queer, exaggerated fashion, that in those days he worshipped the Pope.
At the same time he announces that his study of the Bible at Erfurt
had already shown him many errors in the Papist Church, but that he
had sought to soothe his conscience with the question: “Art thou the
only wise man?” though by so doing he had retarded his understanding
of the Holy Scriptures.[56] He also asserts later that his father’s
words spoken at the banquet which followed his first Mass, viz. that
his religious vocation was probably a delusion, had pierced ever deeper
into his mind and appeared to him more and more true. Yet he likewise
tells us elsewhere of his persevering zeal in his profession, and of
his excessive fastings and disciplines.

It is hard to find the real clue in this tangle of later statements,
all of them influenced by polemical considerations.

He says quite seriously, and this may very well be true, that what
he was wont to hear at times outside the monastery from unbelieving
“grammarians,” i.e. humanists, regarding the great difference between
the teaching of Holy Scripture and that of the existing Church, made
a deep impression on him.[57] He had, however, calmed himself, so he
says, with the thought that this was other people’s business. In the
monastic library he once came across some sermons of John Hus. Their
contents appeared to him excellent, nevertheless, so he writes, from
aversion for the author’s name, he laid aside the book without reading
any further, though not without surprise that such a man should have
written in many ways so well and so correctly. Johann Grefenstein, his
master at Erfurt, had once let fall the remark in his presence that
Hus had been put to death without any previous attempt being made to
instruct or convert him.

At that time, Hus failed to make any impression on him. Doubts,
however, assaulted him in the shape of temptations. Those he repulsed,
well aware of the danger. In June, 1521, writing at the Wartburg,
he says that more than ten years before, much that was taught by
Popes, Councils and Universities had appeared to him absurd and in
contradiction with Christ, but that he had put a bridle on his thoughts
in accordance with the Proverb of Solomon: “Lean not upon thy own
prudence.”[58] Certain it is that his clear mind must early have
perceived that the Church of that day fell far short of the ideal, and
it is possible that even in those early years, such a perception may
have awakened in him doubts and discontent and have led him to take a
too gloomy view of the state of the Church.

In any case, Luther’s own testimony as given above leads us to
suspect the presence in his mind at an early date of a deep-seated
dissatisfaction which foreboded ill to the monk’s future fidelity to
the Church.[59]

A strong moral foundation would have been necessary to save a mind
so singularly constituted from wavering, and if we may believe the
statement of his contemporary, Hieronymus Dungersheim of Leipzig, this
was just what Luther had always lacked. Dungersheim, in a pamphlet
against Luther the heretic, harks back to the years he spent at
Erfurt as a secular student and accuses him of evil habits, probably
contracted then, but the after effects of which made themselves felt
when he had entered into religion and caused him to rebel against his
profession. If Luther, so he says, was now persuaded that no religious
could keep the vow of chastity, in his case the inability could only be
due to a certain “former bad habit,” of which stories were told, and
to his neglect of prayer.[60] In another writing the same opponent
accuses him openly of having indulged in the grossest vice during his
academic years, and mentions as his informant one of the comrades who
had, later on, accompanied Luther to the gates of the monastery.[61] He
says nothing, perhaps, indeed, he knew nothing more definite, and with
regard to Luther’s life in religion, he is unable to adduce anything to
his discredit.

But yet another of Luther’s later adversaries has strong words for
our hero’s early life. His testimony, which has not so far been
dealt with, must be treated of here because such charges, if well
founded, doubtless contribute much to the psychological explanation
of the processes going forward in Luther. This testimony is given by
Hieronymus Emser of Dresden, who, it is true, was himself by no means
spotless, and who, on that account, was roundly reprimanded by the man
he had attacked. In his rejoinder to Luther, a pamphlet published in
1520, and the only one preserved, he says: “Was it necessary on account
of my letter that you should hold up to public execration my former
deviations which are indeed, for the most part, mere inventions? What
do you think has come to my ears concerning your own criminal deeds
(‘_flagitia_’)?” He will be silent about them, he says, because he does
not wish to return evil for evil, but he continues: “That you also
fell, I must attribute to the same cause which brought about my own
fall, namely, the want of public discipline in our days, so that young
men live as they please without fear of punishment and do just what
they like.”[62] We must remember that at Erfurt Emser and Luther had
stood in the relation of teacher and disciple. His words, like those of
Dungersheim written from Leipzig, voice the opinion on Luther later on
current in the hostile University circles of Erfurt.

When Luther in his later years speaks of the “sins of his youth,” this,
in his grotesquely anti-catholic vocabulary, means the good works of
his monastic life, even the celebration of Holy Mass. Once, however,
at the end of his tract on the Last Supper (1528),[63] speaking of the
sins of his youth, he seems to distinguish between the Catholic works
above referred to and other faults of which he accuses himself in the
same general terms.

