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Luther describes, in an important passage of the Preface to the Latin edition of his works in 1545, how he finally arrived at his ideas of faith and the assurance of salvation.[984] It is the only occasion on which he expatiates in so detailed and vivid a manner on his own development. In the light of this passage his other assertions must be considered.

The reader is at once struck by what Luther relates of the gloom and confusion of his mind previous to the discovery in the tower. In the preface, he says: “The passage, Romans i., ‘The Justice of God is revealed in the Gospel,’ had, till then, been an obstacle to me. For I hated the words ‘justice of God,’ which according to the use and custom of all teachers I had been taught to interpret in the philosophical sense, namely, as referring to the formal and active justice by which God is just and punishes the sinners and the unjust. Although I was a blameless monk, I felt myself as a sinner before God, suffered great trouble of conscience and was unable to look with confidence on God as propitiated by my satisfaction, therefore I did not love, but on the contrary, hated, the just God Who punishes sinners; I was angry with Him with furious murmuring, and said: The unhappy sinners and those who owing to original sin are for all eternity rejected are already sufficiently oppressed by every kind of misfortune owing to the Ten Commandments, and as though this were not enough God wills [according to Rom. i.] by means of the gospel to heap pain on pain, and threatens us with His Justice and His Anger even in the gospel.”[985]

In his Table-Talk, as reported by Heydenreich, he says in the winter of 1542-43 in a quite similar way: “These words were always in my mind. Wherever the ‘Justice of God’ occurs in Scripture I was only able to understand this to mean the justice by which He Himself is just and judges according to justice.... I stood there and knocked for someone to open to me, but no one came to undo the door; I did not know what to make of it.... Before finding the solution I shuddered with horror, I hated the Psalms and the Scripture where the justice of God occurs, which I took to mean that He was just and the Judge of sinners, but not that He was our Justification and our imputed righteousness.” “The whole of Scripture stood like a wall in front of me.”[986]

“As often as I read that the Justice of God was revealed in the Gospel,” he says in his Commentary on Genesis, “I wished that God had never revealed the Gospel, for who could love an angry God Who judges and condemns?”[987]

“This word Justice,” he says in another Commentary in 1532, “cost me much sweat (‘magno sudore mihi constitit’). To interpret this as though it meant the justice according to which God damns the wicked is not merely unfounded but very dangerous; it awakens in the heart great hatred of God and His Justice; for who can love Him Who treats the sinner according to justice? Never forget that God’s justice means that justice by which we are justified; it is the gift of the remission of sins.”[988]

That in truth it “cost him much sweat” before he was able to overcome the objections suggested by the justice of God itself, is proved by other and stronger allusions of Luther to the interior storms he underwent at this crisis. We refer to other statements in which, as above, he is speaking of Bible passages containing the expression Justice of God. Thus for instance: “The words just and Justice of God were like a lightning-flash in my conscience (‘fulmen in conscientia’); when I heard them, they at once filled me with terror. I thought God is Just and therefore He punishes.”[989] “That word iustitia,” he said in September, 1538, “was a thunder-clap to my heart. When as a papist I read: ‘Deliver me in Thy Justice’ (Ps. xxx. 2), and ‘In Thy Truth,’ etc., I immediately represented to myself the avenging Justice and the fury of an angry God. In my heart I hated Paul when I read: ‘The Justice of God is revealed in the Gospel’ ... till at last in my affliction a remedy presented itself.”[990]

Here we may mention some statements, which, though they belong to his later, fictitious portrayal of his spiritual development,[991] nevertheless contain an element of truth concerning his inner life at the time when he was still a monk, and probably during those very months when he was excitedly and confusedly brooding over the assurance of salvation. In reality they merely describe in greater detail what the above passages relate of his dread of God’s Justice, though they also falsely charge all papists and all monks with being full of servile fear for the Judge, and forming a school of despair.

