But we can hardly doubt that the profound agony of this depression, this Anfechtungen, would have driven him in fits and starts at first and then in a kind of wild, single-minded quest to find the problem and slay it. That much he believed was possible. His faith made it possible. And if we wonder in the future chapters of his life and this book what it was that made Luther more than anyone else persist and persist where others had failed, it is this despair that must be our answer. He had no patience for theological bromides and had no fear of being burned at the stake. That would have been
...more
