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“We have fallen under a Jewish bondage ... our preachers have concealed from the people the truth regarding the right way of worshipping God, and the Apostles must needs come again to preach to us.”[735]

“When shall we at last listen to reason,” he cries,[736] “and understand that we must spend our valuable time more profitably [than in the study of philosophy]? ‘We are ignorant of what is necessary,’ thus we should complain with Seneca, ‘because we merely learn what is superfluous.’ We remain ignorant of what might be of use to us while we busy ourselves with what is worse than worthless.”[737] He speaks thus because others were not alive to the state of things, or had not the courage to open their mouths: “Perhaps they would not be believed, but I have spent years in these studies, have seen and heard much and know that they are vain and perverse” (“studium vanitatis et perditionis”). Therefore let us rise and destroy them! “We must learn to know Jesus Christ, and Him Crucified.... Is it not a strange madness to praise and belaud philosophy, a doctrine which is merely the perverse wisdom of the flesh advocated by so-called wise men and theologians!”

“Those fools” who do not even know what grace is.... “Who can bear with their blasphemous ideas?” “They do not know what sin or remission of sin is.” “Our theologians see sins only in works, and do not teach us how to change our minds and how to implore grace with humble sighing.... They make proud men, men who after due performance of their works look on themselves as righteous, and seek not to fight against their passions. That is the reason why Confession is of so little use in the Church and why backsliding occurs so frequently.”[738]

His hatred for theology leads him to make the following false and bitter charges: “The Scholastics teach that it is only necessary to fulfil the law outwardly, in deed, not with the heart; they do not even show how this is to be done, and thus the faithful are left in the impossibility of doing good, because they will never be able to fulfil the commandments unless they do so with the heart. These teachers do not even stretch out a finger towards the fulfilment of the law, I mean, they do not make its fulfilment depend even in the slightest on the heart, but merely on outward acts. Hence they become vain and proud.”[739] An esteemed Protestant historian of dogma, in a recent work, speaks of Luther’s knowledge of Scholasticism as follows:

“Luther does not appear to have been acquainted with the Schoolmen of the Middle Ages, more especially Thomas of Aquin. About this statement, which Denifle constantly repeats, there seems to me to be no doubt.”[740]

The Wittenberg Professor makes use of scathing reproofs such as had never before been heard. A good deal of his criticism was justifiable, and he was certainly not wrong in applying it judiciously in his own special domain to much that had hitherto been accepted as true. It is refreshing to those engaged in historical research to note how he cuts himself adrift from the legends of mediæval hagiography, and how he writes on one occasion requesting Spalatin to copy out some particulars for him from Jerome’s book which he might use for a sermon on St. Bartholomew, “for the fables and lies of the ‘Catalogus’ and ‘Legenda aurea’ make my gorge rise.”[741] Criticism of ecclesiastical conditions was also quite permissible when made in the right way and in the proper quarters; examples of such criticism were not wanting among the saintly mediæval reformers, and they might have been acceptable to the authorities of the Church, or, at any rate, could not have been repudiated by them.

But when Luther is dealing with the faults of the clergy, secular or regular, he looks at everything with a jaundiced eye as being saturated with arrogance, avarice and every vice, and seems to fancy all have become traitors to God’s cause. His love of exaggeration and his want of charity override everything, nor do these faults disappear with advancing years, but become still more marked. Never was there an eye more keen to detect the faults of others, never a tongue more ready to amplify them. And yet he, who does not scruple to support his fierce and passionate denunciations by the coarsest and most unfair generalisations, is himself the first to admit in his Commentary on Romans that: “There are fools who put the fault they have to find with a priest or religious to the account of all and then abuse them all with bitterness, forgetting that they themselves are full of imperfections.”[742]

He announces to his hearers in 1516 that, “to-day the clergy are enveloped in thick darkness”; “it troubles no one that all the vices prevail among the faithful, pride, impurity, avarice, quarrelling, anger, ingratitude” and every other vice; “these things you may do as much as you like so long as you respect the rights and liberties of the Church! but if you but touch these, then you are no longer a true son and friend of the Church.” The clergy, he continues, have received many possessions and liberties from the secular princes, but now they are quarrelling with their patrons and insisting on their exemptions: “Bad, godless men strut about with the gifts of their benefactors and think they are doing enough when they mutter a few prayers on their behalf,” “and yet Paul when describing the priest and his duties never even mentioned prayer[!]. But what he did mention, that no one complies with to-day.... They are priests only in appearance.... Where do you find one who carries out the intention of the Founders? Therefore they deserve that what they have received [from the princes] should be taken away from them again.”[743]

“As a matter of fact,” the mystic continues, quite manifestly conveying a hint to the secular authorities, “it were better, and assuredly safer, if the temporalities of the clergy were placed under the control of the worldly authorities ... then they would at least be obliged to stand in awe of others and would be more cautious in all matters.”