In the young Augustinian’s Erfurt days he was prevented by the Rule
from cultivating any intimate and distracting friendship with persons
in the world. We only know that he, and likewise his brother monk
Johann Lang, had some friendly intercourse with the Humanist Petreius
(Peter Eberbach), who not long after, in a letter dated May 8, 1512,
greets Lang—then already with Luther at Wittenberg—in these words:
“_Sancte Lange et Sancte Martine orate pro me_.” Mutianus, the Gotha
canon and chief of the Humanists, who was very unorthodox in his views,
in a letter to Lang of the beginning of May, 1515, seems to remember
Luther, for he sends greetings to the “pious Dr. Martin.”

His intercourse with the Humanists led Luther to make use of philology
in the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. He thus entered upon a
useful, we may even say indispensable, course, in which he might have
done great service. At Erfurt he continued constantly to study his copy
of the Bible, which had become an inseparable companion. “As no one in
the monastery read the Bible” (at any rate not with his zeal) he was
able to flatter himself with being first in the house in the matter of
biblical knowledge; indeed in this field he was probably the greatest
expert in the whole Congregation.

In addition to this, he began to turn his busy mind to the study of
Hebrew, and contrived to provide himself with a dictionary, which at
that time was considered a treasure. Lang, with his humanistic culture,
was able to assist him with the Greek.

Meanwhile the dispute in the Order with regard to the observance had
reached a point when it seemed right to the party to which Luther
belonged to seek the intervention of Rome in their favour, or to
anticipate an appeal on the part of their opponents. The choice of
seven houses “of the observance” resulted in Luther being chosen as the
delegate to represent them in Rome. So little opposed to the Church
was Luther’s theology and Bible interpretation in his Erfurt days, and
so considerable was the number of brethren, even in other Observantine
houses who held him to be a faithful monk, that they deemed him
best suited for so difficult a mission. What Cochlæus, according to
information drawn from Augustinian sources, relates later sounds,
however, quite reasonable, viz. that he was selected on account of his
“cleverness and his forceful spirit of contradiction,” which promised a
complete victory over the other faction.[64]

Luther’s journey to Rome, according to Oldecop, was undertaken from
Erfurt.

3. The Journey to Rome

The Saxon, or more correctly German, Congregation of Augustinians,
at the time of Luther’s journey to Rome, had reached a crisis in its
history.

Founded on the old Order of Hermits of St. Augustine, by the pious
and zealous Andreas Proles (1503), and provided by him with excellent
statutes intended to promote a reform of discipline, the Congregation
had, since its foundation, been withdrawn from the control of the
Provincial of the unreformed Augustinian Province of Saxony in order
the better to preserve its stricter observance.[65] It stood directly
under the General of the Order at Rome, whose German representative
was a Vicar-General—in Luther’s time, Staupitz. He was simply styled
Vicar, or sometimes Provincial. The monasteries under him numbered
about thirty, and were distributed throughout several so-called
districts, each headed by a Rural Vicar.

Staupitz’s aim was to bring about a reunion of the German Congregation
with the numerous non-observant monasteries in Germany, an amalgamation
which would probably have led indirectly to his becoming the head
of all these communities. He had already, September 30, 1510, after
sounding the Pope, published a papal Bull approving such a union, and,
by virtue of the same, begun to style himself Provincial of Thuringia
and Saxony. His efforts were, however, met by decided opposition
within the Congregation. Certain houses which were in favour of the
old state of things and feared that union would lead to a relaxation
of discipline, vehemently opposed Staupitz and his plans. To this
party belonged also the Erfurt monastery, and Luther himself took an
active part in the position assumed by his house. The object of his
visit to Halle with Dr. Nathin to see Prince Adolf of Anhalt, the
Cathedral Provost, had been to obtain a “petition” in favour of the
“observance.” The opposition became acute when the Bull above referred
to was published by Staupitz, and we may consider the protest of the
seven Observantine monasteries against the Bull as the direct cause of
Luther’s despatch to Rome.

The monk, then seven-and-twenty years of age, with his written
authority to act as procurator in the case (“_litis procurator_” is
what Cochlæus, who was well informed on these matters, styles him),
set out forthwith on his journey. It was in the autumn 1510,[66] and
Luther was then lecturing on the third book of the Sentences. His
absence lasted four or five months, i.e. until the spring 1511, when we
again find him at Erfurt. Luther, and those who felt with him, found
no difficulty in reconciling their efforts for the preservation of the
observance against the will of Staupitz, with due submission to him as
their Superior.

