Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  Bucer himself was several times the object of Luther’s wrath, for instance, for his part in the “Cologne Book of Reform”: “It is nothing but a lot of twaddle in which I clearly detect the influence of that chatterbox Bucer.” When Jakob Schenk arrived at Wittenberg after a long absence Luther was so angry with him for not sharing his views as to refuse to receive him when he called; he did the same in the case of Agricola, in spite of the fact that the latter brought a letter of recommendation from the Margrave of Brandenburg; in one of his letters calls him: “the worst of hypocrites, an impenitent man!” From such a monster, so he said, he would take nothing but a sentence of condemnation. As for his former friend Schenk, he ironically offers him to Bishop Amsdorf as a helper in the ministry. On both of them he persisted in bestowing his old favourite nicknames, Jeckel and Grickel (Jakob and Agricola).

  Luther’s Single-handed Struggle with the Powers of Evil

  Owing to the theological opinions reached by some of his one-time friends Luther, as may well be understood, began to be oppressed by a feeling of lonesomeness.

  The devil, whom he at least suspected of being the cause of his bodily pains, is now backing the Popish teachers, and making him to be slighted. But, by so doing, thanks to Luther’s perseverance and bold defiance, he will only succeed in magnifying Christ the more.

  “He hopes to get the better of us or to make us downhearted. But, as the Germans say, cacabimus in os eius. Willy-nilly, he shall suffer until his head is crushed, much as he may, with horrible gnashing of teeth, threaten to devour us. We preach the Seed of the woman; Him do we confess and to Him would we assign the first place, wherefore He is with us.” In his painful loneliness he praises “the heavenly Father Who has hidden these things [Luther’s views on religion] from the wise and prudent and has revealed them to babes and little ones who cannot talk, let alone preach, and are neither clever nor learned.” This he says in a sermon. The clever doctors, he adds, “want to make God their pupil; everyone is anxious to be His schoolmaster and tutor. And so it has ever been among the heretics.... In the Christian churches one bishop nags at the other, and each pastor snaps at his neighbour.... These are the real wiselings of whom Christ speaks who know a lot about horses’ bowels, but who do not keep to the road which God Himself has traced for us, but must always go their own little way.” Indeed it is the fate of “everything that God has instituted to be perverted by the devil,” by “saucy folk and clever people.” “The devil has indeed smeared us well over with fools. But they are accounted wise and prudent simply because they rule and hold office in the Churches.”

  Let us leave them alone then and turn our backs on them, no matter how few we be, for “God will not bear in His Christian Churches men who twist His Divine Word, even though they be called Pope, Emperor, Kings, Princes or Doctors.... We ourselves have had much to do with such wiselings, who have taken it upon themselves to bring about unity or reform.” “They fancy that because they are in power they have a deeper insight into Scripture than other people.” “The devil drives such men so that they seek their own praise and glory in Holy Scripture.” But do you say: I will listen to a teacher “only so long as he leads me to the Son of God,” the true master and preceptor, i.e. in other words, so long as he teaches the truth.

  In his confusion of mind Luther does not perceive to what his proviso “so long as” amounts. It was practically the same as committing the decision concerning what was good for salvation to the hands of every man, however ignorant or incapable of sound judgment. Luther’s real criterion remained, however, his own opinion. “If anyone teaches another Gospel,” he says in this very sermon, “contrary to that which we have proclaimed to you, let him be anathema” (cp. Gal. i. 8). The reason why people will not listen to him is, as he here tells them, because, by means of the filth of his arch-knaves and liars, “the devil in the world misleads and fools all.”

  Luther was convinced that he was the “last trump,” which was to herald in the destruction, not only of Satan and the Papacy, but also of the world itself. “We are weak and but indifferent trumpeters, but, to the assembly of the heavenly spirits, ours is a mighty call.” “They will obey us and our trump, and the end of the world will follow. Amen.”