“We fled from Christ,” he says in one of these remarkable passages, “as from the devil; for we were taught that everyone must appear before the Judgment-seat of Christ with his works and orders.... The Gospel tells us that Christ does not come as a Judge but as a Saviour; but the monks taught the contrary, namely, that He was to be our Judge.”[992] Now, he says, elsewhere, the word of God which has been rediscovered “depicts Christ as our Justice.” But in the monastery he, like all the others, had “fallen away from the faith,” and therefore his “heart trembled and palpitated for fear lest God should not be gracious” to him. “I often shuddered at the name of Jesus and when I looked at Him on the cross, He seemed to me like a lightning-flash.”[993]

He had often, he assures us, been forced to say: “I wish there were no God,”[994] “and none of them looked upon my unbelief as a sin.”[995]

It was “simple idolatry, for I did not believe in Christ but looked on Him as a stern and terrible Judge.”[996] “I did not know how I stood towards God,” “was unable to pray aright,”[997] indeed “no one knew anything” about prayer, “for we did not pray in faith in Christ.”[998]

It was a “great martyrdom and bondage from which the gospel set us free”;[999] I was, as it were, in a privy and in the kingdom of the devil.[1000] He felt the terrors of the Divine Judgment, he assures us (possibly on account of the inward wrestling with the iustitia Dei) so that his “hair stood on end” when he thought of it. “At the monastery I shuddered when they spoke of death or the other life.”[1001]

“I was the most wretched man on earth; day and night there was nothing but howling and despair which no one was able to put an end to for me. Thus I was bathed and baptised and properly sweated in my monkery. Thanks be to God that I did not sweat myself to death, otherwise I should have long ago been in the depths of hell with my monkish baptism. For I knew Christ only as a stern Judge from Whom I wished to escape and was unable to do so.... Thus have they tortured many a worthy soul throughout life and at last thrown him in despair into the infernal abyss.”[1002]

“In this way I raged (‘Ita furebam’),” Luther continues in the Latin Preface where he speaks of his sudden discovery, “and my conscience caused me terror and confusion; I knocked imploringly at the verse of Paul (Rom. i. 17) with a burning thirst to know what it meant.” He now describes the actual inward experience.

“At last, while brooding day and night, by the mercy of God I noticed the connection between the words: the Justice of God is revealed therein [in the gospel], as it is written, ‘The just man liveth by faith.’ Then I began to understand the Justice of God as that by which the just man lives by the gift of God, viz. by faith; [I saw that] the sense is this: ‘By the gospel, justice, i.e. the passive justice of God, is revealed by which the merciful God justifies by faith, as it is written: ‘The just man liveth by faith.’ Then I felt myself born again and fancied I had passed through the gates of Paradise. The whole of Scripture thereupon appeared to me in quite a different light. I ran rapidly through the passages in question as they lived in my memory and compared them with other expressions, such as: ‘Work of God,’ i.e. the work which God carries on in us; ‘Power of God,’ by which He makes us strong; ‘Wisdom of God,’ by which He makes us wise; likewise the ‘Strength of God,’ ‘Salvation of God,’ and ‘Honour of God.’ Then I extolled that sweetest word, Justice, with as much love as I had previously hated it, and this passage of Paul’s became to me in very truth the gate of Paradise.” He adds that the reading of Augustine had strengthened him in his interpretation, and, “provided with better weapons by means of this experience, I set about the exposition of the Psalms for the second time”; this work was, however, interrupted by the Diet of Worms.

Luther, it is true, does not speak here of the monastery tower as the scene of his experience, but this is described quite plainly in his other statements given below. In these the privy situated above the “Hypocaustum” is mentioned as the place where the discovery took place. They at the same time complete and confirm the account given in the Preface of the antecedents of this new enlightenment, i.e. the immediately preceding terrors of God’s avenging justice, the time it happened, viz. when Luther was engaged on the Psalms, and finally, the subject-matter of the experience.

The accounts from Luther’s own lips must here be considered collectively.