Another monk of the Order accompanied Luther to the capital of
Christendom as the Rule enjoined in the case of journeys. The joy
at such an opportunity of seeing the Eternal City, of quenching his
ardent thirst for knowledge by the acquisition of new experiences and
of gaining the graces attached to so holy a pilgrimage, may well have
hurried his steps during the wearisome journey, which in those days had
to be undertaken on foot. He had even, according to a later statement,
made the resolution to cleanse his conscience—so frequently tortured
by fears—by a general confession, indeed he once says that this was
his main object, passing over the real reason.

With regard to the effect of the journey on the question concerning
the Order, according to Cochlæus a certain compromise was reached, the
details of which are, however, not told us. At any rate Staupitz was
unable to carry out his plan and eventually gave it up. The dispute
between “Observants” and “non-Observants” thus started, as we may
gather from statements made by Luther to which we refer later, far from
being at an end became more and more acute. It appears to have done
untold harm to the Congregation and to have largely contributed to its
fall.

What effect had the visit to Italy and Rome upon the development of the
young monk?

Thousands have been cheered in spirit by the visit to the tombs of the
Apostles; prayer at the holy places of Rome, the immediate proximity
of the Vicar of Christ and of the world-embracing government of the
Church made them feel what they had never felt before, the pulse-beat
of the heart of Christendom, and they returned full of enthusiasm,
strengthened and inspirited, and with the desire of working for souls
in accordance with the mind of the Church.

With Luther this was not the case.

He was much less impressed by the Rome of the Saints than by the
corruption then rampant in ecclesiastical circles.

On first perceiving Rome from the heights of Monte Mario, he devoutly
greeted the city, as all pilgrims were wont to do, overjoyed at
having reached the goal of their long pilgrimage.[67] After that, he
untiringly occupied himself, so far as his chief business permitted,
in seeing all that Rome had to show. He assures us that he believed
everything that was told him of the real or legendary reminiscences
of the holy places both above and under ground. He does not, however,
appear to have been very careful in his choice of guides and
acquaintances, for the anecdotes concerning the condition of things at
Rome which he brought back with him to his own country were, if not
untrue, at least exceedingly spiteful. The Augustinians whom he there
met had not the spirit of the reform inaugurated by Proles. Their
southern freedom and lack of restraint found all too strong an echo
in Luther’s character. The general confession he had projected was
probably never made,[68] for, as he asserts later, he had not found
among the clergy a single suitable, worthy man. During his distracting
stay in the Eternal City he said Mass, so he tells us, perhaps once,
perhaps ten times, i.e. occasionally, not regularly.[69] He was
greatly scandalised at much he heard and saw, partly owing to his
looking at things with the critical eye of a northerner, partly owing
to the really existing moral disorders.

The Rome of that day was the Rome of Julius II, the then Pope, and
of his predecessor Alexander VI; it was the Rome of the Popes of the
height of the Renaissance, glorified by art, but inwardly deeply
debased. The capital of Christendom, under the influence of the
frivolity which had seized the occupants of the Papal throne and
invaded the ranks of the higher clergy, had proved false to her dignity
and forgetful of the fact that the eyes of the Faithful who visited
Rome from every quarter of the globe were jealously fixed upon her in
their anxiety lest the godless spirit of the world should poison the
very heart of the Church.

Instead of being edified by the good which he undoubtedly encountered
and by the great ideal of the Church which no shadow can ever darken,
Luther, with his critically disposed mind, proved all too receptive to
the contrary impressions and allowed himself to be unduly influenced by
the dark side of things, i.e. the corruption of morals. Subsequently,
in his public controversies and private Table-Talk, he tells quite
a number of disreputable tales,[70] which, whether based on fact or
not, were all too favourable to his anti-Roman tendencies. He was in
the habit of saying, in his usual tone, that whoever looked about him
a little in Rome, would find abominations compared to which those of
Sodom were mere child’s play. He declares that he heard from the mouth
of Papal courtiers the statement: “It cannot go on much longer, it must
break up.” In the company in which he mixed he heard these words let
fall: “If there be a Hell, then Rome is built over it.” He says that
he had heard it said of one, who expressed his grief at such a state
of things, that he was a “_buon cristiano_” which meant much the same
as a good-natured simpleton. In his proneness to accept evil tales
he believed, at least so he asserts later, the statement made in his
presence, that many priests were in the habit of repeating jokes at
Mass in place of the words of consecration. He relates that he even
questioned whether the bishops and priests at Rome, the prelates of the
Curia, aye, the Pope himself, had any Christian belief left. It is not
worth while to go into the details of the scandals he records, because,
as Hausrath justly remarks, “it is questionable how much weight is due
to statements which, in part, date from the later years of his life,
when he had so completely altered.”[71]

In his accounts the share which he himself actually took in the pious
pilgrim-exercises of the time is kept very much in the background.

