The later occasions on which this peculiar mystic idea asserted itself most strongly and vividly were during the exciting events of the Peasant War of 1525; in 1528, at the time his Evangel was in danger from the Empire, while he was tormented within; his sojourn in the fortress of Coburg during the much-dreaded Diet of Augsburg, in 1530, when he again endured profound mental agony; the period of the Schmalkald negotiations, in 1537, when the Council of Trent had already been summoned, while Luther was suffering much from disease; finally, in the last years of his life, accompanied as they were by recurring friction with the various Courts and hostile parties, when a growing bitterness dominated his spirit.
In this last period of his career the sense of his Divine mission revived in full force, never again to quit him. His statements concerning his mission now bear a more pessimistic stamp, but he nevertheless holds fast to it and allows nothing to disconcert him by any suspicion of a mistake on his part, nor does he betray any trace of his earlier doubts and misgivings.
“We know that it is God’s cause,” he says in 1541 to the Electoral Chancellor Brück: “God has commenced it and carried it through, and He too will finish it! Whoever does not wish to follow us, let him fall to the rear, with the Emperor and the Turk; all the devils shall gain nothing here, let what God wills befall us.”[329]
“It annoys me that they should esteem these things [of the Evangel] as though they were secular, Imperial, Turkish or princely matters to be decided and controlled, bestowed and accepted by reason alone. It is a matter which God and the devil with their respective angels must arrange. Whoever does not believe this will do no good in the business.”[330]
When the negotiations at Ratisbon seemed to be exposing the timorous Melanchthon to the “snares of Satan,” Luther in his wonted presumptuous fashion wrote to him: “Our cause is not to be controlled by our own action, but only by God’s Providence. The Word progresses, prayer is ardent, hope endures, faith conquers, so that verily we cannot but see it, and might even sleep calmly and feast were we not so carnal; for the words of Moses are also addressed to us: ‘The Lord will fight for you and you shall hold your peace’ (cp. Exod. xiv. 14). It is certain that the Lord is fighting, that He is slowly and gradually descending from His Throne to the [Last] Judgment which we so anxiously look for. The signs announcing the approaching Judgment are all too numerous.... Hence put away all fear. Be strong and glad and untroubled, for the Lord is near. Let them undertake what they please, the Henrys [he is thinking of Henry of Brunswick, an opponent], the bishops, and likewise the Turks and Satan himself. We are children of the kingdom, and we await and honour Him as our Saviour Whom these Henrys spit upon and crucify anew.”[331]