Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  He is very painstaking in his anatomy of the Pope-Antichrist.

  “The head of Antichrist,” he said, “is both the Pope and the Turk; a living creature must have both body and soul; the Pope is Antichrist’s soul or spirit, but the Turk is his flesh or body; for the latter lays waste, destroys and persecutes the Church of God materially, just as the Pope does so spiritually.” Considering, however, that he had unduly exonerated the Pope, he corrects himself and adds: And materially also; “materially, viz. by laying waste with fire and sword, hanging, murdering, etc.” The Church, however, so he prophesies, will nevertheless “hold the field and resist the Pope’s hypocrisy and idolatry.” He then goes on to make a fanciful application of Daniel’s prophecy concerning the kingdoms of the world to the Pope’s downfall. “The text compels us” to take the prophecy (Apoc. xiii. 7) as also referring to the “Papal abomination.” “The Pope shall be broken without hands and perish and die of himself.”

  That the Pope was spiritually destroying the Church he had already asserted as early as 1520 in his “Von dem Bapstum tzu Rome”: “Of all that is of Divine appointment not one jot is now observed at Rome; indeed, if anyone thought of doing what is manifestly such, it would be derided as folly. They let the Gospel and the Christian faith perish everywhere and turn never a hair; moreover, every bad example of mischief, spiritual and secular, flows from Rome over the whole world as from an ocean of wickedness. All this the Romans laugh at, and whoever laments it is looked upon as a ‘bon Christian’ [‘cristiano’], i.e. a fool.”

  The strength of Luther’s delusion that the Pope was Antichrist and shared the diabolical nature furnishes the chief explanation of the hopelessly bitter way in which he deals with all those who ventured to defend the Papacy. On all such he heaps abuse and assails them with that worst of the weapons at his command, viz. with calumny, calling into question their good faith and denying to them the character of Christians.

  Johann Eck, so he assured his friends in 1538, “when at Rome, profited splendidly by the example of Epicurus; his short stay there was quite sufficient for him. No doubt he possesses great talent and a good memory, but he is impudence itself, and, at the bottom of his heart, cares as little about the Pope as he does about the Gospel. Twenty years ago I should never have thought it possible to find such Epicureans within the Church.” Eck is “a bold-lipped and bloodthirsty sophist.” In 1532, somewhat more indulgently, Luther had said of him: “Eccius is no preacher.... He can indeed talk ad lib. of drinking, gambling, light women and boon companions”; what, however, he says in his sermons he either does not take seriously or at any rate his heart is not in it. In 1542, nevertheless, Luther was heard to say: “I believe he has made himself over to the devil and entered into a bargain with him how long he will be allowed to live.” As was but natural, the man who had “never really taken the defence of the Pope seriously” died impenitent. According to Luther he passed away without making any confession, without even saying, “God be gracious to me.”

  Could we trust Luther, Johannes Fabri, another Catholic opponent, “blasphemed himself to death.” Surely, thus “to sin deliberately and of set purpose, exceeds all bounds.”

  Joachim I., Elector of Brandenburg († 1535), who remained faithful to the Church, was abused by Luther as a “liar, mad bloodhound, devilish Papist, murderer, traitor, desperate miscreant, assassin of souls, arch-knave, dirty pig and devil’s child, nay, the devil himself.”

  We may recall the epithets he bestowed on Henry VIII. for having presumed to criticise him: “Crowned donkey, abandoned, senseless man, excrement of hogs and asses, impudent royal windbag, mad Harry, arrant fool.”

  Cardinal Cajetan, the famous theologian, was, according to Luther, “an ambiguous, secretive, incomprehensible, mad theologian, and as well qualified to understand and judge his cause as an ass would be to play upon the harp.” Hoogstraaten, the Cologne Dominican, “does not know the difference between what is in agreement with and what contrary to Scripture; he is a mad, bloodthirsty murderer, a blind and hardened donkey, who ought to be put to scratch for dung-beetles in the manure-heaps of the Papists.”

