Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  Not merely does he ascribe his own experiences to the first followers of Christ, viz. to Paul and the other Apostles, but again and again he seeks to make them out to be an evil common to all, an heritage of all Christians, nay, something actually involved in the idea of faith. Often he speaks of faith as of something altogether mystical and intangible of the presence of which no man can be conscious. Faith, he thinks, might well not be present at all just when a man fancies he possesses it; again, it might exist in the man who thought he lacked it; or “at any rate such is the case in times of stress and temptation; for it often happens with faith that he who fancies he believes, believes nothing at all, while the man who thinks he believes nothing and lies in despair, really believes the most.... He who has it, has it. We must believe, but we neither must nor can know it for certain” [i.e. whether we really believe]. Thus in 1528. Needless to say this theory of his was far removed from the strong, simple and perfectly conscious faith of so many thousands even of the humblest followers of the olden religion.

  Some years before this, in a work intended for all, he had made a practical application to himself of this curious doctrine of the frequent impossibility of saying whether one really has the faith. Owing to his temptations he admitted that he was not qualified to be reckoned an authority on this question, nor “even a disciple, much less a master.”

  “Whoever boasts,” he says in his work on Psalm cxvii., “that he knows very well we must be saved without our works by the grace of God, does not know what he is saying”; “it is an art which keeps us ever schoolboys,” a scent after which we must “sniff and run.” “Let anyone who chooses take me as an example of this, which I admit myself to be. Several times, when I was not thinking of this cardinal doctrine, the devil has caught me and plagued me with texts from Scripture till heaven and earth seemed too tight to hold me. Then human works and laws would seem quite right and not an error would be noticed in the whole of Popery. In short, no one but Luther had ever erred; and all my best works, doctrines, sermons, books were condemned.... You hear now how I am confessing to you and admitting what the devil was able to do against Luther, who of all men ought surely to have been a very adept in this art. For he has preached, told, written, spoken, sung and read so much about it and yet remains a tyro in it, and is at times not even a disciple, much less a master.”

  What he is trying to impress on the reader is, that even if you “can do all things,” take care that “your art does not fail you.”

  Thus he did not enjoy the happiness which, according to the testimony of Catholics both learned and unlearned, was shared by all the faithful so long as they paid attention to their religious duties. Guided from their youth by the hand of the Church they were acquainted with no fears and uncertainties, for, thanks to her divine commission and gift of infallibility, she could make up for the insufficiency of human knowledge. Catholics did not look for salvation in a blind and unattainable trust in an imputation of Christ’s righteousness.

  Their attitude indeed presents a striking contrast to Luther’s restless struggle after faith.

  Not only in the last cold, barren years of his life but even at an earlier period we notice in him a tendency to regard this clutching at faith as the one great matter. In some quite early statements he depicts himself as on the look-out for a believing trust, as violently striving to clasp it to his breast, and, generally, as making this the end of all religious effort.

  Even in 1517 in his unpublished Commentary on Hebrews we find a remarkable and oft-repeated admonition which bears on the subject in hand. He sees the troubled conscience “in fear and oppressed whichever way it turns”; hence it must learn to embrace faith in the power of Christ’s blood: “By faith conscience is cleansed and put to rest.” It is this faith in the blood of Christ which we must seek with all our powers to reach. It follows, “that the best of contemplating the sufferings of Christ is that it awakens in the soul this faith or believing trust.” “The oftener he dwells on the Passion, the more strongly will every man believe that the blood of Christ was shed for his own sins. This is ‘to eat and drink spiritually,’ i.e. to feed on Christ in faith and thus become one body with Him.”

