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The views formerly current with regard to the origin of Luther’s struggle against the old Church were due to an insufficient knowledge of history, and might be ignored were it not that their after effects still remain in literature.

It will be sufficient to mention three of these views. It was said that the Church’s teaching on Indulgences, and the practices of the Quæstors or Indulgence-preachers, first brought Luther into antagonism with the Church authorities and then gradually entangled him more and more in the great struggle regarding other erroneous teachings and usages. As a matter of fact, the question of Indulgences was raised only subsequent to Luther’s first great departures from the Church’s doctrine.

Then it was said that the far-seeing teacher of Wittenberg had from the very first directed his attention to the reformation of the whole Church, which he found sunk in abuses, and had therefore commenced with a doctrinal reform as a necessary preliminary. As though Luther—this is what this childish view presupposes—had before him from the beginning the plan of his whole momentous work, or sat down to draw up a general programme for the reformation of doctrine, commencing with the fall of Adam. We are to believe that the Monk at once severed all connecting ties with the whole of the past, in faith as well as in the practical conception of the Church’s life; that he went through no previous long inward process, attended for him by a weary conflict of soul; that, in fact, such a world-stirring revolution had been dependent on the will of one man, and was not the result of the simultaneous action of many factors which had, at the outset, been ignored and not taken into consideration. The whole struggle for the “betterment of the Church” was a gradual development, and the co-operating elements led their originator, both in his teaching and his practical changes, far beyond what he had originally aimed at. When Luther, brooding over original sin, grace and justification, first began to set up his new ideas against the so-called self-righteous and “little Saints” of his immediate surroundings, he did, it is true, now and again speak excitedly of the reforms necessary to meet certain phases of the great decline in the public life of the Church; but the Doctor of Holy Scripture was, as a matter of fact, far more preoccupied with the question of the theology of Paul and Augustine than with the abuses in the Church and outer world, which were, to tell the truth, very remote from the Monk’s cell and lecture-room.

The third view is also incorrect which has it that it was rivalry between two Orders, viz. dissatisfaction and envy on the part of the Augustinians against the Dominicans, which set the Monk on his career. The Augustinians, it was said,[245] were annoyed with the rival Order because the preaching of the Indulgence had been entrusted to its members and not rather to so capable a man as Luther. Notwithstanding the early date at which this charge was made, even by Luther’s own contemporaries, the fact remains, that not only were there Augustinian Indulgence-preachers, as, for instance, Johann Paltz, but that Luther’s erroneous teaching had already made its appearance before he had as yet commenced his struggle with Tetzel, and before he had even thought of the Dominicans Prierias and Cardinal Cajetan. Jealousy against his adversaries, the Dominicans, afterwards added fuel to the flame, but it was not the starting-point.

Moreover, in treating here of Luther’s starting-point, we are not seeking to determine, as was the case with the three views mentioned above, the origin and points of contact of the whole movement comprised under the name of the Reformation, but only of the first rise of Luther’s new opinions on doctrine. These originated quite apart from any attempt at external reform of the Church, and were equally remote from the idea of breaking away from the Pope or of proclaiming freedom of belief or unbelief, though many have fancied that these were Luther’s first aims.

Points of contact have been sought for not only in Humanism and its criticism of Church doctrine, but more particularly in the teaching and tenets of Hus, Luther’s starting-point being traced back to his deep study of the writings of John Hus, which had ultimately led him to revive his errors; most of Luther’s theses, so we are told, were merely a revival of Hus’s teaching. This view calls for a closer examination than the others.

A priori we might easily fancy that he had been led to his teaching on the Church by means of the writings of Wiclif and Hus, for here we do find a great similarity. But it is precisely this teaching on the Church which is not to be found amongst his earlier errors; he reached his views on this subject only as a result of the conflict he had to wage, and, moreover, even then he brought them forward under varying aspects. Erasmus, it is true, thought it fair to say, not merely of his teaching on the Church, but of his teaching in general, that if “what he has in common with Wiclif and Hus be removed, there would not be much left.”[246] Erasmus does not analyse Luther’s assertions, otherwise he would certainly have experienced some difficulty in bringing out in detail his supposed dependence. We do not, however, deny that there may be some connection on certain points.