“Up to now the laity have been too unlettered, and from ignorance have allowed themselves to be led, though full of complaints and bitterness against the clergy. But now they are beginning to be aware of the secret of our iniquity (‘nosse mysteria iniquitatis nostræ’) and to examine into our duties.... In addition to this, it seems to me that the secular authorities fulfil their obligations better than our ecclesiastical rulers. They rigorously punish theft and murder, at least when the lawyers do not intervene with their artfulness. The Church authorities, on the other hand, only proceed against those who infringe their liberties, possessions and rights, and are filled with nothing but pomp, avarice, immorality and disputatiousness.” In the course of this strong outburst, which gives us an insight into the working of his mind, he goes on to brand the higher clergy as “whited sepulchres” and as the “most godless breakers of the law,” who purposely promote only stupid fellows to the priesthood, or even to the most exalted offices. Here the intemperance of his language is already that of his later days, though a year was yet to elapse before he published his Indulgence theses.

Strictures on the use of Indulgences occur, however, among his criticisms dating from this time. He attacks the “unlearned preachers” whose promises of Indulgences in return for donations for the building of churches, or similar pious objects, attract the people, though the latter are “altogether careless about fulfilling the duties of their calling.” He lays to the charge of the Pope and the Bishops not merely the real abuses in the preaching of Indulgences—as though they had been aware of them all—but also the making of Indulgences to depend on offerings; all the Bishops are, however, on the path to hell, and intent on seducing the people from the true service of God.[744]

He had, as we have seen, praised the worldly authorities at the expense of the ecclesiastical dignitaries, and now we find him introducing into his theological lectures a strange eulogy of Frederick, his Elector: “You, Prince Frederick, are yet to be guided by a good angel, therefore be on the watch. How greatly have you already been tried by injustice, and how rightly might you have taken up arms! You have suffered, you remained peaceable. I wonder, were you calling to mind your sins, and wishing thereby to confess them and do penance?” To this the mystic himself prudently replies: “I know not,” and adds: “Perhaps it was merely the fear of possibly getting the worse.”[745] The exhortations he sees fit to address to his sovereign are directed not so much against selfishness or other faults, but rather against his supposed excessive piety; he is blamed for frequently postponing audiences on the plea that he must be present at prayers or Divine Service, and yet, Luther thinks, “we ought to be resigned and indifferent to go wherever the Lord calls us and not attach ourselves obstinately to anything”;[746] another complaint was that the Elector was too much given to imitating the Bishop in the collecting of relics. The Elector’s love for rare relics was indeed notorious, and, as a matter of fact, Luther himself was of service to the Elector in this very matter at the time when Staupitz was negotiating for him at St. Ursula’s in Cologne. We hear of this in a letter, in which Luther also sends his thanks to the Elector for his present of a new cowl (cucullus) “of really princely cloth.”[747]

When, after his second course of lectures on the Psalms, Luther commenced the publishing of an amended edition he dedicated this, his first effort in biblical exegesis, to the Elector, with a preface in the form of a panegyric couched in the most fulsome language.[748] The Elector, Luther tells him, possessed all the qualities of a good ruler in no common degree; his love of learning not only rendered him immortal himself, but conferred this quality on all those who were permitted to belaud him. Under his rule “pure theology triumphed”; secular rulers had, by promoting learning, taken precedence of spiritual dignitaries, “for the Church’s exuberant riches and her powerful influence did not avail her much.”[749] Would that there were other such temporal princes as Frederick, who, as Staupitz had said, was able to discourse on Holy Scripture as learnedly and acutely as the Pope himself (“vel sanctissimum et summum pontificem deceret”); whose utterance bore witness to the “sagacity of his judgment,” filled Luther with love for such a sovereign and made him strong in the defence of Holy Scripture against all Scotists, Thomists, Albertists and Moderns (Nominalists). It was only on account of his opponents, who scoffed at the Bible and wished to replace God’s Word by their own, that he had been induced to quit his beloved solitude and retirement; indeed, he felt quite unworthy to wear the Doctor’s cap which the Prince had so kindly bought for him,[750] and merely did so from obedience; the Prince had been more careful for him than he was for himself, had upheld him in his professorship and not allowed him to suffer expulsion, however much he (Luther) had desired to suffer this at the hands of his enemies.