Not only do they correspond exactly with Luther’s condition of mind, as described above, but also, according to the chronological account already given of the development of his teaching, with the time he recommenced his work on the Psalms, 1518-19, which period Luther expressly mentions in the Preface as the date of the incident.[1003] It is not necessary, indeed, when we consider the above description of the course of his development, not possible, to assign an earlier date to the incident, though some have recently pushed it back to a time prior to his first exposition on the Psalms. Others, on account of some minor inexactitudes which occur in the principal account given in 1545 (see below, p. 399), hold it to be a fanciful invention of Luther in his old age in which he was merely summing up the result of a long inward process. If every circumstance be calmly weighed the historian must however, in the main, support Luther’s account; he is not free to sacrifice the valuable source of knowledge, of such vast importance in arriving at an estimate of Luther’s personality, presented by these testimonies.

In what follows Luther’s other testimonies to the same effect as that contained in the Preface, will be duly brought forward and their peculiarities noted.

The first testimony is to be found in Johann Schlaginhaufen’s notes and speaks of the fears which the thought of God’s avenging justice habitually caused Luther and from which the discovery delivered him.[1004] This pupil of Luther’s relates, in an abbreviated Latin form, the following communication which he received from Luther between June and September, 1532, i.e. thirteen years before the Preface: “The words just and Justice were like a flash of lightning in my conscience. When I heard them I was filled with terror [and thought]: Is He just? Then He will punish; ‘The just man liveth by faith,’ ‘the Justice of God is made manifest without the law’ (cp. Rom. iii. 21); our life therefore comes of faith; God’s Justice must be the salvation of everyone who believes. Then my conscience at once comforted itself: Surely it is the Justice of God which justifies us and saves us; and this word (iustitia) became more pleasing to me.” “This art,” Schlaginhaufen proceeds in Luther’s own German, “the Spiritus sanctus infused into me in this Cl.” (see p. 396).

The fear of the Divine Justice also appears in the foreground in the account of the incident in Luther’s Table-Talk in September, 1540, as preserved by Johann Mathesius.[1005] “At the outset when I read and sang in the Psalm [every evening at Compline] the words: ‘In iustitia tua libera me,’ I was afraid and hated the words: ‘iustitia Dei,’ ‘iudicium Dei,’ ‘opus Dei.’ For I thought nothing less than that ‘iustitia Dei’ meant His strict Judgment. And if He was to save me according to His strict Judgment I should be lost for ever. But ‘misericordiam Dei,’ ‘adiutorium Dei,’ those words pleased me better.” But it was only after the light of a true understanding of God’s Justice had risen upon me that “I began to relish the Psalter.”

The notes on Luther’s Table-Talk made by his friend Master Caspar Heydenreich, dating from the winter 1542-43, and edited by Kroker in 1903 from the collection of Mathesius, must also be considered.[1006]

Mathesius records them under the descriptive title: “Evangelii occasio renascentis per Doctorem.” He plainly thought, agreeably with Luther’s own opinion and that of his pupils, that the enlightenment he had received on the text “The just man liveth by faith” was the most important, or at least one of the most important causes of “the new birth of the Gospel through the Doctor”—Luther. And, as a matter of fact, Luther’s conviction, which was shared by his pupils, that this saving interpretation had been infused by the Holy Spirit, sufficiently explains why so much stress should be laid on this incident, and also why the recipient of the said illumination so frequently recurs to it.

Under the above title we find Heydenreich’s lengthy account, taken from Luther’s own lips, which agrees entirely with the statements of the Preface and, in particular, dwells on Luther’s ecstasy of joy at the discovery (“Cum hoc invenissem, ita delectabar, in tanta lætitia, ut nihil supra”).

