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The UK Bible Students Website History Corner |
MARTIN LUTHER – DOUBTS AND HUMANISTS
Alfred Plummer, The Continental Reformation
(London: Robert Scott; 1913), pp. 131-133.
‘The last six years of Luther’s life, 1540 to 1546, are not marked by any great incident, but we know a great deal about them from Table Talk and his correspondence; and if these do not teach us much more about the great leader and Reformer, they tell us a great deal about the man. . . .
He was very human also in his occasional fits of despondency, when he fears that he has made grievous mistakes, and even that his whole career may have been a mistake.
He has used strong language, and it may have been too strong.
He has written a great deal, and he may have written too much.
The Bible was being buried under mountains of comment. He could “wish that all his writings were buried nine ells [about 45 ft] underground, by reason of the evil example they will give.”
And then there is that pathetic confession of the possibility of radical error. “How often, in the bitterness of my soul, have I pressed myself with the Papist’s argument;
Art thou the only wise person?
Are all others in error?
Have they been mistaken all these hundreds of years?
What if you yourself are mistaken, and are dragging many souls with you into eternal condemnation?” . . . .
‘It must have been a grievous disappointment to him that so many of the Humanists grew cold towards him, and that so few of the people took a serious interest in the movement, after the novelty of it had passed away. The Humanists, who could have done so much for him, cared less and less for the man whom they had at first so heartily supported, but who was found to have so little interest in letters, and who seemed to be insisting on dogmas almost as fanatically as did the Church of Rome.
They did not see that the Reformation, although for a time it withdrew men’s attention from most of the subjects which constitute a liberal education, yet did a great deal for education by developing the intellectual faculties. It took several generations to see the truth of this. The good effects of Luther’s translation of the Bible could be perceived somewhat more quickly, but Luther did not live long enough to receive much encouragement from that source. And there were times when he would not have cared to live long enough for any such purpose. “Forty more years of life! I would not purchase Paradise at such cost!”’
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