He came to the so-called Scala Santa at the Lateran, and saw the
Faithful, from motives of penance, ascending the holy steps on their
knees. He turned away from this touching popular veneration of the
sufferings of the Redeemer, and preferred not to follow the example
of the other pilgrims. An account given by his son Paul in 1582
says that he then quoted the Bible verse: “The just man liveth by
faith.” If it be a fact that he made use of these words which were to
assume so great importance and to be so sadly misinterpreted in his
subsequent theology, it was certainly not in their later sense. In
reality we have here in all probability an instance of a later opinion
being gratuitously anticipated, for Luther himself declares that he
discovered his gospel only after he had taken his Doctor’s degree, and
this we shall show abundantly further on. Older Protestant writers
have frequently represented the scene at the steps of the Lateran
in unhistorical colours owing to their desire to furnish a graphic
historical beginning of the change in Luther’s mind. Mylius of Jena was
one of the first to do this.[72] Mylius, in 1595, quite falsely asserts
that Luther had already commented on the Epistle to the Romans previous
to his journey to Rome, and adds that he had already then noted the
later interpretation of the Bible text in question. It is true that
his son Paul, where he speaks of Luther’s exclamation as having been
communicated to him by his father, expressly states that “he had
_then_, through the spirit of Jesus, come to the knowledge of the
truth of the holy gospel.” But Köstlin’s Biography of Luther rightly
denies this, and describes it as an “exaggeration”[73]—“error” would
have been better—for the assumption to which Luther’s friends still
cling with such affection, namely, that from the very commencement of
his journey to Rome he had been “haunted by the Bible text concerning
justification by faith,” at a time “when he still was striving to
serve God by his own works,” must be struck out of history as a mere
fiction.[74]

At Rome Luther’s conviction of the authority of the Holy See was in
no wise shaken, in spite of what some people have thought. All the
scandals had not been able to achieve this. As late as 1516 he was
still preaching in entire accordance with the traditional doctrine
of the Church on the power of the Papacy, and it is worth while to
quote his words in order to show the Catholic thoughts which engaged
him while wandering through the streets of Rome. “If Christ had not
entrusted all power to one man, the Church would not have been perfect
because there would have been no order and each one would have been
able to say he was led by the Holy Spirit. This is what the heretics
did, each one setting up his own principle. In this way as many
Churches arose as there were heads. Christ therefore wills, in order
that all may be assembled in one unity, that His Power be exercised
by one man to whom also He commits it. He has, however, made this
Power so strong that He looses all the powers of Hell (without injury)
against it. He says: ‘The gates of Hell shall not prevail against it,’
as though He said: ‘They will fight against it but never overcome it,’
so that in this way it is made manifest that this power is in reality
from God and not from man. Wherefore whoever breaks away from this
unity and order of the Power, let him not boast of great enlightenment
and wonderful works, as our Picards and other heretics do, ‘for much
better is obedience than the victims of fools who know not what evil
they do’ (Eccles. iv. 17).”[75] That, when in Rome, he was still full
of reverence for the Pope, Luther shows in his Table-Talk, though his
language on this occasion can only be described as filthy.[76]

His ideas with regard to the Church’s means of Grace, the Mass,
Indulgences and Prayer had not, at the time of his return to Germany,
undergone any theoretical change, though it is highly probable that his
practical observance of the Church’s law suffered considerably. The
fact is, his character was not yet sufficiently formed when he started
on his journey; he was, as Oldecop says, “a wild young fellow.”[77]

Luther later on relates it as a joke, that, when at Rome, he had been
so zealous in gaining Indulgences that he had wished his parents
were already dead so that he might apply to their souls the great
Indulgences obtainable there.[78] Of the Masses which he celebrated
in the Holy City he assures us—again more by way of a joke than as
an exact statement of fact—that he said them so piously and slowly
that three, or even six, Italian priests or monks had finished all
their Masses in succession before he had come to the end of one. He
even declares that in Rome Mass is said so rapidly that ten, one after
another, occupied only one hour, and that he himself had been urged
on with the cry: “Hurry up, Brother, hurry up.” Whoever is familiar
with the older Luther’s manner of speech, will be on his guard against
taking such jests seriously or as proof of scrupulosity; he is, in
reality, merely laying stress on the blatant contrast between his own
habit and the precipitation of the Italians.