  Meanwhile, however, he notes with many misgivings the manifestations of the evil one. He even intended to collect in book form the instances of such awe-inspiring portents (“satanæ portenta”) and to have them printed.

  For this purpose he begged Jonas to send him once more a detailed account of the case of a certain Frau Rauchhaupt, which would have come under this category; he tells his friend that the object of his new book is to “startle” the people who lull themselves in such a state of false security that not only do they scorn the wholesome marvels of the Gospel with which we are daily overwhelmed, but actually make light of the real “furies of furies” of the wickedness of the world; they must read such marvellous stories, for “they are too prone to believe neither in the goodness of God nor in the wickedness of the devil, and too set on becoming, as indeed they are already, just bellies and nothing more.” — Thus, when Lauterbach told him of three suicides who had ended their lives with the halter, he at once insisted that it was really Satan who had strung them up while making them to think that it was they themselves who committed the crime. “The Prince of this world is everywhere at work.” “God, in permitting such crimes, is causing the wrath of heaven to play over the world like summer lightning, that ungrateful men, who fling the Gospel to the winds, may see what is in store for them.” “Such happenings must be brought to the people’s knowledge so that they may learn to fear God.” Happily the book that was to have contained these tales of horror never saw the light; the author’s days were numbered.

  The outward signs, whether in the heavens or on the earth, “whereby Satan seeks to deceive,” were now scrutinised by Luther more superstitiously than ever.

  Talking at table about a thunder-clap which had been heard in winter, he quite agreed with Bugenhagen “that it was downright Satanic.” “People,” he complains, “pay no heed to the portents of this kind which occur without number.” Melanchthon had an experience of this sort before the death of Franz von Sickingen. Others, whom Luther mentions, saw wonderful signs in the heavens and armies at grips; the year before the coming of the Evangel wonders were seen in the stars; “these are in every instance lying portents of Satan; nothing certain is foretold by them; during the last fifteen years there have been many of them; the only thing certain is that we have to expect the coming wrath of God.” Years before, the signs in the heavens and on the earth, for instance the flood promised for 1524, had seemed to him to forebode the “world upheaval” which his Evangel would bring.

  Luther shared to the full the superstition of his day. He did not stand alone when he thus interpreted public events and everyday occurrences. It was the fashion in those days for people, even in Catholic circles, superstitiously to look out for portents and signs.

  In 1537 Luther relates some far-fetched tales of this sort. The most devoted servants of the devil are, according to him, the sorcerers and witches of whom there are many. In 1540 he related to his guests how a schoolmaster had summoned the witches by means of a horse’s head. “Repeatedly,” so he told them in that same year, “they did their best to harm me and my Katey, but God preserved us.” On another occasion, after telling some dreadful tales of sorcery, he adds: “The devil is a mighty spirit.” “Did not God and His dear angels intervene, he would surely slay us with those thunder-clubs of his which you call thunderbolts.” In earlier days he had told them, that, Dr. “Faust, who claimed the devil as his brother-in-law, had declared that ‘if I, Martin Luther, had only shaken hands with him he would have destroyed me’; but I would not have been afraid of him, but would have shaken hands with him in God’s name and reckoning on God’s protection.”

  According to him, most noteworthy of all were the diabolical deeds then on the increase which portended a mighty revulsi
on and a catastrophe in the world’s history. Everything, his laboured calculations on the numbers in the biblical prophecies included, all point to this. Even the appearance of a new kind of fox in 1545 seemed to him of such importance that he submitted the case to an expert huntsman for an opinion. He himself was unable to decide what it signified, “unless it be that change in all things which we await and for which we pray.”

  The change to which he here and so often elsewhere refers is the end of the world.

  2. Luther’s Fanatical Expectation of the End of the World. His hopeless Pessimism

  The excitement with which Luther looks forward to the approaching end of the world affords a curious psychological medley of joy and fear, hope and defiance; his conviction reposed on a wrong reading of the Bible, on a too high estimate of his own work, on his sad experience of men and on his superstitious observance of certain events of the outside world.

