OBJECT OF LUTHER'S CAPTIVITY. 9 freely through the fortress, but could not go beyond the walls.* All his wishes were attended to, and he had never been better treated. A crowd of thoughts filled his soul; but none had power to trouble him. By turns he looked down upon the forests that surrounded him, and raised his eyes towards heaven. "A strange prisoner am I," exclaimed he, "captive with and against my will!" Pray for me," wrote he to Spalatin; "your prayers are the only thing I need. I do not grieve for any thing that may be said of me in the world. At last I am at rest."§ This letter, as well as many others of the same period, is dated from the island of Patmos. Luther compared the Wartburg to that celebrated island to which the wrath of Domitian in former times had banished the Apostle John. In the midst of the dark forests of Thuringia the reformer reposed from the violent struggles that had agitated his soul. There he studied christian truth, not for the purpose of contending, but as a means of regeneration and life. The beginning of the Reformation was of necessity polemical; new times required new labours. After cutting down the thorns and the thickets, it was requisite to sow the Word of God peaceably in the heart. If Luther had been incessantly called upon to fight fresh battles, he would not have accomplished a durable work in the Church. Thus by his captivity he escaped a danger which might possibly have ruined the Reformation,-that of always attacking and destroying without ever defending or building up. This humble retreat had a still more precious result. Uplifted by his countrymen, as on a shield, he was on the verge of the abyss; the least giddiness might have plunged him into it headlong. Some of the first promoters of the * Nunc sum hic otiosus, sicut inter captivos liber. L. Epp. ii. 3, 12th May. +Quanquam et hilariter et libenter omnia mihi ministret. Ibid. 13, 15th August. Ego mirabilis captivus qui et volens et nolens hic sedeo. Ibid. 4, 12th May. § Tu fac ut pro me ores: hac una re opus mihi est. fit in publico, nihil mæror; ego in quiete tandem sedeo. 1521. Quicquid de me Reformation both in Germany and Switzerland, ran upon the shoal of spiritual pride and fanaticism. Luther was a man very subject to the infirmities of our nature, and he was unable to escape altogether from these dangers. The hand of God, however, delivered him for a time, by suddenly removing him from the sphere of intoxicating ovations, and throwing him into an unknown retreat. There his soul was wrapt in pious meditation at God's footstool; it was again tempered in the waters of adversity; its sufferings and humiliation compelled him to walk, for a time at least, with the humble; and the principles of a christian life were thenceforward evolved in his soul with greater energy and freedom. Luther's calmness was not of long duration. Seated in loneliness on the ramparts of the Wartburg, he remained whole days lost in deep meditation. At one time the Church appeared before him, displaying all her wretchedness;* at another, directing his eyes hopefully towards heaven, he could exclaim: "Wherefore, O Lord, hast thou made all men in vain ?" (Psalm lxxxix. 48.) And then, giving way to despair, he cried with dejection: "Alas! there is no one in this latter day of his anger, to stand like a wall before the Lord, and save Israel!" Then recurring to his own destiny, he feared lest he should be accused of deserting the field of battle; and this supposition weighed down his soul. "I would rather," said he, "be stretched on coals of fire, than lie here half-dead." Transporting himself in imagination to Worms and Wittemberg, into the midst of his adversaries, he regretted having yielded to the advice of his friends, that he had quitted the world, and that he had not presented his bosom to the fury of men.§ "Alas!" said he, "there is nothing I desire more than to appear before my cruelest enemies." || Ego hic sedens tota die faciem Ecclesiæ ante me constituo. L. Epp. ii. 1. + Verebar ego ne aciem deserere viderer. Ibid. Mallem inter carbones vivos ardere, quam solus semivivus, atque tinam non mortuus putere. Ibid. 10. § Cervicem esse objectandam publico furori. Ibid. 89. Nihil magis opto, quam furoribus adversariorum occurrere, objecto jugulo. Ibid. 1. Gentler thoughts, however, brought a truce to such anxiety. Everything was not storm and tempest for Luther; from time to time his agitated mind found tranquillity and comfort. Next to the certainty of God's help, one thing consoled him in his sorrows; it was the recollection of Melancthon." If I perish," wrote he, "the Gospel will lose nothing you will succeed me as Elisha did Elijah, with a double portion of my spirit." But calling to mind Philip's timidity, he exclaimed with energy: "Minister of the Word! keep the walls and towers of Jerusalem, until you are struck down by the enemy. As yet we stand alone upon the field of battle; after me, they will aim their blows at you." + The thought of the final attack Rome was about to make on the infant Church, renewed his anxieties. The poor monk, solitary and a prisoner, had many a combat to fight alone. But a hope of deliverance speedily dawned upon him. It appeared to him that the assaults of the Papacy would raise the whole German nation, and that the victorious soldiers of the Gospel would surround the Wartburg and restore the prisoner to liberty. "If the pope," said he, "lays his hand on all those who are on my side, there will be a disturbance in Germany; the greater his haste to crush us, the sooner will come the end of the pope and his followers. And I......I shall be restored to you. God is awakening the hearts of many, and stirring up the nations. Only let our enemies clasp our affair in their arms and try to stifle it; it will gather strength under their pressure, and come forth ten times more formidable." But sickness brought him down from those high places on which his courage and his faith had placed him. He had already suffered much at Worms; his disease increased in solitude.