In several of the accounts the Psalms are represented as the primary cause of the struggles that went on in Luther’s soul, and the correct comprehension of them as one of the first fruits of his new discernment. Then “I first relished the Psalter,” Luther says in Mathesius’s account, and in Heydenreich’s notes he declares: “Whereas I formerly hated the Psalms and the Scripture where mention was made of the Justice of God, the way was now clear to me when I read in the Psalms: ‘Deliver me in Thy Justice’ and ‘Deliver me in Thy mercy,’” for God’s mercy, by which He justifies us with His grace, had, from that time onward, come to mean the same to him as “the righteousness of God.”

In Anton Lauterbach’s Diary of 1538 two passages from the Psalms are likewise quoted as the cause of Luther’s trouble of conscience,[1007] and in the Halle MS. of the “Colloquia” which Bindseil edited, and which is based on Lauterbach’s collection, a similar uneasiness is said to have been induced by the Psalms in priests generally: “When, in Popery, we read the verses [in question] we immediately thought of the avenging Justice ... but when I took into consideration what follows ... I became joyful,” the right interpretation of the passage concerning the just man who lives by faith “supplied a remedy for all who were afflicted” (“afflictis remedium contigit”).[1008]

Another passage in the Psalms which caused him trouble is quoted by Luther when referring to the event in his Commentary on Psalm l. (li.), which he wrote in 1532: “Exsultabit lingua mea iustitiam tuam” (verse 16); as the biblical view of Justice had been obscured in his mind and in that of all, he had been unable to understand how it was possible to praise the avenging Justice in the Psalms.[1009]

Thus, there is no doubt that the Psalms were the actual occasion of his discovery and his statement in the Preface of 1545 with regard to the time it occurred is thereby confirmed.[1010]

Luther’s pupil, Conrad Cordatus, in recording the matter in his diary is quite right in emphasising, in Luther’s own words, that the knowledge gained by the incident was: “Ergo ex fide est iustitia et ex iustitia vita”;[1011] this is also done in the German Table-Talk, where we find a rather more detailed description of the inference drawn by Luther: “Then I became of another mind and from that moment thought: We are to live as justified by faith, and the Justice of God, which is His attribute, shall save all who believe; these verses will no longer affright the poor sinners and those who are troubled in conscience, but on the contrary comfort them.”[1012]

In the reference made to the event in the Commentary on Genesis (1540), the fact that the just man lives by faith is also placed in the foreground, and in this case we may safely rely on the Commentary though it was not printed till after Luther’s death.[1013] Here we read that it was the knowledge he had acquired “under the enlightenment of the Holy Ghost” that “our life comes from faith” that had “opened out the whole of Scripture to him, and heaven itself.” This, according to the passage in question, was the result of the “anxious work,” which at the outset he had devoted to the comprehension of Romans i. 17. By the use of such an expression as “at the outset,” “primum,” the opening word of the whole passage which speaks of his development, he would appear to imply that it was then that the foundation was laid of the great evangelical truth concerning faith. This agrees with the title Mathesius bestows on his notes: “Occasion of the re-birth of the gospel by means of the Doctor.” In the passage in question in the Commentary on Genesis the consoling faith which he had been commissioned to teach is contrasted with the “unbelief” prevalent in Popery, which has lost all experience of this security. “They did not know that unbelief was a sin ... and yet conscience cannot find any real comfort in works. Let us therefore enjoy the blessing of God which is now imparted to us.”

Luther’s utterances so far have referred more to the inward occasion, to the time and the subject-matter of the experience from which the dogma of absolute assurance of salvation took its rise. The statements which follow, on the other hand, refer more to the place where the incident occurred, but they at the same time emphasise more particularly an element which was incidentally connected with it, namely, the inspiration by the Spirit of God.

