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The study of mysticism was not altogether disadvantageous to Luther, for it proved of use to him in various ways.

First, as regards his grasp of spiritual subjects and their expression in words, Tauler’s simple and heartfelt manner taught him how to clothe his thoughts in popular and attractive dress. The proof of this is to be found in his writings for the people and in several of his more carefully prepared sermons, particularly in the works and sermons of the first period when the mystical influence was still predominant. Also with regard to the common body of Christian belief, so far as he still held fast to the same, several excellent elements of Catholic mysticism stood him in good stead, notwithstanding his inward alienation. The intimate attachment of the mystics to Christ and their longing expectation of salvation through the Lord alone, sentiments which made an immense impression on his soul, notwithstanding the fact that he understood them in a one-sided and mistaken fashion, probably had their share in preserving in him to the very end his faith in the Divinity of Christ and in the salvation He wrought. They also led him to esteem the whole Bible as the Word of God, and to hold fast to various other mysteries which some of the Reformers opposed, for instance, the mysterious presence of Christ in the Sacrament, even though they did not prevent him from modifying these doctrines according to his whim. While Luther retained many of the views rooted in the faith and sentiment of earlier ages, the Rationalism of Zwingli was much more ready to throw overboard what did not appear to be sanctioned by reason; this came out especially in the controversy on the Lord’s Supper. The reason of this was that Zwingli had been trained in the school of a narrow and critical Humanism; of mysticism in any shape or form he knew nothing at all.

Among the advantages which Luther derived from mysticism we cannot, however, reckon, as some have done, his later success against the fanatics; this success was not a result of his having overcome their false mysticism by the true one. By that time he had almost completely given up his mysticism, whether true or false. He certainly met the attacks of the fanatics and Anabaptists by appealing to his own mystical experiences, but that was really a mere tactical, though none the less effective, manœuvre on his part, which, with his ready tongue and pen, he was able to put to excellent account. “Who spoke of spirits?” he says; “I also know the spirit and have had experience of the spirit; I am able, yea, am called, to reveal their delusions.” And in the eyes of many he may certainly have been considered, on account of the “mystical” terrors he had suffered, and to which he frequently referred in public, to be specially fitted to unmask the false spiritualism of his opponents. As a matter of fact, his fears and his mysticism had nothing to do with the real discerning of spirits; they never brought him light, but only darkness. The truth is that, at the time of his contest with the fanatics, he had become more sober, had a clear, practical eye for the mischief of the movement, and regarded it as the highest duty of self-preservation to stamp out the flame of revolt against his patrons and his own teaching. We shall see, however, that the fanatics were, in a certain sense, the children of Luther’s own spirit.

The real good which Luther may have derived from the study of mysticism was far more than counterbalanced by the regrettable results of his notions concerning the “pure myrrh” of passivity, and the desire for nothingness, which at one and the same time involved him in a real labyrinth, and raised his estimation of his own mission to an enormous and dangerous height. He came to fancy himself far superior not only to the Occamists, but to the whole of the secular and regular clergy, the “swarm of religious and priests,” even to all the theologians, and particularly to the Scholastics, those “sow theologians,” who knew nothing of what he was conversant with.

His mysticism had already paved the way for his later belief with regard to his own Divine call to establish the new teaching; it was supported by his views of God’s guidance of the unconscious soul; what he would formerly have regarded as a mistaken road and due to diabolical inspiration was now labelled a godly act.

True and real mysticism could not take root in him because, to start with, the necessary predisposition, concerning which the other mystics and Tauler are agreed, was wanting, viz. above all humility, calmness and that holy indifference, which allows itself to be led by God along the path of the rules of its calling without any ulterior, private aims; peaceableness, composure of mind and zeal in prayer were not his. What mysticism left behind in Luther was scarcely more than the fragrance of its words, without any real fruit. What took root and grew in him was rather the hard wood from which lances are made, ready for every combat that may arise. His mysticism itself gives the impression of being part of the battle which his antagonism to the Occamists led him to give to Scholasticism. Those who contradicted his new ideas—even his brother monks, like the Erfurt philosophers and theologians—appeared to him to be opposed on account of their Scholasticism. The most effective way of escaping or overcoming them seemed to him the replacing of the older theology by another, in which, together with Holy Scripture and St. Augustine, mysticism should occupy a chief place.

By this, however, we do not mean that the mysticism of Luther was merely a fighting weapon. From his letters we may gather that he lived in the belief that his new road would conduct him to a joyous nearness to God.