In 1519, i.e. not yet ten years after Luther’s visit, his pupil Oldecop
came to Rome and set to work to make diligent enquiries concerning the
stay there of his already famous master, with whose teaching, however,
he did not agree. As he says in his “Chronik,” published not long
since, he learned that Luther had taken lessons in Hebrew from a Jew
called Jakob, who gave himself out to be a physician. He sought out the
Jew, probably a German, and heard from him that “Martinus had begged
the Pope to be allowed to study in Italy for ten years in secular
dress,” but that, owing to the absence of any authorisation from his
Superiors, his request had been refused, and Martinus, instead of being
privileged to dress as a secular priest, had been obliged to retain
his “cowl,” i.e. the habit of his Order. Oldecop then betook himself
to the official who, as he learnt, had drafted the monk’s petition,
and who fully confirmed the Jew’s statement. There is no reason for
doubting these new tales,[79] notwithstanding the fact that in some
of the other statements made by Oldecop, especially those in which he
had no personal concern, some unintentional errors occur. According to
the character given him by his editor Carl Euling, he was “an educated
and honourable man, with good judgment.”[80] Notice deserves to be
taken of a minor detail of the incident which confirms the truth of
this account, namely, that the official, affrighted at the mention of
Luther’s name, was at first unwilling to speak, and then begged that
the fact of his having had dealings with him should not be betrayed.
The man, who is here portrayed to the life, after he became more
loquacious, also expressed the opinion that had Luther been allowed
to take off the cowl he would never have put it on again; a view, of
course, merely based on the later course of events. Luther’s desire
for learning was so great, and his impulsive character so marked, that
it is quite possible that he cherished such a project. Nor was there
anything so very singular in the plan, for about that time other monks
had been secularised at their own request. In a Brief dated January
26, 1517, Erasmus, who was an Augustinian canon, received permission
to wear the dress of a secular priest, a fact to which Luther, on
occasion, makes allusion. As such a privilege, even though restricted
as to duration, would without doubt have appealed to the freedom of
thought which at that time Luther was beginning to cultivate, the
fact that it was refused owing to the lack of authorisation by his
German Superiors assuredly cannot have sweetened his recollection of
the Roman Curia; its only effect was probably to wound his vanity. He
himself never speaks of this petition; he had no cause to do so, and
indeed it ill agreed with the legend which, with advancing years, he
began to weave about his life in the monastery. On the other hand, we
have probably a distorted version of the incident in an assertion,
circulated later by his opponents, viz. that during his stay at Rome he
had sought secularisation in order to be able to marry.[81]

Regarding the morals of the Italians and not the Romans only, he makes
many unfavourable and even unfair statements in his later reminiscences
of his wanderings through their country. The only things which found
favour in his eyes were, in fact, their charity and benevolence as
displayed in some of the hospitals, particularly in Florence, the
sobriety of the people and, at Rome, the careful carrying out of
ecclesiastical business. An evil breath of moral laxity was passing
over the whole country, more especially, however, over the rich and
opulent towns and the higher classes, infected as they were with
the indifferentism of the Humanists. Those travelling alone found
themselves exposed in the inns to the worst moral dangers. We must
also call to mind that, in those very years the Neapolitan, or French
disease, as syphilis was then called, infested a wide area of this
otherwise delightful country, having been introduced by the troops
who came to southern Italy. The places where strangers from other
lands were obliged to spend the night on their travels were hotbeds of
infection for both body and soul.

Luther returned to Germany towards the month of February, 1511, though
he was no longer the same man as when he set out. He said, after his
apostasy: “I, like a fool, carried onions to Italy and brought garlic
(i.e. worse stuff) back with me.” As a controversialist he declared
that he would not take 100,000 gulden to have missed seeing Rome, as
otherwise he would feel that he was doing the Papacy an injustice; he
only wished that everyone who was about to become a priest would visit
Rome.

A notable result of his stay in Italy was, that Luther, after his
return to the monastery, immediately changed his standpoint regarding
the “observance.” Sent to Rome for the defence of the “observance,” he
now unexpectedly veered round and became its opponent. “He deserted
to Staupitz” as Cochlæus puts it, evidently using the very words of
the Observantines, and soon Luther was seen passionately assailing
the Observantines, whose spokesman he had been shortly before. In all
likelihood his changed view stood in some connection with a change in
his domicile. No sooner had he returned to the Observantine monastery
of Erfurt, than he left it for Wittenberg, where he was to take his
degree of Doctor of Divinity and then ascend the professorial chair.
Doubtless under Staupitz’s influence the fulfilment of those great
hopes which he had formerly cherished now arose on the horizon of his
mind. To continue to withstand Staupitz in the matter of the observance
could but prove a hindrance to his advance, especially as the
Wittenberg community was for the most part opposed to the observance.
Nothing further is, however, known with regard to this strange change
of front. It was of the greatest importance for his future development,
as will appear in the sequel; the history of his warfare against the
Observantines, to which as yet little attention has been paid, may also
be considered as a new and determining factor in his mental career.

4. The Little World of Wittenberg and the Great World in Church and
State

Since the spring 1511, Luther had been qualifying, by diligent study in
his cell in the great Augustinian monastery at Wittenberg, to take his
degree of Doctor in Divinity in the University of that city.

