MEANWHILE Luther, at Coburg, was putting on the whole armour of God; he was constantly singing the praises of the Lord and reading His Word, full of courage, hope, and joy. Not a day passed by in which he did not spend at least three hours in prayer. He addressed God as his Father; so we are informed by his servant. One day he was heard praying in his closet in these words: “I know that Thou art our merciful God and Father; wherefore I am certain that Thou wilt destroy the persecutors of thy children. If thou dost not, the danger concerns thee as well as us. The whole matter is in thy hands; we have done our
duty; wherefore, O holy Father, thou wilt protect us.” The wise, gentle, and timid Melancthon, at Augsburg, did not feel the same confidence that Luther felt; he was full of fear and anguish. His friend Camerarius frequently saw him shed bitter tears. Luther full of assurance, endeavoured to inspire his friends at Augsburg with the same courage. He wrote to Jonas from his desert (for thus he dated his letters written from Coburg): “It is philosophy, and nothing else, that troubles Philip; for our cause is in the hands of One who can say with truth, ‘No man shall pluck them out of my hand.’ I do not wish that it were in our hands. I have had many affairs in my own hands, and none of them have been successful; but all those which I entrusted to Him have succeeded perfectly; for it is true that the Lord is our Refuge and our Strength. Whom has He ever forsaken that trusted in Him? as it is written, ‘Thou, Lord, hast not forsaken them that seek Thee.’ Let us, then, bid defiance to our adversaries, and let us be bold in the Lord Jesus; for, ‘because He liveth, we shall live also,’ even in death; and He will preserve the wife and the children of the man who shall have confessed His name at the cost of his life. Since He reigns, ‘we shall also reign with Him’; even now already we reign with Him! Oh! if my presence was required at Augsburg, how soon, by the grace of Christ, would I be there! God be with you.”
He afterwards wrote to Melancthon: “Grace be unto you, and peace in Christ. In Christ, I say, and not in the world. Amen. Why art thou constantly troubled? If our cause be not just, let us abandon it; but if it be just, why should we make God a liar when He tells us to be of good cheer!” ‘Cast thy burden upon the Lord,’ he says. And again: ‘The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart.’ You are concerned about the issue of this matter, because you cannot conceive what it will be. But I tell you that if I could guess that issue, I would not meddle with it, and still less would I be willing to have undertaken the affair. God has put our cause in a place which you will not find by means of your rhetoric or your philosophy. That place is called Faith; and there are all those things which we can neither see nor understand. The man who endeavours, as you are doing, to see and understand these things, is rewarded by tears and anguish of heart.
If Christ be not with us, where in the universe shall we find Him? If we are not the church, where is the church? Is it the Duke of Bavaria, or Rome, or
the Turk and his fellows, if we have not the Word of God, who has it? And if God be for us, who can be against us? If we fall, Christ falls with us, and Christ is the Lord of the earth. Christ has said, ‘Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world;’ and I know that this is true. And why then should we fear the world when it is overcome as though it were the conqueror? O precious Word! many would go on their knees to Rome and Jerusalem to get it; and we, because we have it, and can at all times make use of it, esteem it lightly. This is wrong. I know that it proceeds from the weakness of our faith. Let us then pray with the apostles, ‘Lord increase our faith.’ ‘Though a host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear.’ ‘No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper, said the Lord.’—J. H. MERLE D’AUBIGNE, D.D.