Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  In the pictures his imagination conjures up, the sacrifice of the Mass — the most sacred mystery of Catholic worship — occupies a special place. It is the idolatrous abomination foretold by the prophet, or rather the idol Moasim itself (above, vol. iv., ). One wonders whether he really succeeded in persuading himself that his greatest sin, a sin that cried to heaven for vengeance and deserved eternal damnation (above, ; cp. vol. iv., ), was his having — as a monk and at a time when he knew no better — celebrated the sacrifice of the Mass? It is true that, in the solemn profession he makes of his belief in the Sacrament (1528), when resolved to confess his faith “before God and the whole world,” he says: “These were my greatest sins, that I was such a holy monk and for over fifteen years angered, plagued and martyred my dear Master so gruesomely by my many Masses.” The words occur at the close of his “Vom Abendmal Christi Bekentnis,” with the asseveration, that he would stand firm in this faith to the very end; “and were I, which God forbid, under stress of temptation or in the hour of death to say otherwise, then [what I might say] must be accounted as nought and I hereby openly proclaim it to be false and to come from the devil. So help me My Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Who is blessed for ever and ever. Amen.”

  According to what he once remarked in 1531 (above, f.) it was, however, not the devil who was prompting him to despair by calling up his crying sin of having said Mass. If Luther is indeed telling the truth, and if his doings as a zealous monk really seemed to him to be his worse sins, then we can only marvel at his confusion of mind having gone so far. From other admissions we should rather gather that what disquieted his conscience was more the subversion of the olden worship, the ruin of the religious life and, in fact, the whole working of the innovations. And yet, here, we have a solemn assurance that the very contrary was the case.

  It is in itself a problem how he contrives to make such frightful sins of his monastic life — into which, on his own showing, he had entered in ignorance — and of the Masses which he had said all unaware of their wickedness.

  But, in his polemics, such is the force with which he is swept along, that he does not pause to consider his blatant self-contradictions, or how much he is putting himself at the mercy of his opponents, or how inadequately his rhetoric and all his playing to the gallery hides the lack of valid proofs and the deficiencies of his reading of Scripture.

  As for his foes, in his mind’s eye he sees them wavering and falling, blown over, as it were, by the strength of his reasoning, even when they are not overtaken and slain by the righteous judgment of God. When need arises he has ready a list of deaths, particularly of sudden ones, by which opponents had been snatched away. The “blessed upheaval,” however, which is one day to carry them all off together, is, so at least his morbid fancy tells him, still delayed by his prayers.

  As for himself personally, he stood under the spell of a train of thought displaying pathological symptoms, which, taken in the lump, must raise serious questions as to the nature of his changing mental state.

  Being chosen by God for such great things, being not merely the “prophet of the Germans” but also destined to bring back the Gospel to the whole Christian world, Providence, in his opinion, has equipped him with qualities such as have hitherto rarely graced a man. This he does not tire of repeating, albeit he ever refers his gifts to God. He is fond of comparing himself not merely with the Popish doctors of his day but also with the most famous of bygone time. In the same way he is fond of measuring foes within the fold by the standard of his own greatness. He is thus betrayed into utterances such as one usually hears only from those affected with megalomania; this sort of thing pleases him so well, that, intent on his own higher mission, he fails to see the bad taste of certain of his exaggerations and how repulsive their tone is.

  God at all times has saved His Church “by means of individuals and for the sake of a few”; this Luther pointed out to his friends in 1540, instancing Adam, Abraham, Moses, Elias, Isaias, Augustine, Ambrose and others. “God also did something by means of Bernard and now again through me, the new Jeremias. And so the end draws nigh!” The end, however, for which he has made everything ready, may now come quite peacefully and speedily, for he has not merely done “something,” but “everything that pertains to the knowledge of God has been restored”; “the Gospel has been revealed and the Last Day is at the door.”

