Luther acts the Prophet: promises to destroy
the Pope immediately without suffering the taking of arms.
Luther
assumed the tone of a prophet against those who opposed his doctrine. After admonishing
them to submit to it, he threatened at last to pray against them. “My prayers,”
said he, “will not be Salmoneus’s thunder, no empty rumbling in the air. Luther’s
voice is not to be stopt so, and I wish your highness find it not to your cost”
(Ep. ad George Duc. Sax. T. ii. f. 491). Thus he wrote to the Prince of the House
of Saxony. “My prayer,” continued he, “is an impregnable bulwark, more powerful
than the devil himself. Had it not been for that, long ago, Luther would not be
so much as spoken of; and men will not stand astonished at so great a miracle!”
When he threatened any with the divine judgments, he would not have it believed
he did it upon general views. You would have said that he read it in the book
of fate. Nay he spoke with such certainty of Papacy’s approaching downfall,
that his followers no longer doubted of it. Upon his assertion, it was deemed
certain that two antichrists, the Pope and the Turk, were clearly pointed out
in Scripture. The Turk was just falling, and the attempts he was then making in
Hungary were to be the last act of this tragedy. As for the papacy, it was just
expiring, and the most he could allow was two years reprieve: but above all,
let them beware of employing arms in this work. Thus he spoke, whilst yet but
weak; and prohibited all other weapons than the word, in the cause of his
gospel. The Papal reign was to expire on a sudden by the breath of Jesus
Christ;--namely, by the preaching of Luther. Daniel was express on the point;
St. Paul left no doubt; and Luther, their interpreter, would have it so. Such
prophecies are still in fashion. The failure of Luther prevents not our
ministers from venturing at the like event now; they know the infatuation of
the vulgar, ever destined to be charmed with some spell. These prophecies of
Luther stand in his works upon record to this day, an eternal evidence against
those who so lightly gave them credit (Assert. Art. Damnat. t. v. f. 3. ad Prop.
3. ad Prop. 33. ad. Lib. Amb. Cathar. ib. f. 161. Cont. Reg. Aug. ib. 331, 332,
et seq.) Sleidan, his historian, relates them with a serious air. He lavishes
all the elegance of his fine style, all the purity of his polished language, to
represent to us a picture which Luther had dispersed throughout Germany (Sleid.
Liv. 70. Xlv. 225, xvi. 261, &c.), was. Yet, if we believe Sleidan, it was
a prophetic piece; nay, the accomplishment of many of Luther’s prophecies had
been seen already, and the remainder of them was still in the hands of God.
Luther
was not looked on as a prophet by the people alone. The learned of the party would
have him esteemed such. Philip Milanchthon, who, from the beginning of the
disputes, had entered himself on the list of his disciples, and was the most able
as well as the most zealous of them all, conceived at first a firm persuasion
that there was something in this man extraordinary and prophetic; and,
notwithstanding all the weaknesses he discovered in his master, he was a long
time before he could relinquish the conviction; and, speaking of Luther, he
wrote to Erasmus, “you know we ought to prove and not to despite prophecies”
(Mel. Lib. iii, Epist, 65). (Jacques Bénigne Bossuet, The History and the
Variations of the Protestant Churches, 2 vols. [2d ed.; Maynooth: Richard
Coyne, 1836], 1:42-44)