The novice found each day, as it went by, fully occupied with the repetition of set prayers and the performance of other acts of devotion. For the day and night together there were seven or eight appointed hours of prayer, or Horae. During each of these the brethren who were not yet priests had to say twenty-five Paternosters with the Ave Maria, more ample formulas of prayer being prescribed meanwhile to the priests. Luther was also introduced already then to certain theological studies, which were under the supervision of two learned fathers of the monastery. But what was of the most importance for him was that a Bible—the Latin translation then in general use in the Church—was put into his hands. Just about this time, a new code of statutes had come in force for these Augustinian convents, drawn up by Staupitz, the Vicar of the Order, which enjoined, as matters of duty, assiduous reading, devout attention to the Hours, and a zealous study of Holy Writ. Teachers were wanting to Luther, and he found it very difficult to understand all he read. But with genuine appetite he read himself, so to speak, into his Bible, and clung to it ever afterwards.

At the end of his year of probation followed his solemn admission to the Order. Faithfully 'unto death' did Luther then promise to live according to the rules of the holy father Augustine, and to render obedience to Almighty God, to the Virgin Mary, and to the prior of the monastery. Before doing so, he put on anew the dress of his Order, which had been consecrated with holy water and incense. The prior received his vows and sprinkled holy water upon him as he prostrated himself upon the ground in the form of a cross. When the ceremony was over, his brethren congratulated him on being now like an innocent child fresh from the baptism. He was then given a cell of his own, with table, bedstead, and chair. It looked out upon the cloistered yard of the monastery. It was destroyed by a fire on March 7, 1872.



Luther now, by an inviolable promise, had bound himself to that vocation through which he aspired to gain heaven. The means whereby he hoped to realise his aspiration were abundantly provided for him in his new home. If he sought the favour of the Virgin and of other saints who should intercede for him before the judgment-seat of God and Christ, he found at once in his Order a fervent worship of the Virgin in particular, and all possible directions for her service. The doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, which Pius IX., in our own days, first ventured to raise into a dogma of the Church, was zealously defended by the Augustinians, and firmly maintained by Luther himself, even after the beginning of his war of Reformation. John Palz, one of his two theological teachers in the convent, wrote profusely in honour of this doctrine, and described all Christians as its spiritual children. Under its mantle, says Luther, he had to creep into the presence of Christ. From the multitude of other saints Luther selected a number as his constant helpers in need. We notice particularly that among these, in addition to St. Anne and St. George, was the Apostle Thomas; from him who himself had once betrayed such cowardice and want of faith he might well hope for peculiar sympathy. We have already mentioned the set prayers which filled up a great portion of the day. He was required above all things to learn and repeat them accurately, word by word. Afterwards, as he tells us, the Horae were read aloud after the manner of magpies, jackdaws, or parrots.

If he wished in penitence to be freed from the sins which had tormented him so long, and were a daily burden on his conscience, the means of confession provided by the Church were always ready for him in the convent. Once a week, at the least, every brother had to attend the private confessional. All his sins, without exception, had then to be revealed, if he wished to obtain for them forgiveness. Luther endeavoured to unbosom to his father-confessor all he had done from his youth up; but this was too much even for the priest. It was by means of a complete inward contrition, corresponding to the infinite burden of sin, that the person confessing was to make himself worthy of the forgiveness which the priest then testified to him by absolution. According to the prevailing doctrine, however, what was wanting to the penitent in completeness of contrition, was supplied by the Sacrament of Absolution. But the punishments reserved by God for sinners were not supposed to be ended by this absolution or forgiveness; these had to be atoned for by peculiar observances, imposed by the priest, and by prayer, alms, fasting, and other acts of mortification. For him who was not forgiven, remained hell; for him who had not expiated his sins, at least the fear and pains of purgatory. Such was and still is the teaching of the Catholic Church.

Thus Luther was now summoned and directed to pursue methodically the painful work of self-examination, which had oppressed him even before he entered the convent, and to use all the means of grace here offered to him. But the more he searched into his life and thoughts, the more transgressions of God's will he found, and the more grievously did they afflict his conscience. It was not, indeed, as might have been imagined with a strong young man like himself, a question of any sensual appetites, stimulated all the more by the restraints of the convent. It was with the passions of anger, hatred, and envy against his brethren and fellow-creatures, that he had to reproach himself. Those who disliked him accused him in particular of self-conceit, and of letting his temper break out too easily. Faults of that description, in thought, word, or deed, were to his own conscience as deadly sins, though to the priest who listened to him at confession, they seemed too trifling to call for enumeration. To these were added a number of smaller offences against the ordinances of the Church and the convent, with reference to outward observances and forms of worship, prayers, and so on, all of which, insignificant as they must seem to us, the Church was accustomed to treat as grievous sins. Finally, there arose in his mind a constant restlessness, which made him look for sins where none in reality existed. What he had said once before about washing one's hands, that it only made them become fouler, he had now to experience for himself. His contrition made him feel pain and fear in abundance, but not so as to enable him to say to himself that it purged the evil in the sight of God. Absolution was pronounced over him again and again, but who ever gave him any assurance that he had fulfilled its conditions, and therefore could really confide in its efficacy? As for acts of penance, he willingly performed them, and, indeed, did far more in the way of prayer, fasting, and vigil than either the rules of the convent demanded or his father-confessor enjoined. His body, from his hardy training as a child, was well prepared for such austerities, but in spite of that, he had for a long while to suffer from their results. Luther, in later years, could well bear witness of himself that he had caused his own body far more pain and torture with those practices of penance than all his enemies and persecutors had caused to theirs.

What leisure remained, after his other monastic duties were over, he devoted most industriously to the study of theology. He read, in particular, the writings of the later Scholastic theologians, with whom he had partly occupied himself during his philosophical course. Of some of these, such as the Englishman Occam, in particular, whose acuteness of reasoning he especially admired, there were writings which, in reference to questions of external Church polity, might have led him even then into paths of his own, if his mind had been disposed for it. These writings were directed against the absolute power of the Pope in the Church, and against his aggressions in the territory of Empire and State. But any such aim was very far removed from the monastic Order to which Luther had devoted himself, and from the theologians who were here his teachers. Palz, whom we have mentioned already, had especially distinguished himself by his glorification of the Papal indulgences. Moreover, the whole Order, and the German convents belonging to it in particular, were indebted to the Pope for various acts of favour. Nor was Luther himself less careful to hold firmly to the ordinances of the hierarchy, than to avail himself of the means of salvation offered by the Church.

What at all times in his theological studies enlisted his warmest personal interest was the difficult question, how sinners could obtain everlasting salvation. And all that he came to read on that subject in the writings of those theologians, and to hear from his learned teachers in the convent, served only to increase his fruitless inward wrestlings, and his anxiety and sense of need. The great father of the Church, from whom his Order was named, and to whom their rules were ascribed, had once, on the ground of his own experiences of the struggle with sin and the flesh, laid down with great force, and in a triumphant controversy with his opponents, the doctrine that, as the Apostle says, salvation depends not on the conduct of man, but on the grace of God, not on the will of man, but on the willingness of God to pardon, Who alone transforms the sinner, and grants him the power and the will for good. But any knowledge or understanding of this theology of Augustine was as strange to his own Order as to the Scholastics. It was taught, indeed, that heaven was too high for man to attain to otherwise than by the grace of God. But it was also taught that the sinner, by his own natural strength, both could and ought to do enough in God's sight to earn that grace which would then help him further on the way to heaven. He who had thus obtained that grace, it was said, felt himself enabled and impelled to do even more than God's commands require. Reference to the bitter passion and death of the Saviour was not omitted, it is true, by the theologians with whom Luther had to do, and frequently, as, for example, by his teacher Palz, was impressed on Christian hearts in words full of feeling. But the chief stress was laid, not on the redeeming love on which man could rest his confident assurance, but on the necessity of offering oneself to Him who had offered Himself for man, and of submitting even to the pains of death, in imitation of Him, and to pay the penalty of sin. In this way, again and again, Luther saw before him claims on the part of God which he could never hope to satisfy. His sorest trial was caused by the thought that God Himself should have the will to let him fail after all his fruitless efforts, and finally be numbered with the lost. And it was just with the later Scholastics that he found, not indeed a theory according to which God had simply predestined a part of mankind to perdition, but a general conception of God which would represent Him as a Being not so much of holy love, as of arbitrary, absolute will.

