Previous to this, in February, 1519, he reveals in the following words the agitation and ferment going on within him: “I adjure you,” he says to his friend Spalatin, “if you would think aright of the Evangel, not to imagine that such a cause can be fought out without tumults, scandal and rebellion. You cannot make a pen out of a sword, or peace of war. The Word of God is a sword, war, ruin, scandal, destruction, poison and, as we read in the Old Covenant, ‘Like to a bear in the road and a lioness in the wood,’ so it withstands the sons of Ephraim.”[345]
No Apostle or Prophet ever laid claim to a Divine authorisation for their preaching in language so violent. Indeed, mere phrases and extracts from his writings scarcely suffice to give a true picture of the intensity of his prepossession for his supposed Divine calling and of his furious hatred of his opponents. It would, in fact, be necessary to read in their entirety certain of his polemical works. That they have not done so is the explanation why so many know only a polished Luther and have scarcely an inkling of the fierceness of the struggle which centred round his consciousness of a Divine mission, and of the depth of his animosity against those who dared to gainsay him.
Nor was this consciousness of his without its effects on those around him. During the long years of his public life, it kindled the passion of thousands and contributed largely to the Peasant Revolt and the unhappy religious wars which followed later. Indirectly it was also productive of disaster for the Empire by forcing it to make terms with the turbulent elements within, and by preventing it from displaying a united front against the Turks and other enemies without. On the other hand, in the case of very many who honestly looked on Luther as a real reformer of the Church, it also served to infuse into them new enthusiasm for what they deemed the Christian cause.
Its effect on Luther’s character in later life was such as to make him, in his writings to the German people, rave like a maniac of the different forms of death best suited for Pope and Cardinals, viz. being hanged on the gallows with their tongues torn out, being drowned in the Tyrrhenean Sea, or “flayed alive.”[346] “How my flesh creeps and how my blood boils,” he cries, after one such outburst.[347]