  On the other hand, the teaching of antiquity concerning meditation on Christ’s Passion and likewise the hints contained in the language of the Church’s liturgy, do not stop short at such an arousing of faith. Taking for granted the Christian’s faith, what they seek to awaken is a real love; meditation on the sufferings and death of our Lord was above all to stimulate the faithful to feelings of loving gratitude, holy compassion and self-sacrifice; in wholesome compunction people were wont, by dwelling on the sufferings of the innocent Lamb, to rouse themselves to a sense of shame, to a holy desire to imitate Christ by good works of self-conquest and by zeal for souls. The ancient hymn, the “Stabat Mater,” which is at the same time so profound and wonderful a prayer, says never a word of faith, precious as this grace is, but, taking it for granted as the groundwork, it teaches us to pray: “Fac ut tecum lugeam — fac ut ardeat cor meum in amando Christum Deum — passionis fac consortem,” etc. This is surely something higher than that mere appropriation of trusting faith in which Luther sums up all the heights and depths of our union with Christ.

  Luther, in his exaggerated language, declares that it was something “almost Gentile” for a man when contemplating the Passion of Christ to “strive after anything else but faith”; this statement, however, he refutes in practice by himself occasionally introducing other good and moral reflexions on the Passion, though he is always chiefly concerned with its bearing on his own peculiar view of faith.

  He was too ready to confuse the sentiment of faith with actual faith.

  Religious writers before Luther’s day, when dealing with distrust and unbelief, had been careful to distinguish between the involuntary acts of man’s lower nature which do not rise above the realm of feeling, and those which have the definite consent of the will and which alone they regarded as grievous sins against faith or the virtue of hope. With Luther everything is sin; he bewails the actual distrust, and real weakness of faith springing from a fault of the will; but, according to him, the involuntary movements of our corrupt nature also deserve God’s signal anger; original sin whereby we bring this upon ourselves must daily be cloaked over by means of the faith wrought by God. But since it is God alone Who works this faith Luther might well have excused himself even had he lost the faith completely. When he is upset and begins to reproach himself as he often does on account of the weakness of his faith, he is really saying good-bye to his own teaching and again reverting to the standpoint of the olden faith, for only the assumption of man’s free-will can justify self-reproaches.

  “Sin” and “the devil” are made to bear the blame for the deeds of man who lacks free-will.

  “The sin which still persists in us,” says Luther, in his last sermon at Eisleben, “compels us not to believe.” “Because we have it daily before our eyes and at our door, it goes in at one ear and out at the other.” “This is what the rude, savage folk do who care nought for God and place no trust in Him; we, the best of Christians, also do the same.” “We are too prone to obey original sin, the taint of evil which yet sticks to our flesh, and although we would willingly believe, and are fond of hearing and reading God’s Word, still we cannot rise as high as we ought.” Before this he had said: “If a man were to ask you: Good fellow, do you believe that the Son of God ... died for your sins? and that it is really true? You would have to say — did you wish to answer right and truthfully and as you really feel — and confess with dismay, that you cannot after all believe it so strongly and indubitably.... You would have to say.... Alas, I see and feel that I do not ... believe as I ought.” Later he returns to this thought which evidently was much before his mind: “Although we cannot now believe so strongly as we should, still God has patience with us.” Yet “we ought to go on and believe more firmly and be angered with ourselves and say: Heavenly Father, is it tr
ue that I must believe that Thou didst send Thine only-begotten Son into the world?... And when I hear that there is no doubt, then I shall go on to say: Well, for this shall I thank God all the days of my life and praise and extol Him.”

  In reality, according to him, we should “run and jump for joy” because by faith “we hear the Lord Christ speaking.” “The life of the Christian ought, by rights, to be all joy and delight, but there are few who really feel this joy.” The martyrs, with their glad, nay, even jubilant confession of faith amidst their torments, are to him an example of a sound, hardy, unshaken faith, for in them the Word was strong and the teaching of the Gospel all-powerful. But, as he had remarked in another of his Eisleben sermons, “We, owing to the weakness of our faith, feel doubts and fears, as by our very nature we cannot help doing”; yet we must “have wisdom enough again and again to run to Christ and cry aloud and awaken Him with our shouts and prayers.”

