in increasing numbers among the people. They took the form chiefly of dialogues, in which laymen, in a simple Christian spirit, and with their natural understanding, complain of the needs of Christendom, ask questions and are enlightened. The outward evils of the Papal system are put clearly before the people:—the scandals among the priesthood and in the convents, the iniquities of the Romish courtiers and creatures of the Pope, who pandered with menial subservience to the magnates at Rome, in order to fatten on German benefices, and reap their harvest of taxes and extortions of every kind. The simple Word of God, with its sublime evangelical truths, must be freed from the sophistries woven round it by man, and be made accessible to all without distinction. Luther is represented as its foremost champion, and a true man of the people, whose testimony penetrated to the heart. His portrait, as painted by Cranach, was circulated together with his small tracts. In later editions the Holy Ghost appears in the form of a dove hovering above his head; his enemies spread the calumny, that Luther intended this emblem to represent himself.
Satirical pictures also were used as weapons on both sides in this contest. Cranach pourtrayed the meek and suffering Saviour on one side, and on the other the arrogant Roman Antichrist, in the twenty-six woodcuts of his 'Passion of Christ and Antichrist:' Luther added short texts to these pictures.
Luther's enemies now began, on their side, to write in German and for the people. The most talented among them, as regards vigorous, popular German and coarse satire, was the Franciscan Thomas Murner; but his theology seemed to Luther so weak, that he only favoured him once with a brief allusion. He entered now into a longer literary duel with the Dresden theologian Emser, who had challenged him after the disputation at Leipzig, and who now published a work 'Against the Unchristian Address of Martin Luther to the German Nobility.' Luther replied with a tract 'To the Goat at Leipzig,' Emser with another 'To the Bull at Wittenberg,' Luther with another 'On the Answer of the Goat at Leipzig,' and Emser with a third, 'On the furious Answer of the Bull at Wittenberg.' Luther, whose reply to Emser's original work had been directed to the first sheets that appeared, met the work, when published in its complete form, with his 'Answer to the over-Christian, over-priestly, over-artful Book of the Goat Emser.' Emser followed up with a 'Quadruplica,' to which Luther rejoined with another treatise entitled 'A Refutation by Doctor Luther of Emser's error, extorted by the most learned priest of God, H. Emser.' When later, during Luther's residence at the Wartburg, Emser published a reply, Luther let him have the last word. Nothing new was contributed to the great struggle by this interchange of polemics. The most effective point made by Emser and the other defenders of the old Church system, was the old charge that Luther, one man, presumed to oppose the whole of Christendom as hitherto constituted, and by the overthrow of all foundations and authorities of the Church, to bring unbelief, distraction, and disturbance upon Church and State. Thus Emser says once in German doggrel, that Luther imagined that
What Church and Fathers teach was nought;
None lived but Luther;—so he thought.
In threatening Luther with the consequences of his heresy, he never failed to hold up Huss as a bugbear.
In Germany, as Emser complains, there was already 'such quarrelling, noise, and uproar, that not a district, town, village, or house was free from partisans, and one man was against another.' Aleander wrote to Rome saying that everywhere exasperation and excitement prevailed, and the Papal bull was laughed at. Among the adherents of the old Church system one heard rumours of strange and terrible import. A letter written shortly after the burning of the bull, gave out that Luther reckoned on thirty-five thousand Bohemians, and as many Saxons and other North Germans, who were ready, like the Goths and Vandals of old, to march on Italy and Rome. But it was evident, even at this stage, that from rancorous words to energetic and self-sacrificing action was a long step to take. Even in central Germany the bull was executed without any disturbance breaking out; and that in the bishoprics of Meissen and Merseburg, which were adjacent to Wittenberg. Pirkheimer and Spengler at Nüremberg, whose names Eck had included in the bull, now bowed to the authority of the Pope, represented though it was by their personal enemy.
Hutten, who saw his hopes in the Emperor's brother deceived, and believed his own liberty and even his life was menaced by the Papal bull, burned with impatient ardour to strike a blow. He was anxious also to see whether a resort to force, after his own meaning of the term, would meet with any support from the Elector Frederick. He ventured even, when speaking of Sickingen's lofty mission, to refer to the precedent of Ziska, the powerful champion of the Hussites, who had once been the terror and abomination of the Germans. He, a member of the proud Equestrian order, was willing now to join hands with the towns and the burghers to do battle with Rome for the liberty of Germany. But, passionate as were his words, it was by no means clear what particular end under present circumstances he sought to achieve by means of arms. Sickingen, who had grasped the situation in a practical spirit, advised him to moderate his impatience, and sought, for his own part, to keep on good terms with the Emperor, in whom Hutten accordingly renewed his hopes. Each, in short, had overrated the influence which Sickingen really possessed with the Emperor.
In this posture of affairs, Luther reverted, with increased conviction, to his original opinion, that the future must be left with God alone, without trusting to the help of man. Hutten himself had written to him, during the Diet of Worms, as follows: 'I will fight manfully with you for Christ; but our counsels differ in this respect, that mine are human, while you, more perfect than I am, trust solely in those of God.' And when Hutten seemed really bent on taking the sword, Luther declared to him and to others, with all decision of purpose: 'I would not have man fight with force and bloodshed for the Gospel. By the Word has the world been subdued, by the Word has the Church been preserved, by the Word will she be restored. As Antichrist has begun without a blow, so without a blow will Antichrist be crushed by the Word.' Even against the Romish hirelings among the German clergy, he would have no acts of violence committed, such as were committed in Bohemia. He had not laboured with the German nobility to have such men restrained by the sword, but by advice and command. He was only afraid that their own rage would not allow of peaceful means to check them, but would bring misery and disaster upon their heads.
His expectation—not indeed ungrounded—of the approaching end of the world, to which, as we have seen, he alluded in a letter to Spalatin on January 16, 1521, Luther now announced more fully in a book, written in answer to an attack by the Romish theologian Ambrosius Catharinus. He based his opinion on the prophecies of the Old and New Testament, on which Christian men and Christian communities, sore pressed in the battle with the powers of darkness, had been wont ere then to rely, in the sure hope of the approaching victory of God. Luther referred in particular to the vision of Daniel (chap. viii.), where he states that after the four great Kingdoms of the World, the last of which Luther takes to be the Roman Empire, a bold and crafty ruler should rise up, and 'by his policy should cause craft to prosper in his hand, and should stand up against the Prince of princes, but should be broken without hand.' He saw this vision fulfilled in the Popedom; which must, therefore, be destroyed 'without hand,' or outward force. St. Paul, in his view, said the same in the passage in which (2 Thess. ii.) he foreshadowed long before the Roman Antichrist. That 'man of sin' who set himself up as God in the temple of God, 'the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming.' So, said Luther, the Pope and his kingdom would not be destroyed by the laity, but would be reserved for a heavier punishment until the coming of Christ. He must fall, as he had raised himself, not 'with the hand,' but with the spirit of Satan. The Spirit must kill the spirit; the truth must reveal deceit.
Luther, as we shall see, had all his life held firmly to this belief that the end was near. As his glowing zeal pictured the loftiest images and contrasts to his mind, so also this assurance of victory was already before his eyes. In his hope of the near completion of the earthly history of Christianity and mankind, he became the instrument of carving out a new grand chapter in its career.