The clever eulogist appears soon to have gained for himself great favour at Court. Barely two months after the letter spoken of, he requests of the sovereign, in the name of his priory, permission “for the monks to build a chamber outside the walls in the moat.” The intention was to erect a privy in the town moat for the use of the monastery, which was situated close to the walls. At the same time he begs that a black cappa (habit) which had been promised him in 1516 or 1517 might now be bestowed upon him, and refers to his dedication of the Psalter as perhaps deserving some such reward; he also asks the Prince to include in his gift a white cloak, which he might perchance have merited by the “Apostle,” i.e. by his Commentary on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Galatians, upon which he was at that time engaged.[751]

Such little touches often reveal the spiritual atmosphere in which a man moves, and by which he is influenced, quite as well as more important matters.

The frightful accusations which Luther brings forward in his Commentary on Romans against the state of morals in Rome belong to a somewhat earlier period; their tone is such as to lead one to fear the worst for the author’s submission to the highest authorities in the Church. The language St. Bernard employed, though he too reproved the immorality of the Papal residence, is quite different in tone from the arrogant words of the Wittenberg Doctor; in the former the most grievous reproofs are mitigated by the warm esteem the saint displays for authority as such, and by filial affection for the Church; in the latter there is nothing but bitterness. Such outbursts of spite confirm our previous observations concerning the results of Luther’s journey to Rome. His indignation with what he had seen or heard during his visit to Rome of the moral conditions under Alexander VI and Julius II became gradually more apparent.

“At Rome,” he exclaims, “they no longer recognise any restrictions on their liberty, everything is set aside by means of dispensations. They have arrogated to themselves freedom of the flesh in every particular.”[752]

“Rome to-day has sunk back to its old heathen state,” where, as Paul says, licentiousness prevailed.[753]

“To-day Rome drags the whole world with her into the puddle; she far exceeds in unbridled luxury even ancient Rome, and stands in even greater need of apostolic messengers from God than she did at the beginning. My only hope is that these may come to her in friendly guise and not to execute stern justice.”[754]

“We may well be amazed at the thick darkness of these times.” “It matters nothing to the Church authorities though you be steeped in all the vices on the list drawn up by Paul (2 Tim. iii. 2 ff.); the sins may cry to Heaven for vengeance, but that does not matter, you are still looked upon as the most devout of Christians so long as you respect the rights and liberties of the Church.”[755] “We have mere phantom priests, who are well supported by phantom revenues. The priests are such only in name.”[756] “Those who ought to keep order are themselves the most godless transgressors,”[757] etc.

Pride, everywhere, is, he thinks, the main cause of the corruption of the times. The humility of Christ is forgotten, and each one wants to exalt himself and amend others instead of himself.

The worst kind of pride, he constantly declares, is that which exalts its own good works in the sight of God. This spiritual overbearing is the reason why the world is filled with the heresy of the Pelagians; the sovereign efficacy of grace is not recognised.[758] Almost the whole Church is overturned because men have put their trust in the deceptive doctrines of the Schoolmen, which are opposed to grace, “for owing to this, all commit sin with impunity ... and have lost all sense of fear.”[759]

In 1514 we hear Luther asserting, that of the three vices, sensuality, anger and pride, pride was the most difficult to overcome, a warning which his own experience had confirmed all too surely. “This vice,” he complains, “arises even from victory over the other vices.”[760] One wonders whether he is speaking here from personal experience.

We may ask a similar question with regard to the two other faults mentioned by him, anger and sensuality. Putting aside anger, the effects of which upon himself he frequently admits, we find that he also gives an answer concerning the third temptation. He writes in 1519 of the experiences of his earlier years with regard to sensuality: “It is a shameful temptation, I have had experience of it. You yourselves are, I fancy, not ignorant of it. Oh, I know it well, when the devil comes and tempts us and excites the flesh. Therefore let a man consider well and prove himself whether he is able to live in chastity, for when one is on heat, I know well what it is, and when temptation then comes upon a man he is already blind,” etc.[761]

In his later years he also refers to the “very numerous temptations” which he underwent at the monastery, and of which he complained to his confessor; the more he fought against them, the stronger they became.[762]

What he says of falling into sin is very instructive from the psychological point of view. It serves as a stepping-stone to his views on penance.

“Even to-day,” he writes in his Commentary on Romans where he deals with hardened sinners, “God allows men to be tempted by the devil, the world and the flesh until they are in despair, choosing thus to humble His elect and lead them to put their trust in Him alone without presuming upon their own will and works. Yet He often, especially in our day, incites the devil to plunge His elect into dreadful sins beneath which they languish, or at least allows the devil ever to hinder their good resolutions, making them do the contrary of what they wish to do, so that it becomes plain to them that it is not they who will or perform what is good. And yet by means of all this God leads them against their expectations [to His grace] and sets them free while they are sighing because they desire and do so much that is evil, and are unable to desire and do the good they would. Yea, it is thus that God manifests His strength and that His name is magnified over the whole earth.”[763] This passage is scored in the margin of the original MS. Was it his intention to include himself among those who are always hindered by the devil from doing what is good, or even among those whom he plunges into dreadful sins, who despair and are then at last led by God to His grace and become promoters of the glory of His name? A certain resemblance which this description bears to other passages in which he recounts his temptations, despair and supposed deliverance and election makes this seem possible, though it is by no means certain.