In his later statements he says that he had small hopes of success
in his new career on account of his weak health; that he had in vain
opposed Staupitz’s invitation to take his doctorate, and that he had
been compelled by obedience to comply with his Superior’s orders. After
passing brilliantly the requisite tests, the University bestowed upon
him the theological degree on October 1, 1512. Luther at once commenced
his lectures on Holy Scripture, the subject of this, his first course,
being the Psalms (1513-16). His audience consisted mainly of young
Augustinians, to whom a correct understanding of the Psalms was a
practical need for their services in choir.

He displayed already in these early lectures, no less than in those of
the later period, the whole force of his fancy and eloquence, his great
ability in the choice of quotations from the Bible, his extraordinary
subjectivity, and, however out of place in such a quarter, the
vehemence of his passion; in our own day the sustained rhetorical tone
of his lectures would scarcely appeal to the hearer.

The fiery and stimulating teacher was in his true element at
Wittenberg. The animation that pervaded students and teachers, the
distinction which he enjoyed amongst his friends, his unlimited
influence over the numerous young men gathered there, more especially
over the students of his own Order, no less than the favour of the
Elector of Saxony for the University, the Order, and, subsequently,
for his own person, all this, in spite of his alleged unwillingness
to embrace the profession, made his stay at Wittenberg, and his work
there, very agreeable to him. He himself admits that his Superiors had
done well in placing him there. Wittenberg became in the sequel the
citadel of his teaching. There he remained until the evening of his
days as Professor of Holy Scripture, and quitted the town only when
forced by urgent reasons to do so.

As with all men of great gifts, who make a deep impression on their
day, but are, all the same, children of their time, so was it with
Luther. In his case, however, the influence from without was all the
deeper because his lively and receptive temperament lent itself to a
stronger external stimulus, and also because the position of so young
a man in a professorial chair in the very heart of Germany did much to
foster such influences.

Martin Pollich of Mellerstadt, formerly Professor at Leipzig, a
physician, a jurist and a man of humanistic tendencies who had helped
Staupitz to organise the new University, enjoyed a great reputation in
the Wittenberg schools. Alongside him were the theologians Amsdorf,
Carlstadt, Link, Lang and Staupitz. Nicholas von Amsdorf, who was
subsequently said to be “more Luther than Luther himself,” had been
since 1511 licentiate of theology, and had at the same time filled,
as a secular priest, the office of Canon at the Castle Church. Andreas
Bodenstein von Carlstadt, usually known as Carlstadt, occupied a
position amongst the Augustinians engaged in teaching. He had taken
his degree at Wittenberg in 1510, and was at the outset a zealous
representative of Scholasticism, though he speedily attached himself
to Luther’s new teaching. He was the first to proclaim the solubility
of religious vows. Wenceslaus Link worked at the University from
1509 to about 1516, eventually succeeding Staupitz as Augustinian
Vicar-General, and, later, by his marriage in 1523, gave the last
Augustinians of the unfortunate Congregation the signal for forsaking
the Order. Another Augustinian, Johann Lang, who had been Luther’s
friend since the days of his first studies at Erfurt, had come to
Wittenberg about 1512 as teacher at the “Studium” of the Order, though
he soon left it to return to Erfurt. Johann Staupitz, the Superior of
the Congregation, resigned in 1512 his Professorship of Holy Scripture
at Wittenberg, being unable to attend to it sufficiently owing to his
frequent absence, and made over the post to Luther, whom, as he says in
his eulogistic speech to the Elector of Saxony, he had been at pains to
form into a “very special Doctor of Holy Scripture.”

The teaching in the University at that time was, of course, from the
religious standpoint, Catholic. Its scholarship was, however, infected
with the humanistic views of the Italian naturalism, and this new
school had already stamped some of the professors with its freethinking
spirit.[82]

The influence of Humanism on Luther’s development must be admitted,
though it is frequently overrated, the subsequent open alliance of the
German Humanists with the new gospel being set back, without due cause,
to Luther’s early days. As a student he had plunged into the study of
the ancient classics which he loved, but there was a great difference
between this and the being in complete intellectual communion with
the later Humanists, whose aims were in many respects opposed to the
Church’s. Thanks to the practical turn of his mind, the study of the
classics, which he occasionally continued later, never engaged his
attention or fascinated him to the extent it did certain Humanists
of the Renaissance, who saw in the revival of classic Paganism the
salvation of mankind. As a young professor at the University he was
not, however, able to escape entirely the influence of the liberalism
of the age, with its one-sided and ill-considered opposition to so many
of the older elements of culture, an opposition which might easily
prove as detrimental as a blind and biassed defence of the older order.