  Of his attacks on Duke George of Saxony, the “Dresden Assassin,” we need only mention the parting shaft he flung into his opponent’s grave: “Let Pharao perish with all his tribe; even though he [the Duke] felt the prick of conscience yet he was never truly contrite.... Now he has been rooted out.... God sometimes consents to look on for a while, but afterwards He punishes the race even down to the children.”

  No one who in any way stood up for the Papal Decrees was safe from Luther’s ungovernable abuse, not even those statesmen who followed them from necessity rather than out of any respect for the Church. Luther is determined, so he says, “not to endure the excrement and filth of the Pope-Ass.... For goodness’ sake don’t come stirring up the donkey’s dung and papal filth in the churches, particularly in this town [Wittenberg].... The Pope defiles the whole world with his donkey’s dung, but why not let him eat it himself?... Let sleeping dogs lie, this I beg of you [and do not worry me with the Pope], otherwise I shall have to give you what for.... I must desist, otherwise I shall get too angry.”

  With the real defenders of the Papal Decrees, or the olden faith, he was, however, never afraid of becoming “too angry”; the only redeeming feature being, that, at times the overwhelming consciousness of his fancied superiority brings his caustic wit to his assistance and his anger dissolves into scorn. Minus this pungent ingredient, his polemics would be incomprehensible, nor would his success have been half so great.

  An example of his descriptions of such Catholics who wrote and spoke against him is to be found in his preface to a writing of Klingenbeyl’s. He there jokingly congratulates himself on having been the means of inducing his opponents to study the Bible in order to refute him: “Luther has driven these blockheads to Holy Scripture, just as though a man were to bring a lot of new animals to a menagerie. Here Dr. Cockles [Cochlæus] barks like a dog; there Brand of Berne [Johann Mensing] yelps like a fox; the Leipzig preacher of blasphemy [Johann Koss] howls like a wolf; Dr. Cunz Wimpina grunts like a snorting sow, and there is so much noise and clamour amongst the beasts that really I am quite sorry to have started the chase.... They are supposed to be conversant with Scripture, and yet are quite ignorant of how to handle it.”

  In a more serious and tragic tone he points out, how many of his foes and opponents had been carried off suddenly by a Divine judgment. He even drafted a long list of such instances, supplied with hateful glosses of his own, which he alleged as a proof of the “visible action of God” in support of his cause. Johann Koss, the “preacher of blasphemy,” mentioned above, was given a place in this libellous catalogue after he had been seized with a stroke of apoplexy in the pulpit (Dec. 29, 1532). At the instance of Duke George he had been appointed assistant preacher under Hieronymus Dungersheim, that, by means of his elocutionary talent, he might defend the town of Leipzig against the inroads of the new teaching. What particularly incensed Luther was the use this preacher made of his Postils to refute him by his own words. The stroke came on him while he was vindicating the Catholic doctrine of good works. This circumstance, taken in conjunction with the “place, time and individual,” was for Luther an irrefutable proof of the intervention of “God’s anger.” “Christ,” he says, “struck down His enemy, the Leipzig shouter, in the very midst of his blasphemy.” The zealous preacher died about a month later.

  “None are more pitiable,” Luther says elsewhere of this incident, “than the presumptuous, such as are all the Papists.” It was impossible for him to inveigh with sufficient severity against the presumption which threatened him on all sides, despite the excessive kindliness and moderation with which he occasionally credits himself; for were not those who confronted him “the devil and his hirelings”? He was forced to combat the frightful presumption of these men who acted as though they were “steeped in holiness”; for in reality they are “dirty pig-snouts”; as Papis
ts they are “at the very least, murderers, thieves and persecutors”; hence let all rise up against the “servers of idols.”

  “We must curse the Pope and his kingdom and revile and abuse it, and not close our jaws but preach against it without ceasing. There are some now who say we are capable of nothing else but of damning, scolding and slandering the Pope and his followers.” “Yes, and so it must be.”

  Elsewhere he hints which vilely vulgar terms of opprobrium were to be applied to the Pope, and, after instancing them, adds: “It is thus that we should learn to make use of these words.” The Catholic Princes were also aimed at in this instruction which occurs in one of his sermons. This discourse, pronounced on Jan. 12, 1531, at a time when the intervention of the hostile secular powers was feared, was printed ten years later under the title “Ein trostlich Unterricht wie man sich gegen den Tyrannen, so Christum und sein Wort verfolgen halten soll.”