We are more inclined to apply to him a remarkable description, which he gives in another passage of the Commentary on Romans, of the devil’s action on a man whom he wishes to lead astray. Man’s fall under the bondage of sin and his resuscitation by grace engage his attention often and with a singular intensity, but generally speaking he makes no mention of contrition or satisfaction, but only of a covering over with the righteousness of Christ. The description in question, given in eloquent language, is based on the well-known passage in Romans iii. 28: “We account a man to be justified by faith without the works of the law.” This is the verse in which Luther later, in his translation, interpolated the word “alone” (“by faith alone”), but on which he does not as yet bestow any particular attention. On the contrary, he commences his exposition of this text with the statement: “Righteousness must, indeed, be sought by works, but these are not the works of the law because they are performed by grace and in faith.”[764]

He goes on to mention four classes of men who are led away by the devil in their esteem and practice of works.[765] The first he draws away from all good works and entangles in manifest sin. The second, who think themselves righteous, he makes tepid and careless. The third, also righteous in their own eyes, he renders over-zealous and superstitious, so that they set themselves up as a class apart and despise others; they have been mentioned over and over again in the above pages, in recounting his warfare with the Observants, the “Spirituals,” the proud self-righteous, etc.

The fourth and last class might possibly include himself.

“The fourth class consists of those who, at the instigation of the devil, desire to be free from any sin, pure and holy. But as they, nevertheless, feel that they commit sin and that all they do is tainted with evil, the devil terrifies them to such an extent with fear of the judgments of God and scruples of conscience that they almost despair. He is acquainted with each one’s disposition and tempts him accordingly. As they are zealous in the pursuit of righteousness the devil is unable to turn them aside from it so readily. Therefore he sets himself to fill them with enthusiasm, so that they wish to free themselves too speedily from all trace of concupiscence. This they are unable to do, and consequently he succeeds in making them sad, downcast and faint-hearted, yea, even in causing them unendurable anxiety of conscience and despair.”

When prescribing the remedy, he begins to use the first person plural. “Therefore there is nothing for us to do but to make the best of things and to remain in sin. We must sigh to be set free, hoping in God’s mercy. When a man desires to be cured he may, if in too great a hurry, have a worse relapse. His cure can only take place slowly and many weaknesses must be borne with during convalescence. It is enough that sin be displeasing, though it cannot be altogether expelled. For Christ bears everything, if only it is displeasing to us; His are the sins not ours, and, here below, His righteousness is our property.”

We may take that portion of the description where the first person is used as an account of his own state. Here he is describing his own practice. This passage, which in itself admits of a good interpretation and might be made use of by a Catholic ascetic, must be read in connection with Luther’s doctrine that concupiscence is sin. Looking at it in this light, the sense in which he understands displeasure with sin becomes clear, also why, in view of the ineradicable nature of concupiscence, he is willing to console himself with the idea that “Christ bears it all.” His dislike of concupiscence is entirely different from contrition for sin. The young Monk frequently felt himself oppressed by an aversion for concupiscence, but of contrition for sin he scarcely ever speaks, or only in such a way as to raise serious doubts with regard to his idea of it and the manner in which he personally manifested it, as the passages about to be quoted will show. The practice of making Christ’s righteousness our own, saying, “His are the sins,” etc., he does not recommend merely in the case of concupiscence, but also in that of actual sins; it should, however, be noted that the latter may quite well be displeasing to us without there being any contrition in the theological sense, particularly without there being perfect contrition.

Luther is here describing the remedy which he himself applies in place of real penance, wholesome contrition and compunction. It is to replace all the good resolutions which strengthen and fortify the will, and all penitential works done in satisfaction for the guilt of sin, and this remedy he begins to recommend to others.

His contempt for good works, for zeal in the religious life and for any efforts at overcoming self encourage him in these views. His new ideas as to man’s inability to do anything that is good, as to his want of free will to fight against concupiscence and the sovereign efficacy of grace and absolute predestination, all incline him to the easy road of imputation; finally, he caps his system by persuading himself that only by his new discoveries, which, moreover, are borne out by St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, can Christ receive the honour which is His due and His Gospel come into its rights. Such was Luther’s train of thought.