Luther spent two years in the convent amidst these strivings and inward sufferings. His spiritual life, as it was called, of strict discipline and asceticism was quoted in other convents as a model for imitation. Now and then, indeed, he felt himself puffed up with a sense of superior sanctity—'a proud saint,' as he afterwards called himself. But humility was the ruling temper of his mind. Frequently, in after life, he described his condition as a warning to others. Thus he speaks of the disciples of the law, who try by their own works, by constant labour, by wearing shirts of hair, by self-scourging, by fasting, by every means, in short, to satisfy the law. Such a one, he tells us, he himself had been. But he had also learned by experience, he adds, what happens when a man is tempted, and death or danger frightens him; how he despairs, nay, would fly from God as from the devil, and would rather that there were no God at all. So great became his inward sufferings, that he thought both body and soul must succumb. Thus he tells us later on, when speaking of the torments of purgatory, of a man, who doubtless was himself, how he had often endured such agony, only momentary it is true, but so hellish in its violence, that no tongue could express nor pen describe it; that, had it lasted longer, even for half an hour, or only five minutes, he must have died then and there, and his bones have been consumed to ashes. He himself saw afterwards in these pains, visitations of a special kind, such as God does not send to everyone. But they served him then as a proof, and one of universal application, that that school of the law, as he called it, would bring no real holiness either to others or himself, but must teach a man to despair of himself and of any claims or merits of his own. And, indeed, as we know from all that had gone before, it was not simply the external barrenness of the regulations of Church and convent, or a sense of imperfect fulfilment on his part, that caused his restlessness of conscience; what gave him the deepest anxiety and harassed him the most were those very inward stirrings, which revealed to him his opposition to God's eternal demands, the fulfilment of which he thought indispensable for reconciliation to God.

His experiences at the convent led him to the perception of those principles which formed the groundwork of his preaching as a Reformer. From his exemplary conduct there, and his wonderful and active conversion, he was compared to St. Paul. In quite another sense he resembled the great Apostle. The latter, when a Pharisee, had laboured to justify himself before God by the law and the prophets. 'O wretched man that I am,' Luther there must have exclaimed of himself, and afterwards looking back on his experiences, have counted all as 'dung and loss' in order to be justified rather by faith through the grace of God and the Saviour, and to become free and holy.

Just as, meanwhile, inside the Catholic Church, the laws, dogmas, and School theories relating to the means of salvation, were never able to supplant entirely the thought of the simple testimony of the Bible, and of the Church's own confession of God's forgiving love and His redeeming and absolving grace, or to prevent simple, pious Christians from seeking here a refuge in the inmost depths of their hearts, so now, at this very convent of Erfurt, where Luther's inward development in those theories and dogmas had reached so high a pitch, he received also the first serious impressions in the other direction. They found with him a difficult and gradual entrance, from the energy and consistency with which he had taken up his original standpoint. But with all the more energy, and with perfect consistency, did he abandon that standpoint, when new light dawned upon him from his new conception of the truth.

Luther's teacher at the convent, by whom we shall have to understand the superintendent of the novices, had already made a deep impression upon him, by reminding him of the words of the Apostles' Creed about the forgiveness of sins, and representing to him, what Luther had never ventured to apply to himself, that the Lord himself had commanded us to hope. For this he referred him to a passage in the writings of St. Bernard, where that fervent preacher, imbued though he was in his theology with the Church notions of the middle ages, insists on the importance of this very faith in God's forgiveness, and appeals to the words of St. Paul that man is justified by grace through faith. Remarks of this kind sank into Luther's mind, and took root there, though their fruit only ripened by degrees. Of his teacher Arnoldi, also, he spoke with admiration and gratitude, for the comfort he had known how to impart to him.

But the one who at this time acquired by far the most potent, wholesome, and lasting influence upon Luther, was the Vicar-General, John von Staupitz. He was a remarkable man, of a noble and pious disposition, and a refined and far-seeing mind. A master of the forms of Scholastic theology, he was also deeply read in Scripture; he made its teachings the special standard of his life, and was careful to enjoin others to do the same. He strove after an inward, practical life in God, not confined to mere forms and observances. Sharp conflicts and controversies were not to his taste; but mildly and discreetly he sought to plant, in his own field of work, and to leave what he had planted in God's name to grow up.



It was during his visits to Erfurt that Staupitz came in contact with the gifted, thoughtful, and melancholy young monk. He treated Luther, both in conversation and letter, with fatherly confidence, and Luther unlocked to him, as to a father, his heart and its cares. Upon his wishing to confess to him all his many small sins, Staupitz insisted first on distinguishing between what were really sins, and what were not; as for self-imagined sins, or such a patchwork of offences as Luther laid before him, he would not listen to them; that was not the kind of seriousness, he would say, that God wished to have. Luther tormented himself with a system of penance, consisting of actual pain, punishments, and expiations. Staupitz taught him that repentance, in the Scriptural meaning, was an inward change and conversion, which must proceed from the love of holiness and of God; and that, for peace with God, he must not look to his own good resolutions to lead a better life, which he had not the strength to carry out, or to his own acts, which could never satisfy the law of God, but must trust with patience to God's forgiving mercy, and learn to see in Christ, whom God permitted to suffer for the sins of man, not the threatening Judge, but rather the loving Saviour. To Christ above all he referred him, when Luther pondered on the secret eternal will of God, and was near despair. God's eternal purpose, he would say, shines clearly in the wounds of Christ. Did his temptations not cease, he bade him see in them means to draw him to the love of God. The thoughts of Staupitz turned in this on the temptations to pride, which might themselves be the means of curing that pride, and on the great things for which God wished to prepare him. In a simple, practical manner, and from the experiences of his own life, he would thus counsel and converse with Luther. During the long course of a confidential intercourse with his friend, his own theology in later years became visibly developed, and his pupil of earlier days became afterwards his teacher. But Luther, both then and throughout his life, spoke of him with grateful affection as his spiritual father, and thanked God that he had been helped out of his temptations by Dr. Staupitz, without whom he would have been swallowed up in them and perished.

The first firm ground, however, for his convictions and his inner life, and the foundation for all his later teachings and works, was found by Luther in his own persevering study of Holy Writ. In this also he was encouraged by Staupitz, who must, however, have been amazed at his indefatigable industry and zeal. For the interpretation of the Bible the means at his command were meagre in the extreme. He himself explored in all cases to their very centre the truths of Christian salvation and the highest questions of moral and religious life. A single passage of importance would occupy his thoughts for days. Significant words, which he was not able yet to comprehend, remained fixed in his mind, and he carried them silently about with him. Thus it was, for example, as he tells us, with the text in Ezekiel, 'I will not the death of a sinner,' a passage which engrossed his earnest thoughts.

It was the third and last year of his monastic life at Erfurt that brought with it, as far as we see, the decisive turn for his inward struggles and labours.

In his second year, on May 2, 1507, he received, by command of his superiors, his solemn ordination as a priest. It was then for the first time since his entry into the convent against his father's will, that the latter saw him again. A convenient day was expressly arranged for him, to enable him to take part personally at the solemnity. He rode into Erfurt with a stately train of friends and relations. But in his opinion of the step taken by his son he remained unalterably firm. At the entertainment which was given in the convent to the young priest, the latter tried to extort from him a friendly remark upon the subject, by asking him why he seemed so angry, when monastic life was such a high and holy thing. His father replied in the presence of all the company, 'Learned brothers, have you not read in Holy Writ, that a man must honour father and mother?' And on being reminded how his son had been called, nay, compelled to this new life by heaven, 'Would to God,' he answered, 'it were no spirit of the devil!' He let them understand that he was there, eating and drinking, as a matter of duty, but that he would much rather be away.

To Luther, however, the post of high dignity to which he was now promoted brought new fear and anxiety. He had now to appear before God as a priest; to have Christ's Body, the very Christ Himself, and God actually present before him at the mass on the altar; to offer the Body of Christ as a sacrifice to the living and eternal God. Added to this, there were a multitude of forms to observe, any oversight wherein was a sin. All this so overpowered him at his first mass, that he could scarcely remain at the altar; he was well-nigh, as he said afterwards, a dead man.

With these priestly functions he united an assiduous devotion to his saints. By reading mass every morning, he invoked twenty-one particular saints, whom he had chosen as his helpers, taking three at a time, so as to include them all within the week.

As regards the most important problems of life, his study of the Scriptures gradually revealed to him the light which determined his future convictions. The path had already been pointed out to him by the words of St. Paul quoted by St. Bernard. When looking back, at the close of his life, on this his inward development, he tells us how perplexed he had been by what St. Paul said of the 'righteousness of God' (Rom. i. 17). For a long time he troubled himself about the expression, connecting it as he did, according to the ruling theology of the day, with God's righteousness in His punishment of sinners. Day and night he pondered over the meaning and context of the Apostle's words. But at length, he adds, God in His great mercy revealed to him that what St. Paul and the gospel proclaimed was a righteousness given freely to us by the grace of God, Who forgives those who have faith in His message of mercy, and justifies them, and gives them eternal life. Therewith the gate of heaven was opened to him, and thenceforth the whole remaining purport of God's word became clearly revealed. Still it was only by degrees, during the latter portion of his stay at Erfurt, and even after that, that he arrived at this full perception of the truth.

