The necessity of these latter qualities, in the case of one who is
to achieve any permanent good, has never been better set forth than
by Luther himself: “It is not possible,” he says in his exposition
of the Lord’s Prayer, “that any man of good will, if really good,
can become angry or quarrelsome when he meets with opposition. Mark
it well, it is assuredly a sign of an evil will if he cannot endure
contradiction.”[21] “But deep-seated pride cannot bear to be thought
in the wrong, or foolish, and therefore looks upon all others as fools
and wicked.”[22] He declares that these passionate and self-seeking
men are the “worst and most shameful in the whole of Christendom,”
forgetting that he himself was classed by his contemporaries and
pupils among these very men.[23] If he really was desirous of hearing
the voice of Christ speaking within him, as he actually believed
he did hear it, then he ought not to have allowed that voice to be
drowned by his passionate excitement. Men chosen by God had always
been careful to await the Divine inspirations with the greatest
composure of mind, because they knew well how easy it is for a
troubled mind to be deaf to them, or to mistake for them the deceptive
voice of its own perverse will.
The writing already mentioned, “Von dem Bapstum tzu Rome,” contains
the saddest examples of Luther’s unbridled excitement, and of the
irritation which burst into a flame at the least opposition to his
opinions.
It is directed against the worthy theologian of Leipzig, Augustine
Alveld, a Franciscan, who had ventured to take the part of the
Apostolic See, and to gauge Luther’s unfair attacks at their
true value. Luther falls upon this learned friar with absolutely
ungovernable fury, calls his book the “work of an ape, intended to
poison the minds of the poor laymen,” and him himself “an uncouth
miller’s beast who has not yet learnt to bray.” “He ought to have
too much respect for the fine, famous town of Leipzig [whence Alveld
wrote] to defile it with his drivel and spittle.”[24]
Alveld, however, may have consoled himself with the fact, that Rome
and the Papacy were the object of Luther’s wildest rage: “The Roman
scoundrels come along and set the Pope above Christ.” But he is
“Antichrist of whom the whole of Scripture speaks ... and I should be
glad if the King, the Princes and all the Nobles gave short shrift to
the Roman buffoons, even if we had to do without episcopal pallia. How
has Roman avarice proceeded so far as to seize on the foundations made
by our fathers, on our bishoprics and livings? Who ever heard or read
of such robbery? Have we not people who stand in need of such that we
should enrich the muleteers, stable-boys, yea, even the prostitutes
and knaves of Rome out of our poverty, people who look upon us as the
merest fools, and who mock at us in the most shameful fashion.”[25]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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