In Lauterbach’s “Colloquia” (ed. by Bindseil) the account commences with the words: “By the grace of God while thinking on one occasion on this tower [he seems to be pointing with his finger to the very spot] and hypocaustum, over those words: Iustus ex fide vivit ... the Holy Ghost revealed the Scripture to me in this tower.”[1014] In Cordatus’s diary both circumstances are mentioned: “On one occasion on this tower (where the privy of the monks was situated) when I was speculating on the words, etc., the Holy Ghost imparted to me this knowledge on this tower,” i.e. to understand that “Justice comes of faith and life proceeds from Justice.”[1015] The editor, H. Wrampelmeyer, points out the fact that the mention of the “privy” is omitted in the later Table-Talk. In the German Table-Talk the inspiration is mentioned instead: “This knowledge was given to me by the Holy Ghost alone.”[1016] Rebenstock, in his valuable Latin Table-Talk, gives both together: “in hac turri vel hypocausto,” and later: “Hæc verba per Spiritum sanctum mihi revelata sunt.”[1017] The Lutheran pastor Caspar Khummer, who, in 1554, made a collection of Table-Talk, relates both circumstances (in Lauterbach’s edition): “Cum semel in hac turri speculabar,” and further on: “With this knowledge the Holy Ghost inspired me in this cloaca on the tower.”[1018]

The mention of the cloaca explains the entry of Johann Schlaginhaufen in his notes of Luther’s own words in 1532: “This art the Spiritus sanctus infused into me in this Cl.”[1019] Cloaca is abbreviated into Cl., probably because Schlaginhaufen’s copyist, was reluctant to write it out in full alongside of the account of the inspiration which Luther had received from the Holy Ghost; the editor suggests we should read “Capitel”; but the chapter-house is not to be thought of. Strange indeed are the interpretations which have been given, even in recent times, by the unlearned to many of the expressions in our texts. The “locus secretus” was supposed to be “a special place allotted to the monks in the tower,” whereas it is clear that the “secret chamber” was simply the closet or privy, a word which occurs often enough in Luther’s later abuse of the Papists. In olden times it was very usual to establish this adjunct on the city wall and its towers, the sewage having egress outside the town boundaries. The buildings on the city wall, of which we hear in connection with Luther’s monastery, were simply this and nothing more.[1020] It has been said that by the word “tower” was meant a spiritual prison, namely, Popery, in which Luther languished until his enlightenment. In the hypocaustum was seen the spiritual sweat-bath in which the Monk was immersed till the time of his liberation by the new doctrine. As a matter of fact the allusion is to a heating apparatus, or warmed space, either below or in front of the privy, some such arrangement being common in monasteries. In his cell Luther had no stove.

We know from Luther’s letters that there was a question in 1519 of allotting some other place outside the walls to the previously existing privy, or of rebuilding it. In the name of the community, Luther, in the middle of May, 1519, requested the Elector for permission to erect a “necessary building outside the walls on the moat,” because the “gentlemen of the Wittenberg Council” delayed giving their sanction.[1021] The result of the request is unknown; as, however, Cordatus, in the passage referring to the tower, makes use of the words: “in which the monks’ privy was,” it would seem at the time he wrote to have been no longer in the tower. The tower, however, remained, otherwise Luther would not have said, as he did, that the event took place on (or in) this tower. An historian of Luther’s Augustinian priory stated in 1883, that, on the eastern side of the monastery, where the localities in question were probably situated, broken drain-pipes were to be seen up to the middle of last (the eighteenth) century.[1022]

We must, therefore, represent the scene of the discovery as the secret chamber, which Luther expressly mentions, situated in a tower on the walls, probably on the eastern flank of the monastery. Constructed against the outer side of the tower, it probably projected over the moat, and, below, or in front of it, was the so-called hypocaustum.