After their ordination the monks received the title of fathers. Luther was not as yet relieved of the duty of going out with a brother in quest of alms. But he was soon employed in the more important business of the Order, as, for instance, in transactions with a high official of the Archbishop, in which he displayed great zeal for the priesthood and for his Order.

With the Scholastic theology of his time, albeit even now in a path marked out by himself, his keen understanding and happy memory had enabled him to become thoroughly familiar. He was scarcely twenty-five years old when Staupitz, occupied with making provision for the newly-founded university of Wittenberg, recognised in him the right man for a professorial chair.



CHAPTER II.

CALL TO WITTENBERG. JOURNEY TO ROME.

Wittenberg was at that time the youngest of the German universities. It was founded in 1502 by the Elector Frederick the Wise of Saxony, a man pre-eminent among the German princes, not only from his prudence and circumspection, but also from his faithful care for his country, his genuine love for knowledge, and his deep religious feeling. His country was not a rich one. Wittenberg itself was a poor, badly-built town of about three thousand inhabitants. But the Elector showed his wisdom above all by his right choice of men whom he consulted in his work, and to whose hands he entrusted its conduct. These, in their turn, were very careful to select talented and trustworthy teachers for the institution, which was to depend for its success on the attractions offered by pure learning, and not those of outward show and a luxurious style of life among the students. The supervision of theology was entrusted by Frederick to Staupitz, whom personally he held in high esteem, and who, together with the learned and versatile Martin Pollich of Melrichstadt, had already been the most active in his service in promoting the foundation of the university. Staupitz himself entered the theological faculty as its first Dean. A constant or regular application to his duties was rendered impossible by the multifarious business of his Order, and the journeys it entailed. But in his very capacity of Vicar-General, he strove to supply the theological needs of the university, and, by the means of education thus offered, to assist the members of his Order. Already before this the Augustinian monks had had a settlement at Wittenberg, though little is known about it. A handsome convent was built for them in 1506. In a short time young inmates of this convent, and afterwards more monks of the same Order who came from other parts, entered the university as students and took academical degrees. The patron saint of the University was, next to the Virgin Mary, St. Augustine. Trutvetter of Erfurt became professor of theology at Wittenberg in 1507. It was early in the winter of 1508-9, when Staupitz, who had been re-elected for the second time, was still dean of the theological faculty, that Luther was suddenly and unexpectedly summoned thither. He had to obey not merely the advice and wish of an affectionate friend, but the will of the principal of his Order.

As hitherto he had simply graduated as a master in philosophy, and had not qualified himself academically for a professor of theology, Luther at first was only called on to lecture on those philosophical subjects which, as we have seen, occupied his studies at Erfurt. Theologians, it is true, had been entrusted with these duties, just as, here at Wittenberg, the first dean of the philosophical faculty was a theologian, and, in addition to that indeed, a member of the Augustinian Order. But from the beginning, Luther was anxious to exchange the province of philosophy for that of theology, meaning thereby, as he expressed it, that theology which searched into the very kernel of the nut, the heart of the wheat, the marrow of the bones. So far, he was already confident of having found a sure ground for his Christian faith, as well as for his inner life, and having found it, of being able to begin teaching others. Indeed, while busily engaged in his first lectures on philosophy, he was preparing to qualify himself for his theological degrees. Here also he had to begin with his baccalaureate, comprising in fact three different steps in the theological faculty, each of which had to be reached by an examination and disputation. The first step was that of bachelor of biblical knowledge, which qualified him to lecture on the Holy Scriptures. The second, or that of a Sententiarius, was necessary for lecturing on the chief compendium of mediaeval School-theology, the so-called Sentences of Peter Lombardus, the due performance of which duly led to the attainment of the third step. Above the baccalaureate, with its three grades, came the rank of licentiate, which gave the right to teach the whole of theology, and lastly the formal, solemn admission as doctor of theology. Already, on March 9, 1509, Luther had attained his first step in the baccalaureate. At the end of six months he was qualified, by the statutes of the university, to reach the second step, and in the course of the next six months he actually reached it.

But before gaining his new rights as a Sententiarius, he was summoned back by the authorities of his Order to Erfurt. The reason we do not know; we only know that he entered the theological faculty there as professor, receiving, at the same time, the recognition of the academical rank he had acquired at Wittenberg. At Erfurt he remained about three terms, or eighteen months. After that he returned to the university at Wittenberg. Trutvetter, towards the end of 1510, had received a summons back to Erfurt from Wittenberg. The void thus caused by his summons away may have had something to do with Luther's return thither. At all events his position at Wittenberg was now vastly different from that which he had previously held. No theologian, his superior in years or fame, was any longer above him.

Ere long, however, Luther received another commission from his Order; a proof of the confidence reposed also in his zeal for the Order, his practical understanding, and his energy. It was about a matter in which, by Staupitz's desire, other Augustinian convents in Germany were to enter into a union with the reformed convents and the Vicar of the Order. As opposition had been raised, Luther in 1511, no doubt at the suggestion of Staupitz, was sent on this matter to Rome, where the decision was to be given. The journey thither and back may easily have taken six weeks or more. According to rule and custom, two monks were always sent out together, and a lay-brother was given them for service and company. They used to make their way on foot. In Rome the brethren of the Order were received by the Augustinian monastery of Maria del Popolo. Thus Luther went forth to the great capital of the world, to the throne of the Head of the Church. He remained there four weeks, discharging his duties, and surrounded by all her monuments and relics of ecclesiastical interest.

No definite account of the result of the business he had to transact, has been handed down to us. We only learn that Staupitz, the Vicar of the Order, was afterwards on friendly relations with the convents which had opposed his scheme, and that he refrained from urging any more unwelcome innovations. For us, however, the most important parts of this journey are the general observations and experiences which Luther made in Italy, and, above all, at the Papal chair itself. He often refers to them later in his speeches and writings, in the midst of his work and warfare, and he tells us plainly how important to him afterwards was all that he there saw and heard.

The devotion of a pilgrim inspired him as he arrived at the city which he had long regarded with holy veneration. It had been his wish, during his troubles and heart-searchings, to make one day a regular and general confession in that city. When he came in sight of her, he fell upon the earth, raised his hands, and exclaimed 'Hail to thee, holy Rome!' She was truly sanctified, he declared afterwards, through the blessed martyrs, and their blood which had flowed within her walls. But he added, with indignation at himself, how he had run like a crazy saint on a pilgrimage through all the churches and catacombs, and had believed what turned out to be a mass of rank lies and impostures. He would gladly then have done something for the welfare of his friends' souls by mass-reading and acts of devotion in places of particular sanctity. He felt downright sorry, he tells us, that his parents were still alive, as he might have performed some special act to release them from the pains of purgatory.

But in all this he found no real peace of mind: on the contrary, his soul was stirred to the consciousness of another way of salvation which had already begun to dawn upon him. Whilst climbing, on his knees and in prayer, the sacred stairs which were said to have led to the Judgment-hall of Pilate, and whither, to this day, worshippers are invited by the promise of Papal absolutions, he thought of the words of St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans (i. 17), 'The just shall live by faith. As for any spiritual enlightenment and consolation, he found none among the priests and monks of Rome. He was struck indeed with the external administration of business and the nice arrangement of legal matters at the Papal see. But he was shocked by all that he observed of the moral and religious life and doings at this centre of Christianity; the immorality of the clergy, and particularly of the highest dignitaries of the Church, who thought themselves highly virtuous if they abstained from the very grossest offences; the wanton levity with which the most sacred names and things were treated; the frivolous unbelief, openly expressed among themselves by the spiritual pastors and masters of the Church. He complains of the priests scrambling through mass as if they were juggling; while he was reading one mass, he found they had finished seven: one of them once urged him to be quick by saying 'Get on, get on, and make haste to send her Son home to our Lady.' He heard jokes even made about the priests when consecrating the elements at mass, repeating in Latin the words 'Bread thou art, and bread thou shalt remain: wine thou art, and wine thou shalt remain.' He often remarked in later years how they would apply in derision the term 'good Christian' to those who were stupid enough to believe in Christian truth, and to be scandalised by anything said to the contrary. No one, he declared, would believe what villanies and shameful doings were then in vogue, if they had not seen and heard them with their own eyes and ears. But the truth of his testimony is confirmed by those very men whose life and conduct so shocked and revolted him. He must have been indignant, moreover, at the contemptuous tone in which the 'stupid Germans' or 'German beasts' were spoken of, as persons entitled to no notice or respect at Rome.