The characteristic position which Luther assumed in his early days with regard to penance and the motive of fear, must be more closely examined in order to complete the above account.

The Monk frankly admits, not once but often, that inward contrition for sin was something foreign, almost unknown, to him. The statements he makes concerning his confessions weigh heavily in the scale when we come to consider the question of his spiritual life.

In a passage of his Commentary on the Psalms where he would in the ordinary course have been obliged to speak of contrition he refrains from doing so on the plea that he has had no experience of it, and refers his hearers to the Confessions of St. Augustine.[766]

He admits in his Commentary on Romans that he had struggled with himself (“ita mecum pugnavi”) because he could not believe that contrition and confession really cleansed him from sin, as he had always been conscious of sin, viz. concupiscence, still continuing within him.[767]

In 1518 he writes: because the evil inclination to sin always remains in man “there are none, or at least very few, in the whole world who have perfect contrition, and I certainly admit this in my own case.”[768]

According to the statements he made in later years concerning his fruitless attempts to awaken contrition within himself, and concerning his relations with his confessor, he must have taken the wrong road at an early period in his religious life; the more earnestly he sought to conceive contrition, he says, the greater was his trouble of mind and remorse of conscience. “I was unable to accept (‘non poteram admittere’) the absolutions and consolations of my confessors, for I thought to myself, who knows whether I can put faith in these words of comfort?”[769] This sentence occurs in the passage mentioned above, where he states how he had been tranquilised by the repeated exhortations of his preceptor to recall God’s command and cultivate the virtue of hope.[770] It is true he here ascribes the original cause of his trouble of mind to the teaching he had received “in the schools, which had such a bad effect on him that he could not endure to hear the word joy mentioned.” It is clear that he is here speaking with an ulterior purpose, namely, with a view to supporting his polemic against the Catholic Church (“meo exemplo et periculo moniti discite!”). But it is highly probable that his idea of concupiscence as sin tended to confuse his conception of contrition, and made confession and contrition painful to him.

At a later date he opposed the Catholic doctrine of contrition on account of his aversion to the motive of fear of the judgments of God.

The Church had always taught that perfect contrition was that which proceeded from a real love of God, but that contrition from a holy fear of God was salutary because it involved a turning away from sin and a beginning of love. Luther, however, at the very commencement of his new teaching, was at pains to exclude fear as an inspiring motive. He was determined to weed it out of the religious life as unworthy of the service of God, quite unmindful of the fact that it was expressly recommended by reason, by the Fathers of the Church and by the very words of the Bible.

He says, for instance, in 1518 in his sermon on the Ten Commandments, that in contrition for sin no place is to be assigned to fear. The contrition which must be aroused is, he says, to proceed from love alone, because that which is based on fear is always outward, hypocritical and not lasting.[771]

In an earlier sermon he mentions the two kinds of contrition, namely, that which, according to him, is the only true one, “out of love of justice and of punishment,” or which, in other words, hates sin from the love of God, and that which springs from fear, which he says is artificial and not real, and to which he gives the nickname “gallows grief.” The latter, he says, does not make us abhor sin, but merely the punishment of sin, and were there no punishment for sin it would at once cease.[772] Hence he misapprehends the nature of imperfect contrition, for this in reality does not desire a return to sin.

He begins his tract on Penance in 1518 with the assertion, that contrition from the motive of fear makes a man a still greater sinner, because it does not detach the will from sin, and because the will would return to sin so soon as there was no punishment to be feared.[773] This contrition, he says, his opponents among the theologians defend; they could not understand that penance is sweet and that this sweetness leads to an abhorrence and hatred of sin.[774]

As he had banished contrition from a motive of fear, he should have laid all the more stress upon that which springs from love. But here he was met by a difficulty, namely, that concupiscence still exists in man and draws him towards sin, or rather, according to Luther’s ideas, of itself makes him a real sinner, so that no actual turning away from sin can take place in the heart. What then was to be done? “You must,” he says, “cast yourself by prayer into God’s hands so that He may account your contrition as real and true.” “Christ will supply from His own what is wanting in yours.”[775] Thus we again arrive at imputation, at a mere outward covering over of the defect of inward change.

If he looked upon penance and confession in this light, then, indeed, they were not of a nature to satisfy and tranquilise him.[776] We may, however, remark that in the time of his great crisis an earnest and devout fear of God the Judge would have availed him more than all his extravagant mysticism with its tendency to cast off the bonds of fear and abolish the keeping of the law.

We shall not be wrong if we assume that the frequent states of terror—of which the cause lay in his temperament rather than in his will—had their part in his aversion to fear and to the idea of God’s judgment. He felt himself impelled to escape at any cost from their dominion.