  Fancying himself the passive tool of Divine Providence, it becomes lawful for him deliberately to scatter over the world his literary bomb-shells, exclaiming: God wills it, for, did He not, He could prevent it! He flings broadcast atrocious charges of a character to arouse men’s worst passions, and, at the same time, writes to his friends: If it is too much, God at our prayer must provide a remedy. Hence it is God Who must bear the blame for everything, seeing that He works through Luther. God made him a Doctor of Holy Scripture, let Him therefore see to it.

  He “throws down the keys at the door” of God when the work goes ill. Why did He will it? “I cannot stop the course of events,” he says somewhat more truly in 1525, “for matters have gone too far”; he adds, however: “I will shut my eyes and leave God to act; He will do as He pleases.”

  This way of thinking was nothing new in Luther, but may be traced in his earliest literary efforts, which only shows how deeply it was rooted in his mind. “In all I do I wish to be led, not by the rede and deed of man, but by the rede and deed of God!” so he said in 1517, when declining the advice of those who only wished to serve his best interests; yet, in the same letter in which these words occur, he confesses his “precipitancy, presumption and prejudice,” qualities “on account of which he was blamed by all.”

  Later, too, as we know, he saw in things both great and small the hand of God at work in him; all his efforts and even his very mistakes were God’s, not his. It was by God that, while yet a monk, he had been “forcibly torn from the Hours,” i.e. freed from the duty of reciting the Divine Office; God had led him like a blinkered charger into the midst of the battle; it was God, again, Who had “flung him into matrimony” and Who had laid upon him, the “wonderful monk,” the burden of preaching to the great ones and the tenor of his message. “Hence you ought to believe my word absolutely … but, even to this day, people do not believe that my preaching is the Word of God.… But, on it I will stake my soul, that I preach the true and pure Word of God, and for it I am also ready to die.… If you believe it you will be saved, if you don’t you will be damned.”

  Seeing the tumults and disorders that had arisen through him, he cries: “It is the Lord Who does this”; “we see God’s plan in these things”; “It was God Who began it”; “in our doings we are guided by the Divine Counsel alone.”

  It is when in such a frame of mind that he detects those signs and wonders that witness against his foes; given the magnitude of the war he was waging whilst waiting for the coming of the Judge, these signs were no more to be wondered at than the obstinacy of his foes: “Now that the end of the world is coming the people [the Papists] storm and rage against God most gruesomely, blaspheming and condemning the Word of God, though knowing it to be indeed the Word and the Truth. And, on the top of this, are the many dreadful signs and wonders in the skies and among almost all creatures, which are a terrible menace to them.”

  Though quite full of the idea that his own doctrine was alone right, yet, as already shown, he went in early days so far as to grant to every man freedom of belief and the right to read Scripture according to his lights; for to him every Christian is a judge of Holy Scripture, a doctor and a tool of the Holy Ghost. The assumption underlying this, viz. that, in spite of all, the necessary unity of doctrine would be preserved, is not easy to explain. When, however, experience stepped in and disproved the assumption, Luther’s behaviour became even more inexplicable. He was by nature so disposed to ignore the claims of logic that the contradiction between his demand that all should bow to his doctrine, and such theories as that the Bible is, for all, the true and only fount of kn
owledge, and that no other outward ecclesiastical authority exists, never seems to have troubled him. Though he claimed to be the “liberator of minds and consciences,” he, nevertheless, called on the authorities to put down all other doctrines.