He was astonished at the pomp and splendour which surrounded the Pope when he appeared in public. He speaks, as an eye-witness, of the processions, like those of a triumphing monarch. But the horrible stories were then still fresh at Rome of the late Pope Alexander and his children, the murder of his brother, the poisoning, the incest, and other crimes. Of the then Pope, Julius II., Luther heard nothing reported, except that he managed his temporal affairs with energy and shrewdness, made war, collected money, and contracted and dissolved, entered into and broke, political alliances. At the time of Luther's visit, he was just returning from a campaign in which he had conducted in person the sanguinary siege of a town. Luther did not fail to observe that he had established in the sacred city an excellent body of police, and that he caused the streets to be kept clean, so that there was not much pestilence about. But he looked upon him simply as a man of the world, and afterwards fulminated against him as a strong man of blood.

All these experiences at Rome did not, however, then avail to shake Luther's faith in the authority of the hierarchy which had such unworthy ministers; though, later on, when he was forced to attack the Papacy itself, they made it easier for him to shape his judgment and conclusions. 'I would not have missed seeing Rome,' he then declared, 'for a hundred thousand florins, for I might then have felt some apprehension that I had done injustice to the Pope. But as we see, we speak.'

During his visit he also roamed about among the ruins of the ancient capital of the world, and was astonished at the remains of bygone worldly splendour. The works of the new art which Pope Julius was then beginning to call into existence, did not appear to have particularly engaged his attention. The Pope was then progressing with the building of the new Church of St. Peter. The indulgence, of which the proceeds were to enable the completion of this vast undertaking, led afterwards to the struggle between the Augustinian monk and the Papacy.



CHAPTER III.

LUTHER AS THEOLOGICAL TEACHER, TO 1517

On his return to his Wittenberg convent, Luther was made sub-prior. At the university he entered fully upon all the rights and duties of a teacher of theology, having been made licentiate and doctor. Here again it was Staupitz, his friend and spiritual superior, who urged this step: Luther's own wish was to leave the university and devote himself entirely to the office of his Order. The Elector Frederick, who had been struck with Luther by hearing one of his sermons, took this, the first opportunity, of showing him personal sympathy, by offering to defray the expenses of his degree. Luther was reluctant to accept this, and years after he was fond of showing his friends a pear-tree in the courtyard of the convent, under which he discussed the matter with Staupitz, who, however, insisted on his demand. He must have felt the more sensibly the responsibility of his new task, from his own personal strivings after new and true theological light. It was a satisfaction to him afterwards, amidst the endless and unexpected labours and contests which his vocation brought with it, to reflect that he had undertaken it, not from choice, but so entirely from obedience. 'Had I known what I now know,' he would exclaim in his later trials and dangers, 'not ten horses would ever have dragged me into it.'

After the necessary preliminaries and customary forms, he received on October 4, 1512, the rights of a licentiate, and on the 18th and 19th was solemnly admitted to the degree of doctor. As licentiate he promised to defend with all his power the truth of the gospel, and he must have had this oath particularly in his mind when he afterwards appealed to the fact of his having sworn on his beloved Bible to preach it faithfully and in its purity. His oath as doctor, which followed, bound him to abstain from doctrines condemned by the Church and offensive to pious ears. Obedience to the Pope was not required at Wittenberg, as it was at other universities.

Others, besides Staupitz, expected from the beginning something original and remarkable from the new professor. Pollich, the first great representative of Wittenberg in its early days, and who died in the following year, said of him, 'This monk will revolutionise the whole system of Scholastic teaching.' He seems, like others whom we hear of afterwards, to have been especially struck with the depth of Luther's eyes, and thought that they must reveal the working of a wonderful mind.

A new theology, in fact, presented itself at once to Luther in the subject which, as doctor, he chose and exclusively adhered to in his lectures. This was the Bible, the very book of which the study was so generally undervalued in School-theology, which so many doctors of theology scarcely knew, and which was usually so hastily forsaken for those Scholastic sentences and a corresponding exposition of ecclesiastical dogmas.

Luther began with lectures upon the Psalms. It is his first work on theology which has remained to posterity. We still possess a Latin text of the Psalter furnished with running notes for his lectures (a copy of it is given in these pages), and also his own manuscript of those lectures themselves. In these also he states that his task was imposed upon him by a distinct command: he frankly confessed that as yet he was insufficiently acquainted with the Psalms; a comparison of his notes and lectures shows further, how continually he was engaged in prosecuting these studies. His explanations indeed fall short of what is required at present, and even of what he himself required later on. He still follows wholly the mediaeval practice of thinking it necessary to find, throughout the words of the Psalmist, pictorial allegories relating to Christ, His work of salvation, and His people. But he was thus enabled to propound, while explaining the Psalms, the fundamental principles of that doctrine of salvation which for some years past had taken such hold on his inmost thoughts and so engrossed his theological studies. And in addition to the fruits of his researches in Scripture, especially in the writings of St. Paul, we observe the use he made of the works of St. Augustine. His acquaintance with the latter did not commence until years after he had joined the Order, and had acquired independently an intimate knowledge of the Bible. It was mainly through them that he was enabled to comprehend the teaching of St. Paul, and to find how the doctrine of Divine grace, which we have already alluded to, was based on Pauline authority. Thus the founder of the Order became, as it were, his first teacher among human theologians.

From his lectures on the Psalms Luther proceeded a few years later to an exposition of those Epistles which were to him the main source of his new belief in God's mercy and justice, namely, the Epistles to the Romans and the Galatians.

In the convent also at Wittenberg, the direction of the theological studies of the brethren was entrusted to Luther. His fellow-labourer in this field was his friend John Lange, who had been with him also in the convent at Erfurt. He was distinguished for a rare knowledge of Greek, and was therefore a valuable help even to Luther, to whom he was indebted in turn for a prolific advance in learning of another kind. Closely allied with Luther also was Wenzeslaus Link, the prior of the convent, who obtained his degree as doctor of the theological faculty a year before him. These men were drawn together by similarity of ideas, and by a strong and enduring personal friendship; they had possibly been acquainted at the school at Magdeburg. The new life and activity awakened at Wittenberg attracted clever young monks more and more from a distance. The convent, not yet quite finished, had scarcely room enough for them, or means for their maintenance.

When in 1515 the associated convents had to choose at Gotha, on a chapter-day, their new authorities, Luther was appointed, Staupitz being still Vicar-General, the Provincial Vicar for Meissen and Thuringia. He obtained by this office the superintendence of eleven convents, to which in the next year he paid the customary visitation. In person, by word of mouth, and equally by letters, we see him labouring with self-sacrificing zeal for the spiritual welfare of those committed to his care, for the correction of bad monks, for the comfort of those oppressed with temptations, as also for the temporal and domestic, and even the legal business of the different convents.

In addition to his academical duties, he performed double service as a preacher. In the first place he had to preach in his convent, as he had already done at Erfurt. When the new convent at Wittenberg was opened, the church was not yet ready; and in a small, poor, tumbledown chapel close by, made up of wood and clay, he began to preach the gospel and unfold the power of his eloquence. When, shortly after, the town-priest of Wittenberg became weak and ailing, his congregation pressed Luther to occupy the pulpit in his place. He performed these different duties with alacrity, energy, and power. He would preach sometimes daily for a week together, sometimes even three times in one day; during Lent in 1517 he gave two sermons every day in addition to his lectures at the university. The zeal which he displayed in proclaiming the gospel to his hearers in church, was quite as new and peculiar to himself as the lofty interest he imparted to his professorial lectures on the Scriptures.

Melancthon says of these first lectures by Luther on the Psalms and the Epistle to the Romans, that after a long and dark night, a new day was now seen to dawn on Christian doctrine. In these lectures Luther pointed out the difference between the law and the gospel. He refuted the errors, then predominant in the Church and schools, the old teaching of the Pharisees, that men could earn forgiveness by their works, and that mere outward penance would justify them in the sight of God. Luther called men back to the Son of God; and just as John the Baptist pointed to the Lamb of God who bore our sins, so Luther showed how, for his Son's sake, God in His mercy will forgive us our sins, and how we must accept such mercy in faith.