Other passages which Luther wrote at a later date on fear and contrition read rather differently and seem to advocate fear as a motive. We see thereby how hard he found it to cut himself adrift from the natural and correct view taught by theology. He declares, for instance, later, with great emphasis, that “true penance begins with the fear and the judgment of God.”[777]

He betrays in this, as in other points, his confusion and inconsequence.[778]

He is utterly unfair to the Church and to her theology when he falsely asserts that she had admitted contrition from fear alone, i.e. to the utter exclusion of love; every kind of fear, he says maliciously, was recognised as sufficient for receiving absolution, even that “gallows grief” which abhorred sin solely from fear of punishment and with the intention of returning to it if no punishment existed (timor serviliter servilis, as it was subsequently termed by theologians). This reproach did not strike home to the theologians or to the Church. Theological and moral treatises there were in plenty, which, like the Fathers of the Church and the mediæval Doctors, taught in express terms the advantage of perfect contrition and exhorted the faithful to it. Indeed, most of the popular manuals merely taught that sin must be repented of for God’s sake, from love of God, without even mentioning simple attrition. It was not only generally recognised and taken for granted that the lower, imperfect contrition, i.e. that which arises from fear, in order to be a means of forgiveness in the Sacrament of Penance, must include a firm resolution of not returning to sin, but it was set down as requisite that this so-called “servile” fear (timor servilis) must be coupled with a commencement of love of God, or else be of such a nature as to lead up to it. It is sufficient to open the works in circulation in the theological schools at the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to see at what length and with what care these questions were discussed. It cannot, however, be denied that some few of the later scholastic theologians—among them, significantly enough, Johann Paltz, preceptor in the Augustinian monastery at Erfurt at the time Luther entered—did not express themselves clearly, and that some other theologians defended views which were not correct.[779]

But whether such theologians exerted a positive or negative influence on Luther we do not know. One thing is certain, however, namely, that he was influenced chiefly by his own desire to free himself from what he looked upon as an oppressive yoke and that his self-sufficiency and ignorance speedily led him to fancy it his duty to confront the theology of previous ages with his epoch-making discovery regarding the doctrine of fear and penance.

This process is confirmed by a letter of his addressed to Staupitz, his esteemed Superior, at a time when the commotion caused by his Indulgence theses was in full swing, which gives us a picture of his mental state.[780] In it he says:

“The word which I hated most in all the Scriptures was the word penance. Nevertheless [when performing penance and going to confession], I played the hypocrite bravely before God, attempting to wring out of myself an imaginary and artificial love.” He also grumbles here about the “works of penance and the insipid satisfactions and the wearisome confession”; such a prominent position ought not to be assigned to them; the ordinary instructions and the modus confitendi contained nothing but the most oppressive tyranny of conscience. He had always felt this, and in his trouble it had been to him like a ray from heaven when Staupitz once told him: “True penance is that only which begins with the love of God and of justice, and what the instructions represent as the last and crown of all is rather the commencement and the starting-point of penance, namely, love.” This precious truth he had, on examination, found to be absolutely confirmed by Holy Scripture (“s. scripturæ verba undique mihi colludebant”)—Luther had a curious knack of finding in Scripture everything he wanted—even the Greek term for penance, metanoia, led up to the same conclusion, whereas the Latin “pœnitentiam agere” implied effort and was therefore misleading. Thus Staupitz’s words had turned the bitter taste of the word penance into sweetness for him. “God’s commandments always become sweet to us when we do not merely content ourselves with reading them in books; we must learn to understand them in the wounds of our Sweetest Saviour.”

The Monk was well aware that such mystical utterances were sure of finding a welcome echo with the influential Vicar of the whole Augustinian Congregation, himself a mystic. He sends him with the same letter his long Latin defence of his Indulgence theses (Resolutiones), which Staupitz was to forward to the Pope.

He at the same time expresses some of his thoughts concerning the connection between his doctrine of penance and the controversy on Indulgences which had just commenced, probably hoping that Staupitz would also acquaint Rome with them. These we cannot pass over without remark in concluding our consideration of Luther’s doctrine on penance. The Indulgence-preachers, he says, must be withstood because they are overturning the whole system of penance; not only do they set up penitential works and satisfaction as the principal thing, but they extol them, solely with a view to inducing the faithful to secure the remission of satisfaction by their rich offerings in return for Indulgences. Therefore he has been obliged, though unwillingly, to emerge from his retirement in order to defend the doctrine that it is better to make real satisfaction than merely to have it remitted by securing an Indulgence.

