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His ideas on predestination were not the direct cause of Luther’s belittling of human effort and the value of good works; the latter tendency was present in him previous to his adoption of rigid predestinarianism; nor does he ever attribute to election by grace any diminution of man’s powers or duties, whether in the case of the chosen or of the reprobate. The same commandments are given to those whom God’s terrible decree has destined for hell as to the elect; they possess the same human abilities, the same weaknesses. It was not predestination which led him in the first instance to attribute such strength to concupiscence in man, and to invest it, as he ultimately did, with an actually sinful and culpable character.

His ideas concerning the absolute corruption of the children of Adam, even to the extinction of any liberty in the doing of what is good, had another origin, and, in their development, were influenced far more by false mysticism than by the predestinarian delusion.

He approached the lectures on the Epistle to the Romans in the conviction that, in this Epistle, he would find the sanction of his earlier efforts against the self-righteous and “holy-by-works,” against whom his peculiar mysticism had still further prejudiced him. From the very outset he interprets the great Apostolic document on the calling of the heathen and the Jews to salvation as directed exclusively against those who, according to him, were imperilling the Church; against those who (whether in his own Order or in Christendom generally) laid stress on the importance of works, on the duty of fulfilling observances and the merit of exercises of virtue for gaining heaven, and who were unmindful of the righteousness which Christ gives us. This is not the place to point out how Paul is speaking in quite another sense, against those Jewish Christians who still adhered to the works of the Mosaic Law, of the merely relative value of works, of the liberty which Christianity imparts and of the saving power of faith.

Luther, however, in the very first lines, tells the “holy-by-works” that the whole purpose of the Epistle to the Romans is a driving back and rooting out of the wisdom and righteousness of the flesh. Among the heathen and the Jews were to be found those who, though “devoted in their hearts to virtue,” yet had not suppressed all self-satisfaction in the same, and looked upon themselves as “righteous and good men”; in the Church, according to Paul, all self-righteousness and wisdom must be torn out of the affections, and self-complacency. God willed to save us not by our own righteousness but by an extraneous righteousness (“non per domesticam sed per extraneam iustitiam vult salvare”), viz. by the imputed righteousness of Christ, and, owing to the exterior righteousness which Christ gives (“externa quæ ex Christo in nobis est iustitia”), there can be no boasting, nor must there be “any depression on account of the sufferings and trials which come to us from Christ.”[495]

“Christ’s righteousness and His gifts,” he says, “shine in the true Christian.... If any man possesses natural and spiritual advantages, yet this is not considered by God as being his wisdom, righteousness and goodness (‘non ideo coram Deo talis reputatur’), rather, he must wait in humility, as though he possessed nothing, for the pure mercy of God, to see whether He will look upon him as righteous and wise. God only does this if he humbles himself deeply. We must learn to regard spiritual possessions and works of righteousness as worthless for obtaining the righteousness of Christ, we must renounce the idea that these have any value in God’s sight and merit a reward, otherwise we shall not be saved” (“opera iusta velint nihil reputare,” etc.).[496]

Any pretext, or even none at all, serves to bring him back again and again in the work to the “Pelagian-minded iustitiarii.” It is possible that amongst these the “Observantines” ranked first. Our thoughts revert to those of his brother monks, whose cause he had at first defended in the internal struggle within the Congregation, only to turn on them unmercifully afterwards. On one occasion he mentions by name the “Observants,” reproaching them with trying to outshine one another in their zeal for God, while at the same time they had no love of their neighbour, whereas, according to the passage he is just expounding, “the fulness of the law is love.”[497] He would also appear to be referring to them, when, on another occasion, he rails at such monks, who by their behaviour bring their whole profession into disgrace.

“They exalt themselves against other members of their profession,” he cries, “as though they were clean and had no evil odour about them,”[498] and continues in the style of his monastic discourse on the “Little Saints” mentioned above (p. 69 f.). “And yet before, behind and within they are a pig-market and sty of sows ... they wish to withdraw from the rest, whereas they ought, were they really virtuous, to help them to conceal their faults. But in place of patient succour there is nothing in them but peevishness and a desire to be far away (‘quærunt fugam ... tediosi sunt et nolunt esse in communione aliorum’). They will not serve those who are good for nothing nor be their companions; they only desire to be the superiors and companions of the worthy, the perfect and the sound. Therefore they run from one place to another.”[499]

The struggle of which this is a picture continued among the German Augustinians. In the spring, 1520, a similar conflict broke out in the Cologne Province, one side having the sympathy of the Roman Conventuals.[500] We can well understand how the General of the Order in Rome was not disposed to grant the exemptions claimed by the Observantines of the Saxon Congregation against his own Provincials.

Luther brandishes his sharp blade against the “spiritually minded, the proud, the stiff-necked, who seek peace in works and in the flesh, the iustitiarii,”[501] without making any sharp distinction between the actual Observantines and the “self-righteous.”

With regard to himself, he admits that he is so antagonistic to the “iustitiarii,” that he is opposed to all scrupulous observance of “iustitia,” to all regulations and strict ordinances:

“The very word righteousness vexes me: if anyone were to steal from me, it would hurt me less than being obliged to listen to the word righteousness. It is a word which the jurists always have on their lips, but there is no more unlearned race than these men of the law, save, perhaps, the men of good intention and superior reason (‘bonæ-intentionarii seu sublimatæ rationis’); for I have experienced both in myself and in others, that when we were righteous, God mocked at us.”[502]