In fact, the whole groundwork of that Christian faith on which the inner life of the Reformer rests, for which he fought, and which gave him strength and fresh courage for the fight, lies already before us in his lectures and sermons during those years, and increases in clearness and decision. The 'new day' had, in reality, broken upon his eyes. That fundamental truth which he designated later as the article by which a Christian Church must stand or fall, stands here already firmly established, before he in the least suspects that it would lead him to separate from the Catholic Church, or that his adopting it would occasion a reconstruction of the Church. The primary question around which everything else centred, remained always this—how he, the sinful man, could possibly stand before God and obtain salvation. With this came the question as to the righteousness of God; and now he was no longer terrified by the avenging justice of God, wherewith He threatens the sinner; but he recognised and saw the meaning of that righteousness declared in the gospel (Rom. i. 17, iii. 25), by which the merciful God justifies the faithful, in that He of His own grace re-establishes them in His sight, and effects an inward change, and lets them thenceforth, like children, enjoy His fatherly love and blessing. Luther, in teaching now that justification proceeds from faith, rejects, above all, the notion that man by any outward acts of his own can ever atone for his sins and merit the favour of God. He reminds us, moreover, with regard to moral works especially, that good fruits always presuppose a good tree, upon which alone they can grow, and that, in like manner, goodness can only proceed from a man, if and when, in his inward being, his inward thoughts, tendencies, and feelings, he has already become good; he must be righteous himself, in a word, before he works righteousness. But it is faith, and faith alone, which in the inward man determines real communion with God. Then only, and gradually, can a man's own inner being, trusting to God, and by means of His imparted grace, become truly renovated and purged from sin. Had Luther, indeed, made salvation depend on such a righteousness, derived from a man's own works, as should satisfy the holy God, the very consciousness of his own sins and infirmities would have made him despair of such salvation. Moreover, all the working of the Holy Spirit, and His gifts in our hearts, presuppose that we are already participators of the forgiving mercy and grace of God, and are received into communion with Him. To this, as Luther teaches after St. Paul, we can only attain through faith in the joyful message of His mercy, in His compassion, and in His Son, whom He has sent to be our Redeemer. Thus he speaks of faith, even in his earliest notes on the Psalter, as the keystone, the marrow, the short road. The worst enemy, in his sight, is self-righteousness; he confesses having had to combat it himself.

Herein also Luther found the theology of St. Augustine in accord with the testimony of the great Apostle. While studying that theology, his conviction of the power of sin and the powerlessness of man's own strength to overcome it, grew more and more decided. But St. Paul taught him to understand that belief somewhat differently to St. Augustine. To Luther it was not merely a recognition of objective truths or historical facts. What he understood by it, with a clearness and decision which are wanting in St. Augustine's teaching, was the trusting of the heart in the mercy offered by the message of salvation, the personal confidence in the Saviour Christ and in that which He has gained for us. With this faith, then, and by the merits and mediation of the Saviour in whom this faith is placed, we stand before God, we have already the assurance of being known by God and of being saved, and we are partakers of the Holy Spirit, who sanctifies more and more the inner man. According to St. Augustine, on the contrary, and to all Catholic theologians who followed his teaching, what will help us before God is rather that inward righteousness which God Himself gives to man by His Holy Spirit and the workings of His grace, or, as the expression was, the righteousness infused by God. The good, therefore, already existing in a Christian is so highly esteemed that he can thereby gain merit before the just God and even do more than is required of him. But to a conscience like Luther's, which applied so severe a standard to human virtue and works, and took such stern count of past and present sins, such a doctrine could bring no assurance of forgiveness, mercy, and salvation. It was in faith alone that Luther had found this assurance, and for it he needed no merits of his own. The happy spirit of the child of God, by its own free impulse, would produce in a Christian the genuine good fruit pleasing in God's sight. It was a long time before Luther himself became aware how he differed on this point from his chief teacher amongst theologians. But we see the difference appear at the very root and beginning of his new doctrine of salvation; and it comes out finally, based on apostolic authority, clear and sharp, in the theology of the Reformer.

And inseparably connected with this is what Melancthon said about the Law and the Gospel. Luther himself always declared in later days, that the whole understanding of the truth of Christian salvation, as revealed by God, depends on a right perception of the relation of one to the other, and this very relation he explained, shortly before the beginning of his contest with the Church, upon the authority of St. Paul's Epistles. The Law is to him the epitome of God's demands with regard to will and works, which still the sinner cannot fulfil. The Gospel is the blessed offer and announcement of that forgiving mercy of God which is to be accepted in simple faith. By the Law says Luther, the sinner is judged, condemned, killed; he himself had to toil and disquiet himself under it, as though he were in the hands of a gaoler and executioner. The Gospel first lifts up those who are crushed, and makes them alive by the faith which the good message awakens in their hearts. But God works in both; in the one, a work which to Him, the God of love, would properly be strange; in the other, His own work of love, for which, however, he has first prepared the sinner by the former.

Whilst Luther was prosecuting his labours in this path, he became acquainted in 1516 with the sermons of the pious, deep-thinking theologian Tauler, who died in 1361; and at the same time an old theological tract, written not long after Tauler, fell into his hands, to which he gave the name of 'German Theology.' Now for the first time, and in the person of their noblest representatives, he was confronted with the Christian and theological views which were commonly designated as the practical German mysticism of the middle ages. Here, instead of the value which the mediaeval Church, so addicted to externals, ascribed to outward acts and ordinances, he found the most devout absorption in the sentiments of real Christian religion. Instead of the barren, formal expositions and logical operations of the scholastic intellect, he found a striving and wrestling of the whole inner man, with all the mind and will, after direct communion and union with God, who Himself seeks to draw into this union the soul devoted to Him, and makes it become like to himself. Such a depth of contemplation and such fervour of a Christian mind Luther had not found even in an Augustine. He rejoiced to see this treasure written in his native German, and it certainly was the noblest German he had ever read. He felt himself marvellously impressed by this theology; he knew of no sermons, so he wrote to a friend, which agreed more faithfully with the gospel than those of Tauler. He published that tract—then not quite complete—in 1516, and again afterwards in 1518. It was the first publication from his hand. His further sermons and writings show how deeply he was imbued with its contents. The influences he here received had a lasting effect on the formation of his inner life and his theology.

With regard to sin, he now learned that its deepest roots and fundamental character lay in our own wills, in self-love and selfishness. To enjoy communion with God it is necessary that the heart should put away all worldliness, and let its natural will be dead, so that God alone may live and work in us. So, as he says on the title-page of 'German Theology,' shall Adam die in us and Christ be made alive. But the essential peculiarity of Luther's doctrine of salvation, grounded as it was directly on Scripture, still remained intact, despite the theology no less of the mystics than of Augustine, and, after passing through these influences, developed its full independence during his struggles as a Reformer. For this communion with God he never thought it necessary, as the mystics maintained, to renounce one's personality and retire altogether from the world and things temporal: a purely passive attitude towards God, and a blessedness consisting in such an attitude, was not his highest or ultimate ideal. A man's personality, he held, should only be destroyed so far as it resists the will of God, and dares to assert its self-righteousness and merits before Him. The road to real communion with God was always that 'short road' of faith, in which the contrite sinner, who feels his personality crushed by the consciousness of sin, grasps the hand of Divine mercy, and is lifted up by it and restored. Christ was manifested, as the mystics said with Scripture, in order that the man's personality should die with Him, and imitate Him in self-renunciation. But the faith, on which Luther insisted, saw in Christ above all the Saviour who has died for us, and who pleads for us before God with His holy life and conduct, that the faithful may obtain through Him reconciliation and salvation. What the Saviour is to us in this respect Luther has thus summarised in words of his own: 'Lord Jesus,' he says, 'Thou hast taken to Thyself what is mine, and given to me what is Thine.' The main divergence between Luther and the German mysticism of the middle ages consists primarily in a different estimate of the general relations between God and the moral personality of man. With the mystics, behind the Christian and religious, lay a metaphysical conception of God, as a Being of absolute power, superior to all destiny, apparently rich in attributes, but in reality an empty Abstraction,—above all, a Being who suffers nothing finite to exist in independence of Himself. With Luther the fundamental conception of God remained this, that He is the perfect Good, and that, in His perfect holiness, He is Love. This is the God by whom the sinner who has faith is restored and justified. From this conception as a starting-point, Luther acquired fresh strength and energy for advancing in the fight, whilst the pious mystic remained passively and quietly behind. From this also he learned to realise Christian liberty and moral duty in regard to daily life and its vocations, whilst the mystics remained shut off altogether from the world. The intimate connection between the conclusions to which the views of Tauler tended, and the principles from which Luther started, is shown further by the superior attraction which those sermons, so warmly recommended by Luther, continued to exercise upon members of the Evangelical, compared with those of the Catholic Church.

What Christ has suffered and done for us, and how we gain through Him the righteousness of God, peace, and real life,—these thoughts of practical religion pervaded now all Luther's discourses. To the saving knowledge of these facts he endeavoured to direct his lectures, and discarded the dogmatical inquiries and subtle investigations and speculations of School-theology. At first, and even in his sermons at the convent, he had employed in his exposition of Biblical truths, as was the custom of learned preachers, philosophical expressions and references to Aristotle and famous Scholastics. But latterly, and at the time we are speaking of, he had entirely left this off; and, as regards the form of his sermons, instead of a stiff, logical construction of sentences, he employed that simple, lively, powerful eloquence which distinguished him above all preachers of his time. In 1516 and 1517 he delivered a course of sermons on the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer before his town congregation, with the view of showing the connection of the truths of Christian religion. He further had printed in 1517, for Christian readers generally, an explanation of the seven penitential psalms. He wished, as the title stated, to expound them thoroughly in their Scriptural meaning, for setting forth the grace of Christ and God, and enabling true self-knowledge. It is the first of his writings, published by himself, and in the German language, which we possess; for the later lectures that were published were delivered by him in Latin, and the first sermons we have of his were also written by him in that language. We give here the title and preface from the original print.



