Quanto isto major Lutherus, major et illa,
Istum illamque uno qui domuit calamo.—Beza.
(Rome won the world, the Pope o’er Rome prevailed,
And one by force and one by fraud availed:
Greater than each was Luther’s prowess shown,
Who conquered both by one poor pen alone.)
Luther, in the lion-hearted daring of his conduct and in the robust and rugged grandeur of his faith, may well be considered as the Elijah of the Reformation; while his life, by the stern and solemn realities of his experiences, and the almost ideal evolutions of events by which it was accompanied, constitutes indeed the embodied Poem of European Protestantism.
R. Montgomery.
Heine sketches the following unique portrait of Luther:—
He was at once a mystic dreamer and a man of action. His thoughts had not only wings, they had hands likewise. He spoke, and, rare thing, he also acted; he was at once the tongue and the sword of his age. At the same time he was a cold scholastic, a chopper of words, and an exalted prophet drunk with the word of God. When he had passed painfully through the day, wearing out his soul in dogmatical instructions, night come, he would take his flute, and, contemplating the stars, melt in melodies and pious thoughts. The same man who could abuse his adversaries like a fish-fag knew also how to use soft and tender language, like an amorous virgin. He was sometimes savage and impetuous as the hurricane that roots up oaks, then gentle and murmuring as the zephyr that lightly caresses the violets. He was full of the holy fear of God, ready for every sacrifice in honor of the Holy Spirit; he knew how to vault into the purest regions of the celestial kingdom; and yet he perfectly knew the magnificence of this earth: he could appreciate it, and from his mouth fell the famous proverb:—