In 1520 he wrote to Spalatin: “God grant that I may meet with Dr. Martinus Luther, for then I will make a careful sketch of him and engrave it in copper, so that the memory of the Christian man may long be preserved, for he has helped me out of much anxiety.” He believed that light had been brought to him by means of Luther’s spiritual teaching, and a little further on he calls him “a man enlightened by the Holy Ghost and one who has the Spirit of God”; these words, which came from the depths of his soul, are an echo of Luther’s writings. Altogether prepossessed in Luther’s favour, though he never formally abandoned the Church, he wrote in his Diary, on May 17, 1521; “The Papacy resists the liberty of Christ by its great burden of human commandments, and in shameful fashion sucks our blood and robs us of our sweat for the benefit of idle and immoral folk, while those who are sick are parched with thirst and left to die of hunger.”
Being at that time somewhat anxious with regard to his material position, he had gone to Holland, and had heard of Luther’s supposed capture and disappearance after the Diet of Worms. In the same Memorandum, therefore, he summons Erasmus to undertake a reform of the Church: “O Erasmus Roderdamus, why hangest thou back? Listen, O Christian knight, ride forth by the side of the Lord Christ and defend the cause of truth.... Then the gates of Hell, the Roman See, shall, as Christ says, not prevail against thee ... for God is on the side of the holy Christian Churches.” And he adds in Apocalyptic tone: “Await the completing of the number of those who have been slain innocently, and then I will judge.”[104] Yet even on this journey through the Netherlands, Dürer showed interest in the manifestations of Catholic life, attended the Catholic services, and, with his wife, duly made his Easter Confession.
Two thoughts, the oppression of the Faithful by man-made commandments and the unjust extortion of their money, held him under the spell of Luther’s writings with their promise of deliverance.
“O God, if Luther is dead who will in future expound the Holy Gospel to us so clearly? What would he not have written for us in ten or twenty years!” “Never,” he says, “has anyone written more clearly during the last 140 years [i.e. since the death of Wiclif in 1381], never has God given to anyone so evangelical a spirit.” So transparent is his teaching, that “everyone who reads Dr. Martin Luther’s books sees that it is the Gospel which he upholds. Hence they must be held sacred and not be burnt.”[105]