Luther had now become possessed with a burning desire to refute, by means of the truth he had newly learned, the teaching and system of that School-theology on which he himself had wasted so much time and labour, and by which he saw that same truth darkened and obstructed. He first attacked Aristotle, the heathen philosopher from whom this theology, he said, received its empty and perverted formalism, whose system of physics was worthless, and who, especially in his conception of moral life and moral good, was blind, since he knew nothing of the essence and ground of true righteousness. The Scholastics, as Luther himself remarked against them, had failed signally to understand the genuine original philosophy of Aristotle. But the real greatness and significance which must be allowed to that philosophy, in the development of human thought and knowledge, were far removed from those profound questions of Christian morality and religion which engrossed Luther's mind, and from those truths to which he again had to testify. In theses which formed the subject of disputation among his followers, Luther expressed with particular acuteness his own doctrine, and that of Augustine, concerning the inability of man, and the grace of God, and his opposition to the previously dominant Schoolmen and their Aristotle. He was anxious also to hear the verdict of others, particularly of his teacher Trutvetter, upon his new polemics.

He already could boast that, at Wittenberg, his, or as he called it, the Augustinian theology, had found its way to victory. It was adopted by the theologians who had taught there, though wholly in the old Scholastic fashion, before him, especially by Carlstadt, who soon strove to outbid him in this new direction, and who, later on, in his own zeal for reform, fell into disputes with the great Reformer himself, and also by Nicholas von Amsdorf, whom we shall see afterwards at Luther's side as his personal friend and strongest supporter. At Erfurt, Luther's former convent, his friend and sympathiser Lange was now prior, having returned thither from Wittenberg, where indeed his former teachers could not yet accommodate themselves to his new ways. Of great importance to Luther's work and position was his friendship with George Spalatin (properly Burkardt of Spelt), the court preacher and private secretary of the Elector Frederick, a conscientious, clear-minded theologian, and a man of varied culture and calm, thoughtful judgment. He was of the same age as Luther; he had been with him at Erfurt as a fellow-student, and at Wittenberg afterwards, whither he came as tutor to the prince, and had remained on terms of intimacy with him. To Luther he proved an upright, warmhearted friend, and to the Elector a faithful and sagacious adviser. It was mainly due to his influence that the Elector showed such continued favour to Luther, marks of which he displayed by presents, such as that of a piece of richly-wrought cloth, which Luther thought almost too good for a monk's frock. Spalatin had also been a member of that circle of 'poets' at Erfurt; he kept up his connection with them, and corresponded with Erasmus, the head of the Humanists, and thus acted as a medium of communication for Luther in this quarter. Elsewhere in Germany we find the theology of Augustine or of St. Paul, as represented by Luther, taking root first among his friends at Nuremberg; in 1517 W. Link came there as prior of the Augustinian convent.



We have seen how Luther as a student associated with the young Humanists at Erfurt, and now, whilst striving further on that road of theology which he had marked out for himself, he was still accessible to the general interests of learning as represented by the Humanistic movement. He made the acquaintance, at least by letter, of the celebrated Mutianus Rufus of Gotha, whom those 'poets' honoured as their famous master, and with whom Lange and Spalatin maintained a respectful intercourse. When the Humanist John Reuchlin, then the first Hebrew scholar in Germany, was declared a heretic by zealous theologians and monks, on account of the protests he raised against the burning of the Rabbinical books of the Jews, and a fierce quarrel broke out in consequence, Luther, on being asked by Spalatin for his opinion, declared himself strongly for the Humanists against those who, being gnats themselves, tried to swallow camels. His heart, he said, was so full of this matter that his tongue could not find utterance. Still, the bold satire with which his former college friend Crotus and other Humanists lashed their opponents and held them up to ridicule, as in the famous 'Epistolae Virorum Obscurorum,' was not to Luther's taste at all. The matter was to him far too serious for such treatment.

The first place among the men who revived the knowledge of antiquity, and strove to apply that knowledge for the benefit of their own times and particularly of theology, belongs undoubtedly to Erasmus, from his comprehensive learning, his refinement of mind, and his indefatigable industry. Just when, in 1516, he brought out a remarkable edition of the New Testament, with a translation and explanatory comments, which forms in fact an epoch in its history. Luther recognised his high talents and services, and was anxious to see him exercise the influence he deserved. He speaks of him in a letter to Spalatin as 'our Erasmus.' But nevertheless he steadily asserted his own independence, and reserved the right of free judgment about him. Two things he lamented in him; first of all that he lacked, as was the case, the comprehension of that fundamental doctrine of St. Paul as to human sin and righteousness by faith; and further, that he made even the errors of the Church, which should be a source of genuine sorrow to every Christian, a subject of ridicule. He sought, however, to keep his opinion of Erasmus to himself, to avoid giving occasion to his jealous and unscrupulous enemies to malign him.



Bitterness and ill-will, aroused by Luther's words and works, were already not wanting among the followers of the hitherto dominant views of theology and the Church. But of any separation from the Church, her authority and her fundamental forms, he had as yet no intention or idea. Nor, on the other hand, did his enemies take occasion to obtain sentence of expulsion against him, until he found himself forced to conclusions which threatened the power and the income of the hierarchy.

As yet he had not expressed or entertained a thought against the ordinances which enslaved every Christian to the priesthood and its power. He certainly showed, in his new doctrine of salvation, the way which leads the soul, by simple faith in the message of mercy sent to all alike, to its God and Saviour. But he had no idea of disputing that everyone should confess to the priests, receive from them absolution, and submit to all the penances and ordinances ordained by the Church. And in that very doctrine of salvation he knew that he was at one with Augustine, the most eminent teacher of the Western Church, whilst the opposite views, however dominant in point of fact, had never yet received any formal sanction of the Church. Zealously, indeed, he soon exposed many practical abuses and errors in the religious life of the Church. But hitherto these were only such as had been long before complained of and combated by others, and which the Church had never expressly declared as essential parts of her own system. He gave vent freely to his opinions about the superstitious worship of saints, about absurd legends, about the heathen practice of invoking the saints for temporal welfare or success. But praying to the saints to intercede for us with God he still justified against the heresy originating with Huss, and with fervour he invoked the Virgin from the pulpit. He was anxious that the priests and bishops should do their duty much better and more conscientiously than was the case, and that instead of troubling themselves about worldly matters, they should care for the good of souls, and feed their flocks with God's word. He saw in the office of bishop, from the difficulties and temptations it involved, an office fraught with danger, and one therefore that he did not wish for his Staupitz. But the Divine origin and Divine right of the hierarchical offices of pope, bishop, and priest, and the infallibility of the Church, thus governed, he held inviolably sacred. The Hussites who broke from her were to him 'sinful heretics.' Nay, at that time he used the very argument by which afterwards the Romish Church thought to crush the principles and claims of the Reformation, namely, that if we deny that power of the Church and Papacy, any man may equally say that he is filled with the Holy Ghost; everyone will claim to be his own master, and there will be as many Churches as heads.

As yet he was only seeking to combat those abuses which were outside the spirit and teaching of the Catholic Church, when the scandals of the traffic in indulgences called him to the field of battle. And it was only when in this battle the Pope and the hierarchy sought to rob him of his evangelical doctrine of salvation, and of the joy and comfort he derived from the knowledge of redemption by Christ, that, from his stand on the Bible, he laid his hands upon the strongholds of this Churchdom.



PART III.

THE BREACH WITH ROME, UP TO THE DIET OF WORMS. 1517-21.



CHAPTER I.

THE NINETY-FIVE THESES.

The first occasion for the struggle which led to the great division in the Christian world was given by that magnificent edifice of ecclesiastical splendour intended by the popes as the creation of the new Italian art; by the building, in a word, of St. Peter's Church, which had already been commenced when Luther was at Rome. Indulgences were to furnish the necessary means. Julius II. had now been succeeded on the Papal chair by Leo X. So far as concerned the encouragement of the various arts, the revival of ancient learning, and the opening up, by that means, to the cultivated and upper classes of society of a spring of rich intellectual enjoyment, Leo would have been just the man for the new age. But whilst actively engaged in these pursuits and pleasures, he remained indifferent to the care and the spiritual welfare of his flock, whom as Christ's vicar he had undertaken to feed. The frivolous tone of morals that ruled at the Papal see was looked upon as an element of the new culture. As regards the Christian faith, a blasphemous saying is reported of Leo, how profitable had been the fable of Christ. He had no scruples in procuring money for the new church, which, as he said, was to protect and glorify the bones of the holy Apostles, by a dirty traffic, pernicious to the soul. Meanwhile, the popes were not ashamed to appropriate freely to their own needs that indulgence money, which was nominally for the Church and for other objects, such as the war against the Turks.