  The dignity of his chair at Wittenberg is exalted by him to giddy heights. “This university and town,” he said of Wittenberg, may vie with any others. “All the highest authorities of the day are at one with us, like Amsdorf, Brenz and Rhegius. Such men are our correspondents.” In comparison, the sects are simply ludicrous in their insignificance. Woe to those within the fold who dare to run counter to Luther, “like ‘Jeckel’ and ‘Grickel’; they imagine that they alone are clever and that they, like ‘Zwingel’ also, never learnt anything from us! Yet who knew anything 25 years ago? Who stood by me 21 years since, when God, against both my will and my knowledge, led me into the fray? Alas, what a misfortune is ambition!” This he said in 1540, but already eight years before he had complained bitterly: “Each one wants to make himself out to be alone in knowing everything.… Everywhere we find the same Master Wiseacre, who is so clever that he can lead a horse by its tail.” Though one alone has received from God the mission of preaching the Gospel, yet “there are others, even among his pupils, who think they know ten times more about it than he.… Then, hey presto, another doctrine is set up.” “Deadly harm” to Christianity is the result; nevertheless, according to Christ’s prophecy, “factions and sects” there must be; but their source is and remains the devil — who, according to Luther, is the true God of this world in which indeed his finger can everywhere be seen. (See above, vol. v., ff.)

  Strange indeed is the frame of mind here presented to the observer. So much is Luther the plaything of his fancy and the feeling of the moment, that, at times he seems the victim of a sort of self-suggestion and to be following blindly the idea which happens to hold the field.

  His judgment being seen to be so confused, it becomes easier to estimate at their right value certain of his ideas, particularly his conviction that he and his cause owed their preservation to a series of palpable miracles. He contrived to spread among his pupils the belief that “holy Luther” was the greatest prophet since the time of the Apostles. Yet anyone who reflects how Luther could devote a special tract to proving that so everyday an occurrence as the “escape” of a nun from her convent was worthy of being deemed a great miracle for all time, can only marvel at the facility with which Luther could delude himself.

  Other Abnormal Lines of Thought and Behaviour

  Luther’s action presents many other problems to the psychologist, for instance, in its waverings and contradictions. Strong in his belief in his Divine mission, he roundly abuses kings and princes in the vilest terms, and yet, at the same time, he teaches respect and obedience towards them and even sets himself up as a model in this respect, all according to his mood and as they happen to be favourable to him or the reverse. On the one hand, he presumes to incite the people to acts of violence, and, on the other, he preaches no less cogently the need of calmness and submission. He boasts of the courage with which he had dashed into the very jaws of Behemoth, and of his utter contempt for his foes; yet this same Luther is obsessed by the idea that his own life is threatened by poison and sorcery, just as his party is menaced by the hired assassins of the monks and Papists. While he extols the University of Wittenberg as the bulwark of theological unity, he is at the same time so distrustful of the doctrine of his friends that his intercourse with them suffers, and, to at least one of his intimates, Wittenberg becomes a “cave of the Cyclops.”

  Such contradictions and many of the like combined to induce in him an abnormal state of mind. Harmony and consistency of thought and feeling was something he never knew. Hence the charge brought against him, not merely by opponents, but even by many of his own followers, viz. of being muddled, illogical and not sure of his ground.

  While he is perfectly able at times to speak and write with such candour and truth that one cannot but admire the wholesome sense, and sober, witty, cheery style of his literary productions, yet their tone and character change entirely as soon as it becomes a question of his polemics or of his Evangel. Then his mind becomes overcast, his thoughts pursue one another like storm-clouds, assuming meanwhile the strangest shapes and the reader is over whelmed by a torrent of mingled abuse and paradox. His very proofs are caught up in the whirl and become so distorted that it is often impossible even to tell whether they are meant in earnest or are merely in the nature of a challenge.

  According to Luther, to mention only a few of the strangest of his sayings, his doctrine of justification and the forgiveness of sins is present “in all creatures” and is confirmed by analogy. The very doctrine of creation rests on the doctrine of justification as on “its foundation.” “If the article of our souls’ salvation is embraced and adhered to with a firm faith, then the other articles follow naturally, for instance, that of the Trinity.”

  Marriage he finds stamped on the whole of nature, “even on the hardest stones.” New-born infants he assumes capable of eliciting an act of faith in baptism; simply because he could not otherwise defend against the Anabaptists the traditional infant baptism and at the same time maintain that the efficacy of the sacraments depends on faith. His doctrine of the spiritual omnipresence of the body of Christ is an absurdity involving the presence of Christ in all food; but even this is not too much for him if it enables him to defend his theory of the Supper. His imputation-theory led him to that considered utterance which has shocked so many: “Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe more boldly still.” “Sic volo, sic iubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas,” was elsewhere his answer to another objection.