§ He could not endure the food at the Wartburg, which was less coarse than that of his convent; they were compelled to give him the meagre diet to which he had * Etiam si peream, nihil peribit Evangelio. L. Epp. ii. 10. Quo citius id tentaverit, hoc citius et ipse et sui peribunt, et ego revertar. Ibid. 10. § Auctum est malum, quo Wormatia laborabam. Ibid. 17. 12 SICKNESS-HIS FRIENDS' ANXIETY. been accustomed. He passed whole nights without sleep. Anxieties of mind were superadded to the pains of the body. No great work is ever accomplished without suffering and martyrdom. Luther, alone upon his rock, endured in his strong frame a passion that the emancipation of the human race rendered necessary. "Seated by night in my chamber I uttered groans, like a woman in her travail; torn, wounded, and bleeding "*......then breaking off his complaints, touched with the thought that his sufferings are a blessing from God, he exclaimed with love: "Thanks be to Thee, O Christ, that thou wilt not leave me without the precious marks of thy cross!" But soon, growing angry with himself, he eried out: "Madman and hard-hearted that I am! Woe is me! I pray seldom, I seldom wrestle with the Lord, I groan not for the Church of God! Instead of being fervent in spirit, my passions take fire; I live in idleness, in sleep, and indolence!" Then, not knowing to what he should attribute this state, and accustomed to expect everything from the affection of his brethren, he exclaimed in the desolation of his heart: "O my friends! do you then forget to pray for me, that God is thus far from me?" Those who were around him, as well as his friends at Wittemberg and at the elector's court, were uneasy and alarmed at this state of suffering. They feared lest they should see the life they had rescued from the flames of the pope and the sword of Charles V. decline sadly and expire. Was the Wartburg destined to be Luther's tomb? "I fear," said Melancthon, "that the grief he feels for the Church will cause his death. A fire has been kindled by him in Israel; if he dies, what hope will remain for us? Would to God, that at the cost of my own wretched life, I could retain in the world that soul which is its fairest ornament! §-Oh! what a man!" exclaimed he, as if already standing on the side of his grave; we never appreciated him rightly!" 66 * Sedeo dolens, sicut puerpera, lacer et saucius et cruentus. L. Epp. ii. 50, 9th Sept. + Gratias Christo, qui me sine reliquiis sanctæ crucis non derelinquit. Ibid. Nihil gemens pro ecclesia Dei. Ibid. 22, 13th July. § Utinam hac vili anima mea ipsius vitam emere queam. Corp. Ref. i. 415, 6th July. LUTHER'S LABOURS CONFESSION. 13 What Luther denominated the shameful indolence of his prison was a task that almost exceeded the strength of one man. “I am here all the day," wrote he on the 14th of May, "in idleness and pleasures (alluding doubtless to the better diet that was provided him at first). I am reading the Bible in Hebrew and Greek; I am going to write a treatise in German on Auricular Confession; I shall continue the translation of the Psalms, and compose a volume of sermons, so soon as I have received what I want from Wittemberg. I am writing without intermission." And yet this was but a part of his labours. His enemies thought that, if he were not dead, at least they should hear no more of him; but their joy was not of long duration, and there could be no doubt that he was alive. A multitude of writings, composed in the Wartburg, succeeded each other rapidly, and the beloved voice of the reformer was everywhere hailed with enthusiasm. Luther published simultaneously works calculated to edify the Church, and polemical tracts which troubled the too eager exultation of his enemies. For nearly a whole year, he by turns instructed, exhorted, reproved, and thundered from his mountain-retreat; and his amazed adversaries asked one another if there was not something supernatural, some mystery, in this prodigious activity. "He could never have taken any rest," says Cochlous.+ But there was no other mystery than the imprudence of the partisans of Rome. They hastened to take advantage of the edict of Worms, to strike a decisive blow at the Reformation; and Luther, condemned, under the ban of the empire, and a prisoner in the Wartburg, undertook to defend the sound doctrine, as if he were still victorious and at -liberty. It was especially at the tribunal of penance that the priests endeavoured to rivet the chains of their docile parishioners; and accordingly the confessional was the object of Luther's first attack. They bring forward," said he, "these words of St. James: Confess your faults to one another. Singular confessor! his name is One Another.› * Sine intermissione scribo. L. Epp. ii. 6, 16. + Cum quiescere non posset. Cochl. Act. Luth. p. 39. |