Luther's spiritual sufferings continued to afflict him for several months, and until the close of the year. Though he had known them, he said, from his youth, he could never have expected that they would prove so severe. He found them very similar to those attacks and struggles which he had had to endure in early life. The invasion of the plague, and the parting from all his intimate friends except Bugenhagen, must have contributed to increase them.
He was just now deeply shocked and agitated by the news of the death of a faithful companion in the faith, the Bavarian minister Leonard Käser or Kaiser, who was publicly burnt on August 16, 1527, in the town of Scherding. Luther broke out, as he had done after Henry of Zütphen's martyrdom, into a lamentation of his own unworthiness compared with such heroes. He published an account of Leonard and his end, which had been sent him by Michael Stiefel, adding a preface and conclusion of his own. About the same time he composed a consolatory tract for the Evangelical congregation at Halle-on-the-Saale, whose minister Winkler had been murdered in the previous April.
In the autumn a new controversial treatise was published against him by Erasmus, which he rightly described as a product of snakes; and he now stood in the midst of the contest between Zwingli and Oecolampadius. He exclaimed once in a letter to Jonas, 'O that Erasmus and the Sacramentarians (Zwingli and his friends) could only for a quarter of an hour know the misery of my heart. I am certain that they would then honestly be converted. Now my enemies live, and are mighty, and heap sorrow on sorrow upon me, whom God has already crushed to the earth.'
The pestilence soon reached his friends. The wife of the physician Schurf, who was then living in the same house with him, was attacked by it, and only recovered slowly towards the beginning of November. At the parsonage the wife of the chaplain or deacon George Rörer succumbed to it on November 2, whereupon Luther took Bugenhagen and his family from the panic-stricken house into his own dwelling. But soon after dangerous symptoms showed themselves with a friend, Margaret Mocha, who was then staying with Luther's family, and she was actually ill unto death. His own wife was then near her confinement. Luther was the more concerned about her, as Rörer's wife, when in the same condition, had sickened and died. But Frau Luther remained, as he says, firm in the faith, and retained her health. Finally, towards the end of October his little son Hans fell ill, and for twelve whole days would not eat. When the anniversary of the ninety-five theses came round again, Luther wrote to Amsdorf telling him of these troubles and anxieties, and concluded with the words: 'So now there are struggles without and terror within…. It is a comfort which we must set against the malice of Satan, that we have the Word of God, whereby to save the souls of the faithful, even though the devil devour their bodies…. Pray for us, that we may endure bravely the hand of the Lord, and overcome the power and craft of the devil, whether it be through death or life. Amen. Wittenberg: All Saints' Day, the tenth anniversary of the death-blow to indulgences, in thankful remembrance whereof we are now drinking a toast.'
[Illustration: Fig. 36.—LUTHER. (From a Portrait by Cranach in 1528, at Berlin.)]
A short time afterwards Luther was able to send Jonas somewhat better news about the sickness at home, though he was still sighing with deep inward oppression; 'I suffer,' he said, 'the wrath of God, because I have sinned in His sight. Pope, Emperor, princes, bishops, and all the world hate me, and, as if that were not enough, my brethren too (he means the Sacramentarians) must needs afflict me. My sins, death, Satan with all his angels—all rage unceasingly; and what could comfort me if Christ were to forsake me, for Whose sake they hate me? But He will never forsake the poor sinner.' Then follow the words above quoted about Erasmus and the Sacramentarians.
[Illustration: Fig. 37.—LUTHER'S WIFE. (From a Portrait by Cranach in 1528, at Berlin.)]
Towards the middle of December the plague gradually abated. Luther writes from home on the tenth of that month: 'My little boy is well and happy again. Schurf's wife has recovered, Margaret has escaped death in a marvellous manner. We have offered up five pigs, which have died, on behalf of the sick.' And on his return home this day to dinner from his lecture, his wife was safely delivered of a little daughter, who received the name of Elizabeth.
To his own inward sufferings Luther rose superior by the strengthening power of the conviction that even in these his Lord and Saviour was with him, and that God had sent them for his own good and that of others; that is to say, for his own discipline and humbling. He applied to himself the words of St. Paul, 'As dying, and behold we live;' nay, he wished not to be freed of his burden, should his God and Saviour be glorified thereby.
Luther's famous hymn, Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott, appeared for the first time, as has been recently proved, in a little hymn-book, about the beginning of the following year. We can see in it indeed a proof how anxious was that time for Luther. It corresponds with his words, already quoted, on the anniversary of the Reformation.