  He made no odds about declaring rhetorically, of all classes of men and all branches of religious knowledge: that, “in a word, before me no one knew anything.” Of the daring eloquence he can use when expressing such ideas we have a sample in the statement: “Were the Papists, particularly those who are now bawling at me in their writings, all stamped together in the wine-press and then boiled down and distilled seven times over, not a quarter would be left capable of using their tongues to teach even one article [of the Catechism], nor from the whole of their doctrine could so much be drawn as would serve to teach a manservant how to behave in God’s sight towards his master or a maid towards her mistress.” He alone, Luther, it was, who had brought to all ranks and classes throughout the world “a good conscience and order.”

  Finally we have the paradox apparent in his practical instructions and the curious behaviour into which his belief in his mission occasionally led him. We may recall the means to be employed for overcoming temptations, one of the mildest of which was a good drink, and the measures to be taken to induce peace of soul. “Break out into abuse,” such is his advice, and that will bring inward peace. If this does not work, then coarse humour will often succeed, one of those jests, for instance, where the sacred and sublime is vulgarised simply to raise a laugh. “Against the devil Luther makes use of ‘stronger buffoonery’ and dismisses him curtly, nay, often rudely.” Pointless jests often spoil the force of his words. For instance, he found himself in a difficulty about the second wife whom one of Carlstadt’s followers, acting on Luther’s own principles, wished to take in addition to his ailing spouse; whilst stipulating that the man must first “feel his conscience assured and convinced by the Word of God,” and doing his best to dissuade him from taking such a step, Luther adds in a jesting tone, that it were perhaps better to let the matter take its course, as at Orlamünde (under the rule of Carlstadt and his Old-Testament ideas) they would soon be introducing circumcision and the Mosaic Law in its entirety.

  His instability of mind and ever-changing feeling ended by impressing a peculiar stamp on his whole mentality.

  At one time he is delighted to see all things subject to the new Evangel, and extols the gigantic success of his efforts; at another he complains bitterly that the world is turning its back on the Word and deserting the l
ittle flock of true Evangelicals. Thus the world could promptly assume in his mind quite contradictory aspects. Of his alternating moods of confidence and despair he told his friends: “My moods vary quite a hundred times a day — nevertheless I stand up to the devil.” Hence he was aware of his vacillations, though on the same occasion he declares that he knows right well how Holy Scripture strengthens him against them. He also feels and acknowledges his inconsistency, in being, for all his changeableness, so rigid and obstinate in his dealings with his friends. They knew his character, he said, and called it “obstinate.”

  Profound depression can alone account for the step he took in 1530, when, for a while, he discontinued his sermons at Wittenberg because he was sick of the indifference of his hearers to the Word of God and disgusted with their conduct. The editor of the sermons of this year, which have only recently been published, remarks justly, that “the only possible explanation of this step is a pathological one.” Luther even went so far as to declare from the pulpit that he was “not going to be a swine-herd.” Yet, a little after, during the journey to the Coburg, a sudden change occurred, and we find Luther making jokes and writing in a quite optimistic vein, and, no sooner had he reached his new abode, than he plunged into new literary labours. Nevertheless, whilst at the Castle, he was again a victim of intense depression, was visited by Satan’s “embassy” and even vouchsafed a glimpse of the enemy of God. On his departure from the Coburg good humour again got the better of him, as we see from his jovial letter to Baumgärtner of Oct. 4, 1530, and on reaching Wittenberg, he was soon up to his ears in work, so that he could write: “I am not only Luther, but Pomeranus, Vicar-General, Moses, Jethro and I know not who else besides.” The facility with which his moods altered is again apparent when, in his last days, he left Wittenberg in disgust only to return again forthwith in the best of spirits. (See below, xxxix., 1.)