In order to appreciate the nature of these indulgences and of Luther's attack upon them, it is necessary first to realise more exactly the significance which the teachers of the Church ascribed to them. The simple statement that absolution or forgiveness of sins was sold for money, must in itself be offence enough to any moral Christian conscience; and we can only wonder that Luther proceeded so prudently and gradually towards his object of getting rid of indulgences altogether. But the arguments by which they were explained and justified did not sound so simple or concise.



Forgiveness of sins, it was maintained, must be gained by penance, namely, by the so-called sacrament of penance, including the acts of private confession and priestly absolution. In this the father-confessor promised to him who had confessed his sins, absolution for them, whereby his guilt was forgiven and he was freed from eternal punishment. A certain contrition of the heart was required from him, even if only imperfect, and proceeding perhaps solely from the fear of punishment, but which nevertheless was deemed sufficient, its imperfection being supplied by the sacrament. But though absolved, he had still to discharge heavy burdens of temporal punishment, penances imposed by the Church, and chastisements which, in the remission of eternal punishment, God in His righteousness still laid upon him. If he failed to satisfy these penances in this life, he must, even if no longer in danger of hell, atone for the rest in the torments of the fire of purgatory. The indulgence now came in to relieve him. The Church was content with easier tasks, as, at that time, with a donation to the sacred edifice at Rome. And even this was made to rest on a certain basis of right. The Church, it was said, had to dispose of a treasure of merits which Christ and the saints, by their good works, had accumulated before the righteous God, and those riches were now to be so disposed of by Christ's representatives, that they should benefit the buyer of indulgences. In this manner penances which otherwise would have to be endured for years were commuted into small donations of money, quickly paid off. The contrition required for the forgiveness of sins was not altogether ignored; as, for instance, in the official announcements of indulgences, and in the letters or certificates granting indulgences to individuals in return for payment. But in those documents, as also in the sermons exhorting the multitude to purchase, the chief stress, so far as possible, was laid upon the payment. The confession, and with it the contrition, was also mentioned, but nothing was said about the personal remission of sins depending on this rather than on the money. Perfect forgiveness of sins was announced to him who, after having confessed and felt contrition, had thrown his contribution into the box. For the souls in purgatory nothing was required but money offered for them by the living. 'The moment the money tinkles in the box, the soul springs up out of purgatory.' A special tariff was arranged for the commission of particular sins, as, for example, six ducats for adultery.

The traffic in indulgences for the building of St. Peter's was delegated by commission from the Pope, over a large part of Germany, to Albert, Archbishop of Mayence and Magdeburg. We shall meet with this great prince of the Church, as now in connection with the origin of the Reformation, so during its subsequent course. Albert, the brother of the Elector of Brandenburg, and cousin of the Grand-Master of the Teutonic Order in Prussia, stood in 1517, though only twenty-seven years old, already at the head of those two great ecclesiastical provinces of Germany; Wittenberg also belonged to his Magdeburg diocese. Raised to such an eminence and so rapidly by good fortune, he was filled with ambitious thoughts. He troubled himself little about theology. He loved to shine as the friend of the new Humanistic learning, especially of an Erasmus, and as patron of the fine arts, particularly of architecture, and to keep a court the splendour of which might correspond with his own dignity and love of art. For this his means were inadequate, especially as, on entering upon his Archbishopric of Mayence, he had had to pay, as was customary, a heavy sum to the Pope for the pallium given for the occasion. For this he had been forced to borrow thirty thousand gulden from the house of Fugger at Augsburg, and he found his aspirations incessantly crippled by want of money and by debts. He succeeded at last in striking a bargain with the Pope, by which he was allowed to keep half of the profits arising from the sale of indulgences, in order to repay the Fuggers their loan. Behind the preacher of indulgences, who announced God's mercy to the paying believers, stood the agents of that commercial house, who collected their share for their principals. The Dominican monk, John Tetzel, a profligate man, whom the Archbishop had appointed his sub-commissioner, drove the largest trade in this business with an audacity and a power of popular declamation well suited to his work.



Contemporaries have described the lofty and well-ordered pomp with which such a commissioner entered on the performance of his exalted duties. Priests, monks, and magistrates, schoolmasters and scholars, men, women, and children, went forth in procession to meet him, with songs and ringing of bells, with flags and torches. They entered the church together amidst the pealing of the organ. In the middle of the church, before the altar, was erected a large red cross, hung with a silken banner which bore the Papal arms. Before the cross was placed a large iron chest to receive the money; specimens of these chests are still shown in many places. Daily, by sermons, hymns, processions round the cross, and other means of attraction, the people were invited and urged to embrace this incomparable offer of salvation. It was arranged that auricular confession should be taken wholesale. The main object was the payment, in return for which the 'contrite' sinners received a letter of indulgence from the commissioner, who, with a significant reference to the absolute power granted to himself, promised them complete absolution and the good opinion of their fellow-men.



We have evidence to show how Tetzel preached himself, and what he wished these sermons on indulgences to be like. Calling upon the people, he summoned all, and especially the great sinners, such as murderers and robbers, to turn to their God and receive the medicine which God, in his mercy and wisdom, had provided for their benefit. St. Stephen once had given up his body to be stoned, St. Lawrence his to be roasted, St. Bartholomew his to a fearful death. Would they not willingly sacrifice a little gift in order to obtain everlasting life? Of the souls in purgatory it was said, 'They, your parents and relatives, are crying out to you, "We are in the bitterest torments, you could deliver us by giving a small alms, and yet you will not. We have given you birth, nourished you, and left to you our temporal goods; and such is your cruelty that you, who might so easily make us free, leave us here to lie in the flames."'

To all who directly or indirectly, in public or in private, should in any way depreciate, or murmur against, or obstruct these indulgences, it was announced that, by Papal edict, they lay already by so doing under the ban of excommunication, and could only be absolved by the Pope or by one of his commissioners.

After Luther had once ventured to attack openly this sale of indulgences, it was admitted even by their defenders and the violent enemies of the Reformer, that in those days 'greedy commissioners, monks and priests, had preached unblushingly about indulgences, and had laid more stress upon the money than upon confession, repentance, and sorrow.' Christian people were shocked and scandalised at the abuse. It was asked whether indeed God so loved the money, that for the sake of a few pence He would leave a soul in everlasting torments, or why the Pope did not out of love empty the whole of purgatory, since he was willing to free innumerable souls in return for such a trifle as a contribution to the building of a church. But not one of them found it then expedient to incur the abuse and slander of a Tetzel by a word spoken openly against the gross misconduct the fruits of which were so important to the Pope and the Archbishop.

Tetzel now came to the borders of the Elector of Saxony's dominion, and to the neighbourhood of Wittenberg. The Elector would not allow him to enter his territory, on account of so much money being taken away, and accordingly he opened his trade at Juterbok. Among those who confessed to Luther, there were some who appealed to letters of indulgence which they had purchased from him there.

In a sermon preached as early as the summer of 1516, Luther had warned his congregation against trusting to indulgences, and he did not conceal his aversion to the system, whilst admitting his doubts and ignorance as to some important questions on the subject. He knew that these opinions and objections would grieve the heart of his sovereign; for Frederick, who with all his sincere piety, still shared the exaggerated veneration of the middle ages for relics, and had formed a rich collection of them in the Church of the Castle and Convent at Wittenberg, which he was always endeavouring to enrich, rejoiced at the Pope's lavish offer of indulgences to all who at an annual exhibition of these sacred treasures should pay their devotions at the nineteen altars of this church. A few years before he had caused a 'Book of Relics' to be printed, which enumerated upwards of five thousand different specimens, and showed how they represented half a million days of indulgence. Luther relates how he had incurred the Elector's displeasure by a sermon preached in his Castle Church against indulgences: he preached, however, again before the exhibition held in February 1517. The honour and interest, moreover, of his university had to be considered, for that church was attached to it, the professors were also dignitaries of the convent, and the university benefited by the revenues of the foundation.



Luther was then, as he afterwards described himself, a young doctor of divinity, ardent, and fresh from the forge. He was burning to protest against the scandal. But as yet he restrained himself and kept quiet. He wrote, indeed, on the subject to some of the bishops. Some listened to him graciously; others laughed at him; none wished to take any steps in the matter.

He longed now to make known to theologians and ecclesiastics generally his thoughts about indulgences, his own principles, his own opinions and doubts, to excite public discussion on the subject, and to awake and maintain the fray. This he did by the ninety-five Latin theses or propositions which he posted on the doors of the Castle Church at Wittenberg, on October 31, 1517, the eve of All Saints' Day and of the anniversary of the consecration of the Church.

