Most shameless have been the charges of lewdness and immorality against Luther.  His relation to Frau Cotta has been represented as impure.  Think of it, a boy of sixteen to eighteen thus related to an honorable housewife!  Illegitimate children have been foisted upon him.  A humorous remark about his intention to marry and being unable to choose between several eligible parties has been twisted into an immoral meaning.  The fact that he gave shelter overnight to a number of escaped nuns, when he was already a married man, has been meaningly referred to.  Boehmer has exhaustively gone into these charges, examining without flinching every asserted fact cited in evidence of Luther’s moral corruptness, and has shown the purity of Luther as being above reproach.  Not one of the sexual vagaries imputed to Luther rests on a basis of fact. (Boehmer, Luther in Light of Recent Research, pp. 215-223.)

When the modern reader meets with a general charge of badness, or even with the assertion of some specific form of badness, in Luther, he should inquire at once to what particular incident in Luther’s life reference is made.  These charges have all been examined and the evidence sifted, and that by impartial investigators.  Protestants have taken the lead in this work and have not glossed anything over.  Boehmer’s able treatise has been translated into English.  Walther’s Fuer Luther wider Rom will, no doubt, be given the public in an English edition soon.  Works like these have long blasted the claim of Catholics that Protestants are afraid to have the truth told about Luther.  They only demand that the truth be told.

4.  Luther’s Task.

One blemish in the character of Luther that is often cited with condemnation even by Protestants deserves to be examined separately.  It is Luther’s violence in controversy, his coarse language, his angry moods.  All will agree that violence and coarse speech must not be countenanced in Christians, least of all in teachers of Christianity.  In the writings of Luther there occur terms, phrases, passages that sound repulsive.  The strongest admirer of Luther will have moments when he wishes certain things could have been said differently.  Luther’s language cannot be repeated in our times.  Some who have tried to do that in all sincerity have found to their dismay that they were wholly misunderstood.  What Jove may do any ox may not do, says an old Latin proverb.

Shall we, then, admit Luther’s fault and proceed to apologize for him and find plausible reasons for extenuating his indiscretions in speech and his temperamental faults?  We shall do neither.  We shall let this “foul-mouthed,” coarse Luther stand before the bar of public opinion just as he is.  His way cannot be our way, but ultimately none of us will be his final judges.  The character of the duties which Luther was sent to perform must be his justification.