  “Our mad and raving Princes,” he says, “are now raging and blustering and planning to root out this teaching. Whoever is desirous of devoting himself to Christ must daily be ready to suffer any peril to life and limb.” Amongst the grounds for encouragement he adduces is the fact that even his very foes admitted, “that we preach and teach God’s Word; the only thing amiss being, that it was not done at their bidding, but that we at Wittenberg started it all unknown to them.” He calls the angry Princes “great merd-pots,” who are “kings and rulers of the pig-sty of the earth where the belly, the universal cesspool, reigns supreme.” “But we will be of good cheer and put our fingers to our noses at them”; because we hold fast to Christ therefore we suffer persecution from the world. “Who is the Pope, that he should be angry?... A sickly, smelly scarecrow.” “The Pope says: I will excommunicate you, thrust you down to the abyss of hell. [I tell him] Stick your tongue in my —— . I am holy, am baptised, have God’s Word and His Promises to proclaim, but you are a sickly, syphilitic sack of maggots. It is thus that we should learn to make use of these words.”

  3. The Psychology of Luther’s Abusive Language

  Various Psychological Factors.

  Psychologically to appreciate the phenomenon in question we must first of all take into account Luther’s temperament.

  To every unprejudiced observer it must be clear, that, without the unusual excitability natural to him, many of his utterances would be quite inexplicable; even when we have given due weight to Luther’s ungovernable temper and all too powerful imagination they still present many difficult questions to the observer. Luther himself, as early as 1520, excuses to Spalatin his offensive language on the ground of his natural “hot-bloodedness”; as everybody knew what his temper was, his opponents ought not to annoy him as they did; yet these “monsters” only provoked him the more, and made him “overstep the bounds of modesty and decency.” It is perfectly true that some of his foes did provoke him by their mode of attack, yet on the other hand his own violence usually put theirs in the shade. (See below, xxvii., 4.)

  In addition to his natural impetuosity which furnishes the chief basis of the phenomenon under consideration, several other factors must also be envisaged, depending on the objects or persons arousing his indignation.

  It is clear that he was within his rights when he scourged the anti-Christian blasphemy and seductive wiles of the Jews, however much he may have been in the wrong in allowing himself to be carried away by fanaticism so far as to demand their actual persecution. The same holds good of many of the instances of his ungenerous and violent behaviour towards “heretics” in his own fold. As against the many and oftentimes very palpable defects of their position, he knew how to stand up for truth and logic, though his way of doing so was not always happy, nor his strictures untouched by his own theological errors.

  Nor can it be denied that he was in the right when he assailed the real, and, alas, all too many abuses of the olden Church. The lively sense that, at least in this respect, he was in the right may quite possibly have fed the inward fire of his animosity to Catholics, all the more owing to his being in the wrong in those new doctrines which were his principal concern. To the assurance, and the offensive manner in which he insisted on a reform, his visit to Rome, a distorted recollection of which ever remained with him, no doubt contributed. His mind was ever reverting to the dismal picture — by no means an altogether imaginary one — of the immorality prevailing in even the highest ecclesiastical circles of Rome.

  Rome’s unworthy treatment of the system of indulgences, which had afforded the occasion of his action in 1517, continued to supply new fuel for his indignation; to it he was fond of tracing back his whole undertaking. What increased his anger was the thought that it was this same Rome, whose ignoble practices both in the matter of indulgences and in other fields was notorious, who had called him to judgment. It is painful to the Catholic to have to confess that many of Luther’s complaints were by no means unfounded. He will, however, call to mind the better churchmen of those days, who, though indignant at the sad corruption then prevalent, never dreamt of apostasy, knowing as they did, that even far worse scandals could never justify a revolt against the institution appointed by Christ for the salvation of souls.