The letter is dated December 14, 1516, in which he exhorts his friend Spalatin, at the Court of the Elector, to taste in Tauler “the pure, thorough theology, which so closely resembles the old, and to see how bitter everything is that is ourselves,” in order to “discover how sweet the Lord is.”[430] He is already so mystically inclined that he will not even advise his friend in answer to a query, which little religious books he should translate into German for the use of the people; this advice lay in the counsel of God, as what was most wholesome for man was generally not appreciated; hardly was there one who sought for Christ; the world was full of wolves (these thoughts certainly seem to have remained with him in his public career); we must mistrust even our best intentions and be guided only by Christ in prayer; but the “swarm of religious and priests always follow their own good and pious notions and are thereby miserably deceived.”

His letter to George Spenlein, which is saturated with an extravagant mysticism of grace, also belongs to the same year, 1516.[431]

On December 4, 1516 (see above, p. 87), Luther finished seeing through the press the “Theologia Deutsch,” which he brought out, first in an incomplete edition, because he was under the impression that it was by Tauler. It is an echo of Tauler’s authentic works, somewhat distorted, however, by Luther’s Preface, at the end of which he declares that a thorough teaching of the Holy Scripture “must make fools,” intending thereby to contrast the insignificance of natural knowledge with Divine revelation. The booklet teaches mysticism from the Church’s standpoint, though its language is not well chosen. There is, however, no real need to interpret certain obscure passages in a pantheistic sense, as has been done. The booklet cannot therefore be taken as a proof that Luther at that time was pantheistically inclined, or that he possessed so little theological and philosophical knowledge as not to be able to distinguish between Pantheism and the teaching of the Church. Nor is there the slightest trace of specifically Lutheran doctrine in the “Theologia Deutsch.”[432]

In a sermon of February 15, 1517, based on Tauler, Luther busies himself with those priests, laymen, and in particular religious, who, so he says, wish to be thought especially pious, but who are hypocrites because, even in spiritual things, they do not overcome their self-love because they attempt, for the love of God, to accomplish much and to do great things; almost all Tauler’s sermons, he remarks, show how clearly he saw through these false self-righteous, and how energetically he opposed them.[433] As a matter of fact, Tauler, in the remarks referred to, has in his mind those who deserve, for other reasons, to be blamed on account of their perverse and proud mind, while Luther utilises such utterances in support of his own notorious dislike for good works and for zealous individual effort.[434]

In his defence of his Wittenberg Indulgence Theses against Eck’s “Obelisci” (1518), we also find a characteristic misrepresentation of Tauler. Tauler, speaking of the possible torments resulting from the deprivation of religious consolation which may be experienced on earth, instances the vision of a poor soul who, by humble resignation to God’s Will, was delivered from its trouble. Luther takes the story as referring to a soul in Purgatory, and sees therein not merely a proof that souls are resigned in the place of purgation, but that they actually rejoice in the separation from salvation which God has imposed upon them; finally, he uses the story in support of his twenty-ninth pseudo-mystical thesis, in which he says that, on account of the piety of those who have died in the peace of God, it is uncertain whether all souls in Purgatory even wish to be delivered from their torments.[435] His mystical ideas concerning abandonment to God’s good pleasure had warped his understanding.

In the above passage, and again later, he instances Paul and Moses as men who had desired to become a curse of God. If they expressed such a wish during life, he declares, a similar desire on the part of the dead is comprehensible. The common and better interpretation of the Bible passages in question regarding Moses and Paul differs very much from that of Luther.

Luther embraced the idea, which permeates Tauler’s works, of the painful annihilation of self-will and of all man’s sensual inclinations, not in order to mortify his own self-will and sensuality by obedience to the rules of his Order and humble submission to the practices of the Church, but the better to make his delusive disregard for the zealous performance of good works appear high and perfect to his own mind and in that of others.

One should be ready, so he asserts in the defence of his theses against Prierias, to renounce all hope in any merit or reward to such an extent that “if you were to see heaven open before you, you would nevertheless, as the learned Dr. Tauler, one of your own Order [Prierias was also a Dominican], says, not enter unless you had first consulted God’s Will as regards your entering, so that even in glory you may not be seeking your own will.”[436] In Tauler there is, it is true, something of the sort,[437] though it does not authorise Luther to assume the standpoint he does in his theory of resignation. Luther in his Commentary on Romans, as already stated, goes so far as to preach resignation to eternal damnation, and even to demand of us a desire to be damned should it please God to decree it for us (see below, vi. 9). All this for the ostensible purpose of excluding the slightest appearance of self-love. “But how,” a modern author asks, writing with a knowledge of the better Christian mysticism, “can there be less merit in striving after the final consummation in the next life which is offered and recommended to us by the Divine favour, and from which final salvation is inseparable? How then can the ideal state of the mystic consist in indifference to his perfection and salvation, to heaven or hell?”[438] “Indifference with regard to the attainment of the highest, uncreated, eternal, endless Good can never be postulated.”[439] But Luther thinks he can justify this and other errors with the help of Tauler and his own mysticism.

