156
The Great Controversy 1888
his Word than you and I and the whole world could effect by all our
efforts put together. God arrests the heart, and that once taken, all is
won.”
“I am ready to preach, argue, write; but I will not constrain any
one, for faith is but a voluntary act. Call to mind what I have already
done. I stood up against pope, indulgences, and papists; but without
violence or tumult. I brought forward God’s Word; I preached and
wrote, and then I stopped. And while I laid me down and slept, ...
the Word I had preached brought down the power of the pope to the
ground, so that never prince or emperor had dealt it such a blow. For
my part I did next to nothing; the power of the Word did the whole
business. Had I appealed to force, Germany might have been deluged
with blood. But what would have been the consequence? Ruin and
destruction of soul and body. Accordingly I kept quiet, and let the
Word run through the length and breadth of the land.”
Day after day, for a whole week, Luther continued to preach to
eager crowds. The Word of God broke the spell of fanatical excitement.
The power of the gospel brought back the misguided people into the
way of truth.
Luther had no desire to encounter the fanatics whose course had
been productive of so great evil. He knew them to be men of un-
sound judgment and undisciplined passions, who, while claiming to
be especially illuminated from Heaven, would not endure the slight-
est contradiction, or even the kindest reproof or counsel. Arrogating
to themselves supreme authority, they required every one, without
a question, to acknowledge their claims. But as they demanded an
interview with him, he consented to meet them; and so successfully
did he expose their pretensions, that the impostors at once departed
from Wittenberg.
The fanaticism was checked for a time; but several years later
it broke out with greater violence and more terrible results. Said
[191]
Luther, concerning the leaders in this movement: “To them the Holy
Scriptures were but a dead letter, and they all began to cry, ‘The Spirit!
the Spirit!’ But most assuredly I will not follow where their spirit leads
them. May God in his mercy preserve me from a church in which there
are none but such saints. I wish to be in fellowship with the humble,
the feeble, the sick, who know and feel their sins, and who sigh and