  Even when voicing his real grievances Luther was seldom either prudent or moderate. He never seems to have quite taken to heart the scriptural injunction: “Let every man be slow to speak, slow to anger, for the anger of man worketh not the justice of God.” He expounds in his Postils the Epistle where the admonition in question occurs, but it is curious to note how cursorily he dismisses the words, with which, maybe, he felt somewhat out of sympathy, though here, as elsewhere, he refers to the evil consequences of any proneness to anger. On the other hand, he insists, that “our censures and rebukes” must be in accordance with the “right and true Word,” i.e. with theology as he understood it. He prefers to devote far the greater portion of the exposition to proving his favourite thesis, that, thanks to the Evangel now proclaimed, “we have a good and cheerful conscience, stronger than all fear, sin and temptation, and containing the sure hope of life everlasting”; “it is a Word that has power to save your souls; what more can you desire?” He seems averse to inculcating that meekness which the text requires.

  One factor which frequently fanned the flames was jealousy, when, for instance, he had to deal with theological opponents who appeared to be making too small account of him. The new Evangel, he said, was endangered by none more than by the “fanatics and sacramentarians”; to defend his personal position against them had cost him the hardest struggle of his whole life; no wonder that against them he opened wide the sluice-gates of his eloquence. He was keenly sensitive to any slight. “Things are going all wrong in the world,” he sighed in 1532. “We are already looked upon with contempt, but let us gather up the fragments when they are cheapest, that is what I advise.” Of Carlstadt twelve years previous he had written: “If he has no respect for me, which of us then will he respect? And what is the good of admonishing him? I believe he reckons me one of the most learned men in Wittenberg, and yet he actually tells me to my very face that I am nobody.... He writes right and left just as he chooses and looks on poor Wittenberg as quite beneath his notice.” Luther’s vexation explains his language. A pity one of the Princes did not let him taste cold steel; if Carlstadt believed in a God in heaven, then might Christ never more be gracious to him (Luther); he was no man, but an incarnation of the evil spirit, etc.

  Not merely his former friend Carlstadt but others too he accused of inordinate ambition because they wished to discredit his discoveries and his position. “It is the ‘gloria’ that does the mischief,” he said in 1540 in his Table-Talk, “Zwingli was greedy of honour, as we see from what he wrote, viz. that he had learnt nothing from me. I should indeed be sorry had he learnt from me, for he went astray. Œcolampadius thought himself too learned to listen to me or to learn from me; of course, he too, surpassed me. Carlstadt also declares: ‘I care nothing for you,’ and Münzer actually declaimed against two Popes, th
e new one [myself] and the old. All who shun us and attack us secretly have departed from the faith, like Jeckel and Grickel [Jakob Schenk and Johann Agricola]; they reached their understanding by their own efforts and learnt nothing from us! Just like Zwingli.” Yet twenty-five years before (i.e. previous to his great discovery in 1515) no one “knew anything,” and, twenty-one years before, he, all alone, under the Divine guidance had put the ball in motion. “Ah, κενοδοξία [vainglory], that’s the mischief.”

  Jealousy played its part also, when, in 1525, he rounded so violently upon Zwingli and the Zwinglians at Strasburg. Zwingli’s crime in his eyes lay not merely in his having, like Œcolampadius, adopted a divergent doctrine on the Eucharist, but in his claim to have been before Luther in preaching the Gospel of Christ openly according to its true meaning. Both circumstances contributed to Luther’s ire, which, after finding vent in many angry words, culminated at last in the rudest abuse of Zwingli and his “devilish” crew. Already in 1525, he wrote in the instruction for the people of Strasburg which he gave to Gregory Casel, who had come to Wittenberg to negotiate: “One of the parties must be the tool of Satan, i.e. either they or we.” “Christ can have no part with Belial.” And, before this: “They [Zwingli and Œcolampadius] disturb our Church and weaken our repute. Hence we cannot remain silent. If they would be vexed to see their own reputation suffer, let them also think of ours.” “They ought to have held their tongues long ago [on the question of the Sacrament]; now silence comes too late.” He concludes with the assurance, that their error was refuted by “the Spirit,” and that it was impossible they could have any certainty concerning their doctrine, whereas he could justly boast, that he had the experience of the faith and the testimony of the Spirit (“experimentum fidei et spiritus testimonium”). “They will never win the day. It pains me that Zwingli and his followers take offence at my saying that ‘What I write must be true.’”