  The fact that the end of all was nigh gradually became an absolute certainty with him. In his latter days it grew into one of those ideas around which, as around so many fixed stars, his other plans, fancies and grounds for consolation revolve. To the depth of his conviction his excessive credulity and that habit — which he shared with his contemporaries — of reading things into natural events contributed not a little.

  A remarkable conjunction of the planets in 1524, “other signs which have been described elsewhere, such as earthquakes, pestilences, famines and wars,” a predicted flood— “all these signs agree” in announcing the great day; never have “more numerous and greater signs” occurred during the whole course of the world’s history to vouch for the forthcoming end of the world. “All the firmaments and courses of the heavens are declining and coming to an end; the Elbe has stood for a whole year at the same low level, this also is a portent.” Such signs invite us to be watchful. Over and above all this we have the “many gruesome dreams of the Last Judgment” with which he was plagued in later years.

  He describes to his friends quite confidently the manner of the coming of the end such as he pictures it to himself: “Early one morning, about the time of the spring equinox, a thick black cloud, three lightning flashes and a thunder-clap, and, presto, everything will lie in ruins,” etc. “I am ever awaiting the day.” “Things may go on for some years longer,” perhaps for “five or six years,” but no more, because “the wickedness of men has increased so dreadfully within so short a time.” “We shall live to see the day”; Aggeus (ii. 7 f.) says: “Yet a little while and I will shake the heaven and the earth”; look around you; “surely the State is being shaken ... the household too, and even the very mob, item our own very sons and daughters. The Church too totters.”

  “All the great wonders have already taken place; the Pope has been unmasked; the world rages. Nor will things improve until the Last Day comes. I hope, however, now that the Evangel is so greatly despised, that the Last Day is no longer far distant, not more than a hundred years off. God’s Word will again decline ... and the world will become quite savage and epicurean.”

  Reason and Ground of Luther’s Conviction of the near End of the World

  The actual origin and basis of this strange idea are plainly expressed in the statement last quoted: “The Pope is unmasked” as Antichrist, such was Luther’s starting-point. Further, “the Evangel is despised,” by his own followers no less than by his foes; this depressing sight, together with the sad outlook for religion generally, formed the ground on which Luther’s conviction of the coming cataclysm grew, particularly when the fall of the Papacy seemed to be unduly delayed, and its strength to be even on the increase. The Bible texts which he twists into his service are an outcome rather than the cause of his conviction concerning Antichrist, while the “signs” in the heavens and on earth also serve merely to confirm a persuasion derived from elsewhere.

  The starting-point of the idea and the soil on which it grew deserve to be considered separately.

  Luther’s views on the unmasking of Antichrist and the approaching end of the world carry us back to the early years of his career. Soon after beginning his attack on the Church, he, over and over again, declared that he had been called to reveal the Pope as Antichrist. His breach with the ecclesiastical past was so far-reaching that he could not have expressed his position and indicated the full extent of his aims better than by so radical an apocalyptic announcement. Nor did it sound so entirely strange to the world. Even according to Wiclif the Papal power was the power of “Antichrist” and the Roman Church the “Synagogue of Satan”; John Hus likewise taught, that it was Antichrist who, by means of the Papal penalties, was seeking to affright those who were after “unmasking” him.

  The idea of Antichrist in Luther’s mind embodied all the wickedness of the Roman Church which it was his purpose to unmask, all the religious perversion of which he wished to make an end, and, in a word, the dominion of the devil against which he fancied he was to proclaim the last and decisive combat. When, by dint of insisting in his writings, over and over again, and in the most drastic of ways, on the Papal Antichrist, the idea came to assume its definitive shape in his own mind, his announcement of the end of the world could not be any longer delayed; for, according to the generally accepted view, Antichrist was directly to precede the coming of Christ to Judgment, or at least the latter’s coming would not be long delayed after the revelation of Antichrist in his true colours. As a rule Antichrist was taken to be a person; Luther, however, saw Antichrist in the Papacy as a whole. Antichrist had had a long spell of life; the last Pope would, however, soon fall, he, Luther, with Christ’s help, was preparing his overthrow, then the end would come — such is the sum of Luther’s eschatological statements during the first period of his career.