  Luther’s farewell address where these words occur furnishes at the same time an example of how, throughout his life, when assailed by doubts and fears, or when the Evangel was in danger, as it then was owing to the Emperor’s warlike preparations, he carried out his injunction of “running to Christ.” He seeks to pour into his faith a little of the strengthening cordial of defiance, and calls upon all his followers to do the same: “Christ says.... Obey me; if you have My Word, hold fast to it.... Leave Pope, Emperor, the mighty and learned to be as wise as ever they please, but do not you follow them.... Do not that which even the angels in heaven may not do.... The poor, wretched creatures, the Pope, Emperor, kings and all the sects fear not to presume this; but God has set His Son at His right hand and said, Thou art My Son, I have given Thee all the kings and the whole world for Thy possession, etc. To Him you kings and lords must hearken.” “I will give you courage,” Christ says, “to laugh when the Turk, Pope and Emperor rage and storm their very worst; come ye only to me. Though you be burdened, faced by death or martyrdom, though Pope and Turk and Emperor attack you, fear ye not.”

  It is, in fact, quite characteristic of his faith, that, when in difficulties, the more he becomes conscious of its lack of theological foundation and of its purely emotional character, the more he arms himself with the weapons of defiant violence. On the one hand he can say, as he does in the Table-Talk of Cordatus: “Had I such great faith as I ought to have, I should long ago have slain the Turk and curbed every tyrant.” “I have indeed tormented myself greatly about them. But my faith is wanting.” And yet on another occasion, with a sadness which does him credit, he expresses his envy of the “pure and simple faith” of the children, and laments: “We old fools torment ourselves and make our hearts heavy with our disputations on the Word, whether this be true, or whether that be possible.”

  Luther’s Pretended Condemnations of his whole Life-work

  Certain controversialists have alleged that Luther came outspokenly to disown his doctrine and his work; they tell us that he expressed his regret for ever having undertaken the religious innovation. Words are even quoted as his which furnish “the tersest condemnation of the Reformation by the Reformer himself.”

  No genuine utterances of his to this effect exist.

  The first abjuration of the whole of his life’s work is supposed to be contained in the statement: “Well, since I have begun it I will carry it through, but, not for the whole world would I begin it again now.” But why was he disinclined to begin again anew? Not by a single word does Luther give us to understand the reason to be that he regarded what he had done as reprehensible; on the contrary, he explains that he would not begin it again “on account of the great and excessive cares and anxieties this office brings with it.” That he by no means regarded the office itself as blameworthy is plain from the words that immediately follow: “If I looked to Him Who called me to it, then I would not even wish not to have begun it; nor do I now desire to have any other God.” And before this, in the same passage, extolling his office, he had said: Moses had besought God as many as six times to excuse him from so arduous a mission. “Yet he had to go. And in the same way God led me into it. Had I known about it beforehand He would have had difficulty in inducing me to undertake it.” It was Luther’s wont thus to represent the beginning of his undertaking as having been entirely directed by God. He is fond of saying that he had foreseen neither its final aims nor its immense difficulties and then to proceed: My ignorance was a piece of luck and a dispensation of providence, for, otherwise, affrighted by the dangers, I should have drawn back from my labours. Here his idea is much the same, and is as far removed as possible from any self-condemnation. Of course the question, whether his idea that God alone was responsible for his work was based on truth, is quite another one.

  The second utterance of Luther’s which has been brought forward against him merely voices anew his disappointment with this wicked world and his complaint of the cold way in which people had received his Evangel though it is the Word of God: “Had I known when I first began to write what I have now seen and experienced, namely that people would be so hostile to the Word of God and would so violently oppose it, I would assuredly have held my tongue, for I should never have been so bold as to attack and anger the Pope and indeed all mankind.” Here, moreover, we have little more than a rhetorical exaggeration of the difficulties he had overcome.