These theses were intended as a challenge for disputation. Such public disputations were then very common at the universities and among theologians, and they were meant to serve as means not only of exercising learned thought, but of elucidating the truth. Luther headed his theses as follows:—

'Disputation to explain the virtue of indulgences.-In charity and in the endeavour to bring the truth to light, a disputation on the following propositions will be held at Wittenberg, presided over by the Reverend Father Martin Luther.... Those who are unable to attend personally may discuss the question with us by letter. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.'

It was in accordance with the general custom of that time that, on the occasion of a high festival, particular acts and announcements, and likewise disputations at a university, were arranged, and the doors of a collegiate church were used for posting such notices.

The contents of these theses show that their author really had such a disputation in view. He was resolved to defend with all his might certain fundamental truths to which he firmly adhered. Some points he considered still within the region of dispute; it was his wish and object to make these clear to himself by arguing about them with others.

Recognising the connection between the system of indulgences and the view of penance entertained by the Church, he starts with considering the nature of true Christian repentance; but he would have this understood in the sense and spirit taught by Christ and the Scriptures, as, indeed, Staupitz had first taught it to him. He begins with the thesis 'Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when He says Repent, desires that the whole life of the believer should be one of repentance.' He means, as the subsequent theses express it, that true inward repentance, that sorrow for sin and hatred of one's own sinful self, from which must proceed good works and mortification of the sinful flesh. The Pope could only remit his sin to the penitent so far as to declare that God had forgiven it.

Thus then the theses expressly declare that God forgives no man his sin without making him submit himself in humility to the priest who represents Him, and that He recognises the punishments enjoined by the Church in her outward sacrament of penance. But Luther's leading principles are consistently opposed to the customary announcements of indulgences by the Church. The Pope, he holds, can only grant indulgences for what the Pope and the law of the Church have imposed; nay, the Pope himself means absolution from these obligations only, when he promises absolution from all punishment. And it is only the living against whom those punishments are directed which the Church's discipline of penance enjoins: nothing, according to her own laws, can be imposed upon those in another world.

Further on, Luther declares, 'When true repentance is awakened in a man, full absolution from punishment and sin comes to him without any letters of indulgence.' At the same time he says that such a man would willingly undergo self-imposed chastisement, nay, he would even seek and love it.

Still, it is not the indulgences themselves, if understood in the right sense, that he wishes to be attacked, but the loose babble of those who sold them. Blessed, he says, be he who protests against this, but cursed be he who speaks against the truth of apostolic indulgences. He finds it difficult, however, to praise these to the people, and at the same time to teach them the true repentance of the heart. He would have them even taught that a Christian would do better by giving money to the poor than by spending it in buying indulgences, and that he who allows a poor man near him to starve draws down on himself, not indulgences, but the wrath of God. In sharp and scornful language he denounces the iniquitous trader in indulgences, and gives the Pope credit for the same abhorrence for the traffic that he felt himself. Christians must be told, he says, that if the Pope only knew of it, he would rather see St. Peter's Church in ashes, than have it built with the flesh and bones of his sheep.

Agreeably with what the preceding theses had said about the true penitent's earnestness and willingness to suffer, and the temptation offered to a mere carnal sense of security, Luther concludes as follows: 'Away therefore with all those prophets who say to Christ's people "Peace, peace!" when there is no peace, but welcome to all those who bid them seek the Cross of Christ, not the Cross which bears the Papal arms. Christians must be admonished to follow Christ their Master through torture, death, and hell, and thus through much tribulation, rather than by a carnal feeling of false security, hope to enter the kingdom of heaven.

The Catholics objected to this doctrine of salvation advanced by Luther, that by trusting to God's free mercy and by undervaluing good works, it led to moral indolence. But on the contrary, it was to the very unbending moral earnestness of a Christian conscience, which, indignant at the temptations offered to moral frivolity, to a deceitful feeling of ease in respect to sin and guilt, and to a contempt of the fruits of true morality, rebelled against the false value attached to this indulgence money, that these Theses, the germ, so to speak, of the Reformation, owed their origin and prosecution. With the same earnestness he now for the first time publicly attacked the ecclesiastical power of the Papacy, in so far namely as, in his conviction, it invaded the territory reserved to Himself by the Heavenly Lord and Judge. This was what the Pope and his theologians and ecclesiastics could least of all endure.

On the same day that these theses were published, Luther sent a copy of them with a letter to the Archbishop Albert, his 'revered and gracious Lord and Shepherd in Christ.' After a humble introduction, he begged him most earnestly to prevent the scandalising and iniquitous harangues with which his agents hawked about their indulgences, and reminded him that he would have to give an account of the souls entrusted to his episcopal care.

The next day he addressed himself to the people from the pulpit, in a sermon he had to preach on the festival of All Saints. After exhorting them to seek their salvation in God and Christ alone, and to let the consecration by the Church become a real consecration of the heart, he went on to tell them plainly, with regard to indulgences, that he could only absolve from duties imposed by the Church, and that they dare not rely on him for more, nor delay on his account the duties of true repentance.



CHAPTER II.

THE CONTROVERSY CONCERNING INDULGENCES.

Anyone who has heard that the great movement of the Reformation in Germany, and with it the founding of the Evangelical Church, originated in the ninety-five theses of Luther, and who then reads these theses through, might perhaps be surprised at the importance of their results. They referred, in the first place, to only one particular point of Christian doctrine, not at all to the general fundamental question as to how sinners could obtain forgiveness and be saved, but merely to the remission of punishments connected with penance. They contained no positive declaration against the most essential elements of the Catholic theory of penance, or against the necessity of oral confession, or of priestly absolution, and such subjects; they presupposed, in fact, the existence of a purgatory. Much of what they attacked, not one of the learned theologians of the middle ages or of those times had ever ventured to assert; as, for instance, the notion that indulgences made the remission of sins to the individual complete on the part of God. Moreover, the ruling principles of the theology of the day, which defended the system of indulgences, though resting mainly on the authority of the great Scholastic teacher Thomas Aquinas, were not adopted by other Scholastics, and had never been erected into a dogma by any decree of the Church. Theologians before Luther, and with far more acuteness and penetration than he showed in his theses, had already assailed the whole system of indulgences. And, in regard to any idea on Luther's part of the effects of his theses extending widely in Germany, it may be noticed that not only were they composed in Latin, but that they dealt largely with Scholastic expressions and ideas, which a layman would find it difficult to understand.

Nevertheless the theses created a sensation which far surpassed Luther's expectations. In fourteen days, as he tells us, they ran through the whole of Germany, and were immediately translated and circulated in German. They found, indeed, the soil already prepared for them, through the indignation long since and generally aroused by the shameless doings they attacked; though till then nobody, as Luther expresses it, had liked to bell the cat, nobody had dared to expose himself to the blasphemous clamour of the indulgence-mongers and the monks who were in league with them, still less to the threatened charge of heresy.

On the other hand, the very impunity with which this traffic in indulgences had been maintained throughout German Christendom, had served to increase from day to day the audacity of its promoters. Ranged on the side of these doctrines of Thomas Aquinas, the chief mainstay of this trade, stood the whole powerful order of the Dominicans. And to this order Tetzel himself, the sub-commissioner of indulgences, belonged. Already other doctrines of the Pope's authority, of his power over the salvation of the human soul, and the infallibility of his decisions, had been asserted with ever-increasing boldness. The mediaeval writings of Thomas Aquinas had conspicuously tended to this result. And a climax had just been reached at a so-called General Council, which met at Rome shortly after Luther's visit there, and continued its sittings for several years.

Tetzel, who hitherto had only made himself notorious as a preacher, or rather as a bawling mountebank, now answered Luther with two series of theses of his own, drawn up in learned scholastic form. One Conrad Wimpina, a theologian of the university of Frankfort-on-the-Oder, whom the Archbishop Albert had recommended, assisted Tetzel in this work. The university of Frankfort immediately made Tetzel doctor of theology, and thus espoused his theses. Three hundred Dominican monks assembled round him while he conducted an academical disputation upon them. The doctrines he now advanced were the doctrines of Thomas Aquinas. But at the same time he took care to make the question of the Pope's position and power the cardinal point at issue; he and his patrons knew well enough, that for Luther, who in his theses had touched upon this question so significantly though so briefly, this was the most fatal blow that he could deal. 'Christians must be taught,' he declared, 'that in all that relates to faith and salvation, the judgment of the Pope is absolutely infallible, and that all observances connected with matters of faith on which the Papal see has expressed itself, are equivalent to Christian truths, even if they are not to be found in scripture.' With distinct reference to his opponent, but without actually mentioning him by name, he insists that whoever defends heretical error must be held to be excommunicated, and if he fails within a given time to make satisfaction, incurs by right and law the most frightful penalties. Furthermore, he argued—and this has always been held up against Luther and Protestantism—that if the authority of the Church and Pope should not be recognised, every man would believe only what was pleasing to himself and what he found in the Bible, and thus the souls of all Christendom would be imperilled.