Luther himself is absolutely silent as regards having arrived at his ideas through Wiclif and Hus. He evidently considers himself quite independent. In his earlier years he even speaks very strongly against the Bohemian heretics and the Picards, as he frequently calls the Husites. In his Commentary on the Psalms he regards them simply as heretics,[247] and in his lectures on the Epistle to the Romans he once instances the “hæresis Pighardorum” as an example of the wilful destruction of what is holy.[248] Later, however, at and after his public apostasy, and even shortly after the Leipzig Disputation, he defends some of Hus’s doctrines, and the result of his perusal of Hus’s work, “De ecclesia,” was to make him more audacious in upholding the views it contains.[249] This quite explains the great sympathy with which he afterwards speaks of Hus and his writings in general, and the passionate way in which he blames the Catholic Church for having condemned him. He says in 1520: “In many parts of the German land there still survives the memory of John Hus, and, as it did not fade, I also took it up, and discovered that he was a worthy, highly enlightened man.... See, all ye Papists and Romanists,” he cries, “whether you are able to undo one page of John Hus with all your writings.”[250] That book of Hus’s sermons which he found as a young student of theology in the monastery library at Erfurt (p. 25), he declares that he laid aside because it was by an arch-heretic, though he had found much good in it, and had been horrified that such a man had suffered death as a heretic; as he had at that time convinced himself, Hus interpreted Scripture powerfully and in a Christian manner.[251] We also know that Luther relates that Staupitz had told him of Proles, his predecessor, how he disapproved of Johann Zachariæ, one of the most capable opponents of Hus, and that Staupitz had agreed: the latter also held that “Zachariæ had gone to the devil, but that Hus had been unfairly treated.”[252] This opinion reinforces that of Grefenstein, mentioned above.[253] Nor does Luther, when speaking of his later development, ever admit having read Hus and other heretical books, or being in any way indebted to them. On the other hand, he tries always to place himself above Hus. What Hus, according to him, discovered was quite insignificant (“minora et pauciora”); he only commenced bringing the light which had in reality to come from him (Luther).[254] He only “reproved the abuses and the life of the Pope,” he says on a later occasion, “but I put the knife to his throat, I oppose his existence and his teaching and make him merely equal to other bishops; that I did not do at first,”[255] i.e. I did not commence that way. It is certainly true that at the beginning he made no attempt to oppose the Papacy and the power of the Church.

At any rate, and this is what is most true in the above statements regarding Luther’s connection with Hus, the feeling against Rome which Hus had stirred up, and the memory of the latter, proved of assistance to Luther when he came forward and brought him a speedier success; he himself says on one occasion: “It is a tradition among honest people that Hus suffered violence and injustice,” and calls the belief that Hus was condemned by false judges “robustissima,” so that no Pope, or Kaiser or University can shake it.[256]

Protestant biographers, as is well known, are fond of representing the inward process through which Luther went in the monastery, agreeably with his own descriptions in later years.[257] Unable to find peace of conscience and assurance of salvation in the “works” of his monastery life or of the Papacy, his one aim had been to arrive at the knowledge of a “merciful God,” and for this purpose he had been obliged to unearth in Holy Scripture the long-forgotten doctrine of justification by faith. Some Protestant writers dwell not so much upon his longing for certainty of salvation as upon his desire for virtue and true righteousness. “Oh, when wilt thou become pious and do enough?”[258] Others again complete the picture by laying stress upon his recognition of the concupiscence which is always reigning in man and which is sin, and of man’s inability to keep the commandments; it was his recognition of this which “produced Luther’s theology; his whole doctrine of justification culminated in the warfare against sin.” All these descriptions are, however, based on an uncritical acceptance of Luther’s later accounts of his life in religion, accounts plainly inspired by his polemic against the old Church, and intended to illustrate his false assertion that, in the cloister and in the Papacy, the way to obtain grace from God was utterly unknown.

Here we will mention only cursorily some of Luther’s later statements, purporting to give a picture of his life as a monk.

To these belong the assertion that in the monastery he had not prayed with faith in Christ, because “no one knew anything” about Christ: that there the Saviour was known only as a strict Judge, and that he had therefore wished there were no Saviour: “I wished there had been no God.” “None of us” believed at all that Christ was our Saviour, and, by dint of works, we “lost our baptism.” We were always told: “Torment yourself in the monastery ... whip yourself until you destroy your own sin; that was the teaching and faith of the Pope.”[259] “It was a cursed life, full of malignity, was the life of that monkery.”[260]

The apostate monk’s object in all those statements regarding his interior or exterior experiences in the monastery was to strike at the Catholic Church.

We certainly cannot accept as historic the picture of religious practice, or malpractice, given in the following: whenever his eyes fell upon a figure of Christ, owing to his popish upbringing, he “would have preferred to see the devil rather than Christ”; he had thought “that he had been raised to the company of angels,” but found he had really been “among devils”; he had “raged” in his search for comfort in Holy Scripture; he had also continuously suffered “a very great martyrdom and the task-mastership” of his conscience. “Self-righteousness” only had counted for anything; so great was it that he had been taught not to thank God for the Sacrament, but that God should thank him; but, notwithstanding all these errors, he had always sought after a “merciful God” and had at last found Him by coming to understand His gospel.

The birth and growth of this fable in the mind of Luther as he advanced in years will occupy us later. The present writer may point out, that no convincing answer has been given to the objections against the legend which he made public even prior to the appearance of Denifle’s first volume,[261] and which were repeated therein independently, and at considerably greater length. On the Protestant side, too, much more caution is now being observed in the use of Luther’s later descriptions of his own development, the tendency being to use contemporary sources instead. This is seen, for instance, in the studies by Braun on Luther’s theory of concupiscence and by Hunzinger on Luther’s mysticism, which will be quoted later.

In explanation of the inner process through which Luther went, the primary reason for his turning away from Catholic doctrine has been attributed by some Catholics to scrupulosity combined with an unhealthy self-righteousness, which by an inward reaction grew into carelessness and despair. How far this view is correct, and how far it requires to be supplemented by other important factors, will be shown further on.

Meanwhile another altogether too summary theory, a theory which overshoots the mark, must first be considered.