90 ORIENTATION.
skeptical and rationalistic in its tendency, but his strong religious nature always retained the mastery. He felt as keenly as any modern Rationalist, the conflict between natural reason and the transcending mysteries of revelation. He was often tormented by doubts and even temptations to blasphemy, especially when suffering from physical infirmity. A comforter of others, he needed comfort himself and asked the prayers of friends to fortify him against the assaults of the evil spirit, with whom he had, as he thought, many a personal encounter. He confessed, in 1524, how glad he would have been five years before in his war with papal superstition, if Carlstadt could have convinced him that the Eucharist was nothing but bread and wine, and how strongly he was then inclined to that rationalistic view which would have given a death blow to transubstantiation and the mass. He felt that every article of his creed—the trinity in unity, the incarnation, the transmission of Adam’s sin, the atonement by the blood | of Christ, baptismal regeneration, the real presence, the renewal of the Holy Spirit, the resurrection of the body—transcended human comprehension. In Aug. 2, 1527, during the raging of the pestilence at Wittenberg, he wrote to Melanchthon, who was absent at Jena: “ For more than a week I have been tossed about in death and hell; so that, hurt in all my body, I still tremble inevery limb. For having almost wholly lost Christ, I was driven about by storms and tempests of despair and blasphemy against God. But God, moved by the prayers of the saints, begins to have pity upon me, and has drawn my soul out of the lowest hell. Do not cease to pray for me, as I do for you. I believe that this agony of mine pertains to others also.” *
In such trials and temptations he clung all the more mightily to the Scriptures and to faith which believes against reason and hopes against hope. “It is a quality of faith,” he says in the explanation of his favorite Epistle to the Galatians, “that it
1 Briefe, ed. de Wette, III. 189: “ Ego sane . . . plus tota hebdomada in morte et inferno jactatus, ita ut toto corpore lesus adhuc tremam membris,” etc. Comp. Luther’s letters to Spalatin, July 10th and Aug. 19th, 1527, i. c, 111. 187, 191.
§ 9. THE REFORMATION AND RATIONALISM. 31
wrings the neck of reason and strangles the beast, which else the whole world, with all creatures, could not strangle. But how? It holds to God’s Word, and lets it be right and true, no matter how foolish and impossible it sounds. So did Abraham take his reason captive and slay it, inasmuch as he believed God’s Word, wherein was promised him that from his unfruitful and as it were dead wife, Sarah, God would give him seed.”
This and many similar passages clearly show the bent of Luther’s mind. He knew the enemy, but overcame it; his faith triumphed over doubt. In his later years he became more and more a conservative churchman. He repudiated the mystic doctrine of the inner word and spirit, insisted on submission to the written letter of the Scriptures, even when it flatly contradicted reason. He traced the errors of the Zwickau prophets, the rebellious peasants, the Anabaptists, and the radical views of | Carlstadt and Zwingli, without proper discrimination, to presumptuous inroads of the human reason into the domain of faith, and feared from them the overthrow of religion. He so far forgot his obligations to Erasmus as to call him an Epicurus, a Lucian, a doubter, and an atheist. Much as he valued reason as a precious gift of God in matters of this world, he abused it with unreasonable violence, when it dared to sit in judgment over matters of faith.’
1 He called reason “the mistress of the devil,” “the ugly devil’s bride,” “a poisonous beast with many dragons’ heads,” “God’s bitterest enemy.” The coarsest invective against this gift of God is found in the last sermon he preached at Wittenberg, in the year of his death (1546), on Rom. 12: 3. He here represents reason as the fountain of gross and subtle idolatry, and says: “ Wucherei, Sduferei, Ehebruch, Mord, Todtschlag, etc., die kann man merken, und verstehet auch die Welt, dass sie Siinde sein; aber des Tuefels Braut, Ratio, die schéne Metze, fahret herein, wnd will klug sein, und was sie saget, meinet sie, es set der heilige Geist ; wer will da helfen? Weder Jurist, Medicus, noch Kénig oder Kaiser. Denn es ist die hichste Hure die der Teufel hat.’ Andagain: “ Derohalben wie ein junger Gesell muss der bésen Lust wehren, ein Alter dem Geiz: also ist die Vernunft von Art und Natur eine schddliche Hure.” ... “Die Vernunft ist und soll in der Taufe erscuft sein.” “ Hore auf, du verfluchte Hure; willst dw Meisterin sein tiber den Gilauben, welcher sagt, dass im Abendmahl des Herrn sei der wahre Leib und das wahre Blut; ttem dass die Taufe nicht schlecht Wasser ist . . . Diesem Glauben muss die Vernunft unterthan und gehorsam sein.” And much of the same sort,