It is not necessary to demonstrate here how dangerous a spirit of
change and libertinism was being imported in the books of the Italian
Humanists, or by the German students who had attended their lectures.

With regard to Luther personally, we know that he not only had some
connection with Mutian, the leader of a movement which at that time was
still chiefly literary, but also that Johann Lang at once forwarded to
Mutian a lecture against the morals of the “little Saints” of his Order
delivered by Luther at Gotha in 1515.[83] Luther also excused himself
in a very respectful letter to this leader of the Humanists for not
having called on him when passing through Gotha in 1516.[84] Luther’s
most intimate friend, Lang, through whom he seems to have entered
into a certain exchange of ideas with Humanism, was an enthusiastic
Humanist and possessed of great literary connections. Lang, for his
part, speaks highly to Mutian of the assistance rendered him in his
studies by Luther.[85] There can therefore be no doubt that Luther was
no stranger to the efforts of the Humanists, to their bold and incisive
criticism of the traditional methods, to their new idealism and their
spirit of independence. Many of the ideas which filled the air in those
days had doubtless an attraction for and exerted an influence on the
open-hearted, receptive disposition of the talented monk.

Luther’s friendship with Spalatin, which dated from his Erfurt days,
must also be taken into account in this regard. For Spalatin, who came
as tutor and preacher in 1508 to the Court of the Elector of Saxony,
was very closely allied in spirit with the Humanists of Erfurt and
Gotha. It was he who asked Luther for his opinion respecting the famous
dispute of the Cologne Faculty with the Humanist Reuchlin, a quarrel
which engaged the sympathy of scholars and men of education throughout
the length and breadth of Germany. Luther, in his reply, which dates
from January or February, 1514, had at that time no hesitation in
emphatically taking the side of Reuchlin, who, he declared, possessed
his love and esteem. God, he says, would carry on His work in spite of
the determined opposition of one thousand times one thousand Cologne
burghers, and he adds meaningly that there were much more important
matters with the Church which needed reform; they were “straining at
gnats and swallowing camels.”[86] The conservative attitude of the
authorities at Cologne was at that time not at all to his taste. Not
long after Luther writes very strongly to Spalatin, again in favour
of Reuchlin, against Ortwin de Graes of Cologne, and says among other
things that he had hitherto thought the latter an ass, but that he must
now call him a dog, a wolf and a crocodile, in spite of his wanting
to play the lion,[87] expressions which are quite characteristic of
Luther’s style.

On the appearance of the “Letters of Obscure Men,” and a similar
satirical writing which followed them, and which also found its way
into Luther’s hands, the young Wittenberg professor, instead of taking
the field against the evil tendency of these attacks of the Humanist
party on the “bigots of Scholasticism and the cloister” as such
diatribes deserved, and as he in his character of monk and theologian
should have done, sought to take a middle course: he approved of the
purpose of the attacks, but not of the satire itself, which mended
nothing and contained too much invective. Both productions, he says,
must have come out of the same pot; they had as their author, if not
the same, at least a very similar comedian. It is now known that the
real author of the letters which caused such an uproar was his former
University friend, Crotus Rubeanus.[88]

On what terms did Luther stand with respect to Erasmus, the leader
of the Humanists, before their great and final estrangement? As he
speaks of Erasmus in a letter of 1517 to Lang as “our Erasmus,” we may
infer that until then he was, to a certain extent, favourably disposed
towards him. He rejoiced on reading his humanistic writings to find
that “he belaboured the monks and clergy so manfully and so learnedly
and had torn the veil off their out-of-date rubbish.”[89] Yet, on the
same occasion, he confesses that his liking for Erasmus is becoming
weaker. It was not the attitude of Erasmus to the Church in general
which even then separated Luther from him, but his new teaching on
Grace, the origin of which will be treated of later. It is true Luther
conveyed to him through Spalatin his good wishes for his renown and
progress, but in the same message he admonished him not to follow the
example of nearly every commentator in interpreting certain passages
where Paul condemns “righteousness by works” as referring only to
the Mosaic ceremonial law, and not rather to all the works of the
Decalogue. If such are performed “outside the Faith in Christ,” then
though they should make of a man a Fabricius, a Regulus, or a paragon
of perfection, yet they have as little in common with righteousness
as blackberries have with figs”; it is not the works which justify a
man, but rather our righteousness which sanctifies the works. Abel was
more pleasing to God than his works.[90] The exclusive sense in which
Luther interprets these words, according to which he does not even
admit that works of righteousness are of any value for the increase of
righteousness, is a consequence of his new standpoint, to which he is
anxious to convert Erasmus and all the Humanists.

