Martin Luther: Catholic Dissident
by Peter Stanford, Hodder, £20
On page 90 of Peter Stanford’s compelling new book we find Martin Luther in a gloomy mood. “What hell may be in that last day, I am not altogether sure,” Luther admits.
“I do not believe it is a special place where damned souls now exist like the place painters depict … Everyone carries his hell within him, wherever he is, as long as he feels and fears the last necessity of death and God’s wrath.” As Stanford comments, Luther is “making hell sound less like a place than an inner torment”, and Luther assuredly knew all about the pangs of depression and anxiety.