But he did not, and could not, use Tauler as a weapon against the Schoolmen. All he could do was to magnify the loss which these had suffered through not being acquainted with such a theology as Tauler’s, “the truest theology.” Tauler, as a matter of fact, was not opposed to Scholasticism, indeed, the pith of his exhortations rests upon well-grounded scholastic principles.

By the time his second and complete edition of the “Theologia Deutsch” appeared, the printing of which was finished on June 4, 1518, Luther knew with certainty that this booklet was not by Tauler. Nevertheless, in the Preface he heaps exaggerated praise upon it, gives it a place beside the Bible and St. Augustine, and declares that his own teaching, on account of which Wittenberg is being assailed, possesses in it a real bulwark: “Only now” has he discovered that, before his time, “other people” thought just the same as he. Here then we see the alliance which he has entered into with mysticism, now placed completely at the service of his rediscovered Evangel; the sympathy which had attracted him to the German mystics during the last few years here reveals its true character and is led to its overdue triumph. In a certain sense mysticism was always to remain harnessed to his chariot.

On the other hand, Luther very soon gave up pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, the mystic whose teaching had spread from the East over the whole of the West. At first, following public opinion, he had esteemed him very highly, the more so since he had taken him for a disciple of the Apostles; but, subsequently to the Disputation at Leipzig, where the Areopagite was urged against him, he shows himself very much opposed to him. According to Luther, he does not allow Christ to come to His rights, he grants too much to philosophy and is, of course, all wrong in his teaching concerning the hierarchy of the Church.[440] Luther, however, always remained true to St. Bernard, with whom he had become acquainted, together with Gerson, in his spiritual reading at the monastery. From St. Bernard, as likewise from Tauler, he borrowed many mystic ideas, yet not without at the same time forcibly misinterpreting them and ascribing to the former, ideas which are altogether foreign to his mind.[441] Gerson’s theologico-mystical introduction, which Luther cites in his glosses on Tauler, did not experience any better treatment at his hands,[442] while Bonaventure, the mystic whom he once prized, came under suspicion on account of his theological teaching, even before the Areopagite.[443]

On the other hand, he retained his esteem for Tauler till the end.

Some very remarkable references which Luther makes to Tauler’s teaching are in connection with the troubles of conscience which dogged the steps of the Wittenberg Doctor from his first public appearance. These will be mentioned later, together with the means of allaying such torments of soul, which he gives in his “Operationes in Psalmos” (1519-21), borrowing them from misunderstood passages of Tauler.

We conclude with another passage from the “Operationes” in which, following Tauler, he gives expression to that favourite idea of his, which like a star of ill-omen presided at the rise of his new theology. Psalm xi., according to him, is intended to demonstrate the “righteousness by faith” against “the supporters of holiness by works and the deceptive appearance of human righteousness.” This is a forced interpretation going far beyond his own former exposition of the Psalm in question. “To-day,” he says—with an eye on the so-called holy-by-works, or iustitiarii—“there are many such seducers, as Johann Tauler also frequently warns us.”[444] Of course, here again, what he has in mind are the well-known admonitions of Tauler, to trust in God more than in our own acts of virtue, though he takes them quite wrongly as implying the worthlessness of works for salvation. A Protestant authority here meets us at least half-way: “Tauler certainly did not hold in so accentuated a fashion as Luther the antithesis between grace and works, for he allows that ‘good works’ bring a man forward on the way of salvation.”[445]

Luther, since beginning his over-zealous and excited perusal of Tauler’s writings, presents to the calm observer the appearance of a man caught up in a dangerous whirl of overstrain. Even in the first months this whirl of a mystic world brought up from the depth of his soul all the accumulated sediment of anti-theological feeling and disgust with the state of the Church. The enthusiasm with which Luther speaks of the “Theologia Deutsch” and Tauler, shows, as a Protestant theologian has it, “that the mysticism of the late Middle Ages had intoxicated him.” “It is clear that we have here a turning-point in Luther’s theology.”[446]

Of mighty importance for the future was his unfortunate choice, perhaps due to his state of mind, just in that period of storm and stress, to deliver lectures at the University on the Epistle to the Romans. Through his Commentary on this Epistle he set a seal upon his new views directed against the Church’s doctrine concerning grace, works and justification.