Staupitz, a shortsighted man, was not to be convinced that, by Luther’s teaching and the commotion which it was arousing, the very existence of the Augustinian Congregation was endangered and the Catholic Church herself menaced in her dogma and discipline.

Instead of watching over the communities committed to his care he spent his days in travelling from place to place, a welcome and witty guest at the tables of great men, devoting his spare time to writing pious and learned books. The sad instances of disobedience, dissension and want of discipline which became more and more prevalent in his monasteries did not induce him to lay a restraining hand upon them. Too many exemptions from regular observance and the common life had already been permitted in the Congregation in the past, and of this the effect was highly pernicious.[781] Luther himself had scarcely ever had the opportunity of acquiring any practical experience of the monastic life at its best during his conventual days; it offered no splendid picture which might have roused his admiration and enthusiasm. This circumstance must be taken into account in considering his growing coldness in his profession and his gradually increasing animosity towards the religious life. He and Staupitz helped to destroy the fine foundation of Andreas Proles at a time when it already showed signs of deterioration.

On one occasion, when referring to his administration, Staupitz told Luther, that at first he had sought to carry out his plans for the good of the Order, later he had followed the advice of the Fathers of the Order, and, then, entrusted the matter to God, but, now, he was letting things take their course. Luther himself adds when recounting this: “Then I came on the scene and started something new.”[782] It is a proof of the weakness which was coming upon the institution, that a man holding principles such as Luther was advocating in his lectures and sermons should have been allowed to retain for three years the position of Vicar with jurisdiction over eleven monasteries. When he laid down his office in the Chapter at Heidelberg in 1518 we do not even learn that the Chapter carried out the measures which had meanwhile been decreed against Luther by the General of the Augustinians at Rome. The election of the Prior of Erfurt, Johann Lang, Luther’s friend and sympathiser, as his successor, and the Heidelberg disputation in the Augustinian monastery of that town, of which the result was a victory for the new teaching, show sufficiently the feelings of the Chapter. This election was the final triumph of the non-Observantine party.

A later hand has added against Lang’s name in the Register of the University of Erfurt the words “Hussita apostata,”[783] intended to stigmatise his falling away to the Lutheran heresy comparable only with that of Hus. On leaving the Order he wrote an insulting vindication of his conduct, in which among other things he says all the Priors are donkeys. While he was Prior at Erfurt, a Prior was appointed at Wittenberg whom Luther, as Rural Vicar, raised to this dignity almost before he had finished his year of noviceship. Only Luther’s strange power over men can account for the fact that so many of the monks were convinced that he was animated by the true Spirit of God in his new ideas with regard to conventual life and religion generally, and even in his overhauling of theology. Later, when the Catholic Church had spoken, they did not see their way to retract and submit, but preferred to marry. Staupitz himself, the inexperienced theologian, deceived by his protégé’s talents, often said to him: “Christ speaks through you.” It is true, that, at a later date, he sternly represented to Luther that he was going too far. After most of the monks had ranged themselves under the new standard, their apathetic and disappointed Superior withdrew to a Catholic monastery at Salzburg, where he expired in peace in 1524 as a Benedictine Abbot.

At that period Church discipline in Germany was already ruined. The man who was responsible for the downfall reveals a mental state capable of going to any extreme when in 1518 he writes to his fatherly friend Staupitz in almost fanatical language: “Let Christ see to it whether the words I have hitherto spoken are mine or His. Without His permission no Pope or Prince can give a decision (Cp. Prov. xxi. 1).... I have no temporal possessions to lose, I have only my weak body, tried by many labours. Should they desire to take my life by treachery or violence they will but shorten my existence by a few hours. I am content with my sweetest Saviour and Redeemer, our Lord Jesus Christ. Him I will praise as long as life lasts (Ps. ciii. 33). Should others refuse to sing with me, what matters it? Let them howl alone if it pleases them. May our Lord Jesus Christ ever preserve you, my sweetest father.”[784]

The ultra-spiritualism which had cast its spell over Luther was compounded, as we may see from what has gone before, of pseudo-mysticism, bad theology, a distaste for practical works of piety, a tendency to polemics and a misguided zeal for reform, not to speak of other elements. This it was which animated him during the years which preceded his public apostasy. On the other hand, in the subsequent struggle against the Church it is rather less apparent, being, to a certain extent, kept within bounds by the conflict he was obliged to wage in his own camp against dangerous fanatics such as Münzer and Carlstadt. Nevertheless, his spirit had not been entirely tamed, and, when occasion arose, as we shall see later, was still capable of all its former violence.

