884 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1580.
The sword is powerless here. God alone must act without man’s interference. He who has most faith will be the most powerful protector. As I feel your Grace’s faith to be still weak, I can by no means recognize in you the man who is to protect and save me. Your Electoral Grace asks me, what you are to do under these circumstances? I answer, with all submission, Do nothing at all, but trust in God alone. . . If your Grace had faith, you would behold the glory of God; but as you do not yet believe, you have not seen it. Let us love and glorify God forever. Amen.”
Being asked by the Elector to give his reasons for a return, he assigned, in a letter of March 7, from Wittenberg,! three reasons: the urgent written request of the church at Wittenberg; the confusion in his flock; and his desire to prevent. an imminent outbreak. ‘My second reason,” he wrote, ‘is that during my absence Satan has entered my sheepfold, and committed ravages which I can not repair by writing, but only by my personal presence and living word. My conscience would not allow me to delay longer; I was bound to disregard, not only your Highness’s disfavor, but the whole world’s wrath. It is my flock, the flock intrusted to me by God; they are my children in Christ. I could not hesitate a moment. Iam bound to suffer death for them, and will cheerfully with God’s grace lay down my life for them, as Christ commands (John 10: 12).
Luther rode without fear through the territory of his violent enemy, Duke George of Saxony, who was then urging the Elector to severe measures against him and the Wittenbergers. He informed the Elector that he would pass through Leipzig, as he once went to Worms, though it should rain Duke Georges for nine days in succession, each fiercer than the original in Dresden.
He safely arrived in Wittenberg on Thursday evening, the
1 De Wette, II. 141-144.
§ 67. LUTHER RETURNS TO WITTENBERG. 385
6th of March, full of faith and hope, and ready for a fight against his false friends.
On this journey he had on the 3d or 4th of March an interesting interview with two Swiss students, Kessler and Spengler, in the tavern of the Black Bear at Jena. We have an account of it from one of them, John Kessler of St. Gallen, who afterwards became a reformer of that city.) It contrasts very favorably with his subsequent dealings with
the Swiss, especially with Zwingli, which were clouded by
prejudice, and embittered by intolerance. The episode was purely private, and had no influence upon the course of events; but it reveals a characteristic trait in this mighty man, who even in critical moments of intense earnestness did not lose his playful humor. We find the same combination. of apparently opposite qualities when at Coburg he was watching the affairs of the Diet at Augsburg, and wrote a childlike letter to his little Hans. Such harmless humor is like the light of the sun breaking through dark clouds.
The two Swiss, who had studied at Basel, were attracted by the fame of Luther and Melanchthon, and traveled on foot to Wittenberg to hear them. They arrived at Jena after a terrible thunderstorm, fatigued and soaked through, and humbly sat down on a bench near the door of the guestchamber, when they saw a knight seated at a table, sword in hand, and the Hebrew Psalter before him. Luther recognized the Swiss by their dialect, kindly invited them to sit down at his side, and offered them a drink. He inquired whether Erasmus was still living in Basel, what he was doing, and what the people in Switzerland thought of Martin Luther. The students replied that some lauded him to the
1 Published by Bernet, Joh. Kessler genannt Athenarius, St. Gallen, 1826, and more fully by E. Gétzinger in Kessler’s Sadbata, St. Gallen, 1866 and 1868, 2 parts. See a good account in Hagenbach’s Ref. Gesch., pp. 141 sqq. In the Schwarze Bar hotel at Jena, where I stopped a few days in July, 1886, the ‘‘ Lutherstube’’ is still shown with the likeness of Luther an old Bible, and Kessler’s report.