  Speaking of the end of the world he often says, that the fall of the Papacy involves it. “Assuredly,” he says, the end will shortly follow on account of the manifest wickedness of the Pope and the Papists. According to him, the Bible itself teaches that, “after the downfall of the Pope and the deliverance of the poor, no one on earth would ever again be a tyrant and inspire fear.” “This would not be possible,” so Luther thinks, “were the world to go on after the fall of the Pope, for the world cannot exist without tyrants. And thus the Prophet agrees with the Apostle, viz. that Christ, when He comes, will upset the Holy Roman Chair. God grant it may happen speedily. Amen!”

  In his fantastic interpretation of the Monk-Calf he declares in a similar way, that the near end of the world is certain in view of the abominations of the sinking Papacy and its monkish system, which last is symbolised in the wonderful calf: “My wish and hope are that it may mean the Last Day, since many signs have so far coincided, and the whole world is as it were in an uproar,” the source of the whole to-do being his triumphant contest with Antichrist. In the same way his conviction of the magnitude and success of his mission against the foe of Christ gives the key to his curious reading of Daniel and the Epistle to the Thessalonians with regard to the time of Antichrist’s advent and the end of the world, which we find set forth quite seriously in his reply to Catharinus. In short, “Antichrist will be revealed whatever the world may do; after this Christ must come with His Judgment Day.”

  When the Papacy, instead of collapsing, began to gather strength and even proceeded to summon a Council, Luther did not cease foretelling its fall; he predicts the end of the world in terms even stronger than before, though the reason he assigns for his forebodings is more and more the “contempt shown for the Word,” i.e. for his teaching and exhortations. Disgust, disappointment and the gloomy outlook for the future of his work are now his chief grounds for expecting the end of all and for ardently hoping that the Day will soon dawn.... It is the self-seeking and vice so prevalent in his own fold which wrings from him the exclamation: “It must soon come to a head,” for things cannot long go on thus.

  The last temptation which shall assail the faithful, he says, will be “an undisciplined life”; then we shall “grow sick of the Word and disg
usted with it.” “Not even the Word of God will they endure; ... the Gospel which they [his own people] once confessed, they now look upon as merely the word of man.” “Do you fancy you are out of the world, or that Satan, the Prince of this world, has died or been crucified in you?” It is bitter experience that causes him to say: “The day will dawn when Christ shall come to free us from sin and death.” “May the world go to rack and ruin and be utterly blotted out,” “the world which has shown me such gratitude during my own lifetime!” “May the Lord call me away, for I have done, and seen, and suffered enough evil.” “Would that the Lord would put an end to the great misery [that among us each one does as he pleases]! Oh that the day of our deliverance would come!” “The people have waxed cold towards the Evangel.... May Christ mend all things and hasten the Day of His Coming.”

  “It is a wonder to me what the world does to-day,” he said, alluding to the turmoil in the newly acquired bishopric of Naumburg; he then goes on to complain in the words already given (), that a new world is growing up around him; no one will admit of having done wrong, of having lied or sinned; those only who meet with injustice are reputed unrighteous, liars and sinners. Verily it would soon rain filth. “The day of our redemption draweth nigh. Amen.” “The world will rage, but good-bye to it”!— “The world is indeed a contemptible thing,” he groans, after describing the morals of Wittenberg.

  The conduct of the great ones at the Saxon Court led him to surmise that “soon,” after but a few days, hell would be their portion. For those who infringe the rights of his Church he has a similar sentence ready: “Hell will be your share. Come, Lord Jesus, come, listen to the groaning of Thy people, and hasten Thy coming!”— “Farewell and teach your people to pray for the day of the Lord; for of better times there is no longer any hope.”