The Monk, at the time he was at work on the Epistle to the Romans, by dint of studying the Bible and Tauler, had, as he thought, attained to the mystical light of a higher knowledge, and begins accordingly to speak of hearing the inward voice. He tries to persuade himself that he hears this voice speaking in his soul; he looks upon it as so imperative that he is obliged, so he says, to do what it commands, “whether it be foolish or evil or great or small.”[785] Thus the way is already paved for his mysterious comprehension of the Scriptures through the inner word, as his letter to Spalatin shows;[786] we have also here the beginning of what he supposed was the ratification of his Divine mission as proclaimer of the new teaching.

Even before much was known of the data furnished by the Commentary on Romans regarding Luther’s development, Fr. Loofs, on the strength of the fragments which Denifle had made public, ventured to predict that, on the publication of the whole work, it would be seen, “that Luther was at that time following a road which might justly be described as a peculiar form of quietistic mysticism.”[787] To-day we must go further and say that Luther’s whole character was steeped in ultra-spiritualism.

Johann Adam Möhler says of Luther’s public work as a teacher: “In his theological views he showed himself a one-sided mystic.”[788] He adds, “had he lived in the second century Luther would have been a gnostic like Marcion, with some of whose peculiarities he is in singular agreement,” a statement which is borne out by what we have seen of Luther’s work so far. Neander, the Protestant historian, also compares the growth and development of Luther’s mind with that of Marcion.[789] Neander looks upon Marcion as Luther’s spiritual comrade, in fact as a Protestant, because he, like the founder of Protestantism, emphasised the evil in man everywhere, set up an antagonism between righteousness and grace, between the law and the gospel, and preached freedom from the works of the law. This Marcion did by appealing to the gnosis, or deeper knowledge. Luther likewise bases his very first utterances on this teaching and appeals to the more profound theology; he possesses that seductive enthusiasm which Marcion also displayed at the commencement of his career. Soon we shall see that Luther, again like Marcion, brushed aside such books of the Bible as stood in his way; the canon of Holy Scripture must be brought into agreement with his special conception of doctrine, and he and his pupils amplified and altered this doctrine, even in its fundamentals, to such a degree, that the words which Tertullian applied to Marcion might quite fit Luther too: “nam et quotidie reformant illud,” i.e. their gospel.[790] Luther at the very outset obscured the conception of God by his doctrine of absolute predestination to hell. Marcion, it is true, went much further than Luther in obfuscating the Christian teaching with regard to God by setting up an eternal twofold principle, of good and evil. The Wittenberg Professor never dreamt of so radical a change in the doctrine respecting God, and in comparison with that of Marcion this part of his system is quite conservative.

We find in Luther, from the beginning of his career, together with his rather gloomy ultra-spiritualism, another characteristic embracing a number of heterogeneous qualities, and which we can only describe as grotesque. Side by side with his love of extremes, we find an ultra-conservative regard for the text of Holy Scripture as he understood it, no matter how allegorical his pet interpretation might be. Again, the pious mysticism of his language scarcely agrees with the practical disregard he manifested for his profession. To this must be added, on the one hand, his tendency to spring from one subject to another, and the restlessness which permeates his theological statements, and on the other, his ponderous Scholasticism. Again we have the digressions in which he declaims on public events, and, besides, his incorrect and uncharitable criticisms; here he displays his utter want of consideration, his ignorance of the world and finally a tempestuous passion for freedom in all things, which renders him altogether callous to the vindication of their rights by others and makes him sigh over the countless “fetters of men.”[791] All this, taken in connection with his unusual talent, shows that Luther, though a real genius and a man of originality, was inclined to be hysterical. How curiously paradoxical his character was is revealed in his exaggerated manner of speech and his incessant recourse to antithesis.

With an unbounded confidence in himself and all too well aware of the seduction exercised by his splendid talents, he yet does not scruple to warn others with the utmost seriousness against their “inclinations to arrogance, avarice and ambition,” and to represent pride as the cardinal sin.[792] He is keen to notice defects in earlier theologians, but an unhappy trait of his own blinds him to the fact that the Church, as the invincible guardian of truth, must soon rise up against him.

He has already discovered a new way of salvation which is to tranquilise all, and yet he will be counted, not among those who feel sure of their salvation, but among the pious who are anxious and troubled about their state of grace, “who are still in fear lest they fall into wickedness, and, therefore, through fear, become more and more deeply steeped in humility in doing which they render God gracious to them.”[793] The assurance of salvation by faith alone, the sola fides of a later date, he still protests against so vigorously, that, when he fancies he espies it in his opponents in any shape or form, he attacks them as “a pestilential crew,” who speak of the signs of grace and thereby, as he imagines, lull men into security.

The last words show that the process of development is not yet ended. What we have considered above was merely the first of the two stages which he traversed before finally arriving at the conception of his chief doctrine.[794]