I. To Jonas von Stockhausen, Captain at Nordhausen.
November 27, 1532.
To the strict and firm, Jonas von Stockhausen, captain at Nordhausen, my favorable lord and good friend, peace and grace in Christo.
1 Strict, firm, dear Lord and friend! I have been told by good friends how the evil enemy is attacking you hard with weariness of life and lust for death. O my dear friend, here it is high time that you should
Do not trust our thoughts or follow them, but listen to other people who are free from such temptation; yes, bind your ears firmly to our mouth and let our word enter your heart, and God will comfort and strengthen you through our word.
First, you know that one should and must be obedient to God and diligently guard against disobedience to His will. Because you
For if you are certain and must grasp that God gives you life, then your thoughts should give way to such divine will and you should willingly be obedient to it and have no doubt that such thoughts, as disobedient to the will of God, have certainly been forcibly shot and penetrated into your heart by the devil. Therefore, you must stand firm against them and again suffer or uproot them by force.
3 Our Lord Christ's life was also sour and bitter, yet he would not die without his Father's will, and fled death, and kept life where he could, saying, My hour is not yet come. And Elijah, Jonah, and other prophets cried out and cried for death because of great sorrow and impatience of life, and cursed their birth, day, and life; yet they had to live and bear such affliction with all their might and powerlessness until their hour came.
4 You must truly follow these words and examples, as the words and admonitions of the Holy Spirit, and spit out and cast out the thoughts that drive you away; and even if it is hard and difficult for you, let it seem to you as if you were bound and imprisoned with chains, from which you must work and choke yourself so that the sweat breaks out. For the devil's arrows, when they are so deep, cannot be pulled out with laughter without work, but with strength they must be torn out.
(5) Therefore, you must take heart and defiance against yourselves and speak to yourselves with anger: No, journeyman, however unwillingly you live, you shall live and must live to me; for so will my God, so will I have it. Lift yourselves, you devil thoughts, into the abyss of hell with dying and death, here you have nothing to do! And only grit your teeth against the thoughts and in God's will put on such a hard head and made yourself more stiff-necked and stubborn than no evil peasant or woman, yes, harder than no anvil or iron is.
6. will you attack and oppose each other like this?
If you fight yourselves, God will certainly help you. But if you do not resist or resist, but let the thoughts plague you freely with all leisure, you will soon lose.
7 But the very best of all advice is, if you don't want to fight with them everywhere, but could despise them, and act as if you don't feel them and always think something different, and thus speak to them: Well, devil, leave me unheeded, I cannot wait for your thoughts now, I must ride, drive, eat, drink, do this or that; item: I want to be happy now, come back tomorrow etc.; and what else you could do, play and the like, so that you only despise such thoughts freely and well and dismiss them from you, even with rude, impolite words, as: dear devil, if you do not come closer to me, then lick me etc., I cannot wait for you now.
8. let the example of the lice-picker and the goose-whistling and the like in Gerson,*) de cogitationibus blasphemiae (of blasphemous thoughts) be read to you; this is the best counsel, for which the prayer of all our devout Christians must and shall help you. Hereby I command you to our dear Lord, the only Savior and right victor JESUS CHRIST, who may keep his victory and triumph in your heart against the devil and make us all happy by his help and miracles in you, which we comfortingly hope and ask, as he has commanded and promised us, Amen. At Wittenberg, Wednesday after Catharine.
*Joh. Charlier, called Gerson from his birthplace (in Champagne), was chancellor of the church and university in Paris and received the honorary title "most Christian teacher" because of his piety. At the Constance Council he was entrusted with the drafting of the resolutions and definitions. He gave speeches there and also wrote many treatises against papal authority and then had to teach the catechism to small children in Lyon, where he also died in 1429 in great poverty. The writing cited here is taken from his tract: de consolatione (of consolation). D. Red.
II. to the previous von Stockhausen's housewife.
November 27, 1532.
To the honorable and virtuous Mrs. N. von Stockhausen, Captain of Nordhausen, my favorable, good friend, grace and peace in Christ.
Honorable, virtuous woman! I have written a letter of comfort to your dear squire in haste. Now, the devil is an enemy to both of you, because you love Christ, his enemy. You must repay him, as he himself says: "Because I have chosen you, therefore the world hates you," and their prince: "But be of good cheer. "Suffering of His saints is delicious in the sight of God." But now, in my haste, I can write little. Take care, however, that you do not leave the man alone for a moment, nor anything with him, so that he may harm him. Loneliness is vain poison for him, that's why the devil drives him there. But if you write before him many histories, new
It does not hurt to read or read newspapers and strange things, whether it is sometimes lazy or false theiding (gossip, talk) and fairy tales of Turks, Tartars and the like, whether he could be aroused to laugh and joke with it; and then quickly out of it with comforting sayings of the Scriptures. Whatever you do, do not let it be lonely or quiet around him, so that he does not sink into thought. Do not harm him, even if he becomes angry. Pretend that you are sorry, and therefore reproach him etc. But always order it the more. Let such things be taken care of in haste. Christ, who is the cause of your heartache, will help you, as he himself helped you the other day. Just hold on, you are the apple of his eye, whoever touches it, touches it himself. Amen. At Wittenberg, Wednesday after St. Catherine's, 1532, Doctor Martinus Luther.