As regards the revelation mentioned in the above passages, it is certain that Luther always traced back the knowledge so acquired to a special revelation, though not indeed to anything like a vision. Those verses on faith composed his “evangel,” and he always declared with regard to this “evangel” that his discovery, made at the cost of so much labour, had been accompanied by a “revelation of the Holy Ghost.”[1023]

He speaks, for instance, of the time when he began to advocate his favourite doctrine as being the time of the “revelation of the evangel.”[1024] In answer to the fanatics who disputed his right to the first place in the new teaching, he defends himself by saying that it was he who “not without the revelation of the Holy Ghost had again brought forward the gospel.” The words contained in his letter to the Elector on his return from the Wartburg express a consciousness of a higher illumination, where he declares that he had received the “evangel, not from men, but solely from heaven through our Lord Jesus Christ.”[1025]

“Such self-reliance almost fills us with anxiety,” says Adolf Harnack, of the latter and other writings. “... We seek in vain in the whole history of the Church for examples of men who could write such letters as that to the Elector, and the writings which Luther composed on the Wartburg. I can quite understand how Catholic critics see in these letters a ‘delirious pride.’ There is no choice except to judge Luther thus or to recognise that his place was an entirely peculiar one in the history of the Christian religion.”[1026] Harnack goes on to quote another extremely self-confident passage from Luther: “It pleased God well to reveal His Son through me,” and then expresses his own opinion on the subject: “Luther’s merit consisted in the circumstance that he was able to express what he had experienced, namely, the equation of the assurance of salvation, and faith”;[1027] his self-reliance, Harnack adds, was the “true expression of a religious freedom such as Clement of Alexandria had painted as the disposition of a true Christian, and such as the mystics of all ages had in their way sought to attain to.”[1028]

Luther’s claim to special illumination must, as hinted before, be restricted to the domain of the aforesaid doctrine of assurance of salvation; the whole of his doctrine did not come to him from God, or at least only by way of the inspiration of the Spirit, which, according to his own statements to be afterwards considered, is common to all well-disposed Christians who make use of Holy Scripture. Döllinger, also, says: This doctrine was the “only one which he really believed he had received by a special revelation of the Holy Ghost.”[1029]

Here again we perceive the fundamental importance attaching to the assurance of salvation as the corner-stone of his development. Unconsciously he had been driven forward to this extremity. Protestants quite rightly have often pointed out that the decisive question for him was: “How can I, a mere single individual, be assured of the forgiveness of sins and thereby of the mercy of God?” “He ventured,” so it has been said, “to throw overboard all doubts as to the doctrine of assurance of salvation and to declare frankly and freely: it is impossible to trust God without being fully assured of redemption and salvation.” “One thing only was still wanting (in his Commentary on Romans), namely, the clear perception of the fact, that the believer not only may be certain of his redemption, but that he must be so.” The mystics helped him finally to arrive at the “joyous sense of trust in God” after he had been through “the hell of a troubled conscience”; thus he was set “free from the last scruples and doubts, and reached the consciousness that he might, nay, must, rest assured of his God.”[1030]

The fact cannot be concealed, that in the above passages concerning the discovery on the tower, which for the most part date from a later period of Luther’s life, there is some obscurity and confusion as to the subject. He says first: the Justice of God, by which God (Christ) is Just, is taught in the New Law and is also indicated in the Psalms, and this Justice of God is reckoned to us as our Justice. Secondly, we lay hold upon it only by faith, and thus our life comes from faith (fiducial faith with assurance of salvation), of which fact we must be joyfully confident. Thirdly: The difficulty caused by the idea of God’s avenging Justice, which weighs down the soul, must therefore be fought against with determination. Of the first of these three elements Luther had made personal experience long before this time; its earliest expression is at the commencement of the Commentary on Romans, also in the well-known letter to Spenlein of April 7, 1516. He had therefore no right to speak of it as forming the subject of his newly acquired knowledge. The second element on the other hand was really new, and gave him the answer to the anxious question: How is the imputed Justice of God to become mine? Not by self-annihilation, not by humilitas, not by yearning prayer and other works which hitherto he had proposed as the means, but by faith only which had assured him of “regeneration,” of heavenly revelations, etc. Concerning the third element no more need be said here, however greedily he may have seized the semblance of comfort which the discovery afforded him, passing from the storms of his crisis into what he took to be a safe haven of peace.

The illusory talisman of absolute assurance of salvation was the result of the second stage of his development.