  Nor is it hard to estimate at its true value a third utterance wrung from him: “I can never rid myself of the thought and wish, that I had better never have begun this business.” The feeling which prompted this deliverance is plainly expressed in what follows immediately: “Item, I would rather be dead than witness such contempt of God’s Word and of His faithful servants.” Here again he is simply giving vent to his ill-temper, that his preaching of the divine truths should receive such scant attention; not in the least can this be read as an admission of the falsehood of his mission.

  Two other curious statements which have further been cited, besides having been spoken under the influence of the disappointment above referred to, also bear the stamp of his peculiar rhetoric which alone can explain their tenor. The context at any rate makes it impossible to find in them any repudiation of his previous conduct.

  One of these sayings of Luther’s does indeed ring strange: “The tyrants in the Papacy” “plagued the world with their violence”; but the people, now that they have been delivered from them, refuse to lend an ear to those who preach “at God’s command,” but prefer to run after seducers. “Hence I am going to help to set up again the Papacy and raise the monks on high, for the world cannot get along without such clowns and comedians.” — The truth is, however, that Luther never seriously contemplated carrying out such a threat or countenancing the rule of “Antichrist.” People simply misapprehended him when they read into this jest of his a real intention to re-establish “the Papal rule.”

  In the other saying brought up against him he states: “Had I now to begin to preach the Evangel, I would set about it otherwise.” Here he is referring to a preceding remark, viz. that a preacher must have great experience of the world. He then proceeds: “I would leave the great, rude masses under the dominion of the Pope, for they are no better off for the Evangel but only abuse its freedom. But I should preach the Evangel and its comfort to the troubled in spirit and the meek, to the despondent and the simple-minded.” A preacher, he declares, could not paint the world in colours bad enough, seeing that it belongs altogether to the devil; he must not be such a “simple sheep” as he himself (Luther) had been at the outset when he had expected all “at once to flock to the Evangel.” — Thus there is again no question of any repentant condemnation of the whole work of his lifetime. He clothes in his strange “rhetoric” an idea which is indeed peculiar to him, viz. the special value of his Evangel for those troubled in mind. It is his sad experiences, his personal embitterment and also a certain irritation with his own party that lead him here to lay such stress on the preference to be shown to troubled consciences, even to the abandonment of
all others. Of his own exaggeration he himself was perfectly aware, for he also makes far too much of his simplicity and lack of prudence. The resemblance between what we have just heard him say and his theory of the Church Apart of the True Believers, can hardly escape the reader.

  The wish Luther is supposed to have expressed, viz. never to have been born, and some other strong things to which he gave vent, when in a state of depression, have likewise been quoted in support of the assertion that he himself branded his work “more cruelly than any foe dared to do.” If, however, we take the statements in their setting we find they have quite a different meaning. As an instance we may quote one passage from a tract of 1539 “Against the Antinomians” where, apparently, he curses the day of his birth and regrets that all his writings had not been destroyed. Alluding to Johann Agricola, an opponent within the camp, he writes: “I might in good sooth expect my own followers to leave me in peace, having quite enough to do with the Papists. One might well cry out with Job and Jeremias: ‘Would that I had never been born!’ and in the same way I am tempted to say: ‘Would I had never come with my books,’ I care nothing for them, I should not mind had they all been destroyed and did the works of such great minds [as Agricola] outsell them in all the booksellers’ shops — as they would like, being so desirous of being fed up with honour.”

  Here both his good wishes to his adversary and his repudiation of his own books are the merest irony, though, reading between the lines, we get a glimpse of his pain and annoyance at the hostility he encountered. In the same vein of mingled grief and sarcasm he continues: Christ too (like himself) had complained through the Prophet (Isaias xlix. 4): “I have laboured in vain”; but it was plain (so little does he condemn his own preaching), that “the devil is master of the world” since the Gospel of the “beloved master of the house,” which Luther taught, was so violently attacked. “We must and shall strive and suffer,” so he cries, “for it cannot fare better with us than with the dear prophets and apostles who also had to bear these things.” Seeing that, throughout the tract, he is inveighing against “devilish” deformations of his doctrine, is it likely that here he is cursing the day of his birth out of remorse for his teaching?