He had the Humanists in his mind when he wrote as follows to Johann
Lang: “The times are perilous, and a man may be a great Greek, or
Hebrew [scholar] without being a wise Christian.... He who makes
concessions to human freewill judges differently from him who knows
nothing save Grace alone.”[91] But this is to forestall a development
of his error, which will be described later. At the time that his new
doctrine originated he was far more in sympathy with the theories
of certain groups of late mediæval mystics than with the views of
the Humanists, because, as will appear later, he found in them the
expression of that annihilation of the human by means of Grace, of
which the idea was floating before his mind, and because he also
discovered in them an “inwardness” which agreed with his own feelings
at that time.

From Erasmus and his compeers he undoubtedly borrowed, in addition
to a spirit of justifiable criticism, an exaggerated sentiment of
independence towards ecclesiastical antiquity. The contact with their
humanistic views assuredly strengthened in him the modern tendency to
individualism. Not long after a change in the nature of his friendship
necessarily took place. His antagonism to Erasmus in the matter of his
doctrine of Grace led to a bitter dispute between the two, to which
Luther’s contribution was his work on “The Servitude of the Will” (_De
servo arbitrio_); at the same time his alliance with the Humanists
remained of value to him in the subversive movement which he had
inaugurated.

Mighty indeed were the forces, heralds of a spiritual upheaval, which,
since the fifteenth century, had streamed through the Western world in
closer or more distant connection with the great revival of the study
of classical antiquity. They proclaimed the advent of a new cycle in
the history of mankind. This excited world could not fail to impart its
impulse to the youthful Luther.

The recently discovered art of printing had, as it were at one blow,
created a world-wide community of intellectual productions and literary
ideas such as the Middle Ages had never dreamed of. The nations were
drawn closer together at that period by the interchange of the most
varied and far-reaching discoveries. The spirit of worldly enterprise
awoke as from a long slumber as a result of the astonishing discovery
of great and wealthy countries overseas.

With the greater facilities for intellectual intercourse and the
increase of means of study, criticism set to work on all branches of
learning with greater results than ever before. The greater States
now did what they had been willing but unable to do before; they freed
themselves more and more from the former tutelage of the Church; they
aimed at securing freedom and shaking off that priestly influence to
which, in part at least, they owed their stability and their growth;
nor was this movement confined to the greater States, for, in Germany,
at any rate, the wealthy cities, the great landed proprietors and
princes were all alike intent on ridding themselves of the oppression
under which they had hitherto laboured and on securing for themselves
an increase of power. In brief, everywhere the old restraints were
breaking down, everywhere a forward movement of individualism was in
progress at the expense of the commonweal and the traditional order
of the Middle Ages; but, above all, at the expense of the Church’s
religious authority, which, alone till then, had kept individualism in
check to the profit of humanity.

It would indeed have been well had at least the Catholic Church at that
critical period been free from weakness and abuse. Her Divine power
of blessing the nations, it is true, still survived, her preaching
of the truth, her treasure of the Sacraments, in short, her soul,
was unchanged; but, because she was suffering from many lamentable
imperfections, the disruptive forces were able to come into play with
fatal results. The complaints of eloquent men full of zeal for souls,
both at that time and during the preceding decades, particularly in
Germany, over the decline of religious life among the Faithful and the
corruption in the clergy, were only too well founded, and deserved to
have met with a much more effectual reception than they did. What the
monk of Wittenberg, with unbridled passion and glaring exaggeration,
was about to thunder forth over the world in his mighty call for
reform, had already for the most part been urged by others, yea, by
great Saints of the Church who attacked the abuses with the high-minded
zeal of ripe experience. Strict, earnest and experienced men had set to
work on a Catholic reform in many parts of the Church, not excepting
Germany, in the only profitable way, viz. not by doctrinal innovation,
but by raising the standard of morality among both people and clergy.
But progress was slow, very slow, for reasons which cannot be dealt
with here. The life-work of the pious founder of his own Congregation
might well have served Luther as an admirable example of moral
regeneration and efficiency; for the aim of Andreas Proles was, as a
Protestant writer remarks: “A strong and mighty Reformation”; he lived
in hopes that God would shortly raise up a hero capable of bringing it
about with strength and determination, though the Reformation he had in
his mind, as our historian allows, could only have been a Reformation
in the Catholic sense.[92] Another attractive example of reforming zeal
was also given under Luther’s very eyes by the Windesheim Congregation
of the Brethren of the Common Life, with whom he had been in friendly
intercourse from his boyish days.

The disorders in Germany had an all too powerful stronghold in
the higher ranks of ecclesiastical authority. Not until after the
Council of Trent did it become apparent how much the breaking down
of this bulwark of corruption would cost. The bishops were for the
most part incapable or worldly. Abbots, provosts, wealthy canons
and dignitaries vied with and even excelled the episcopate in their
neglect of the duties of their clerical state. In the filling of
Church offices worldly influence was paramount, and in its wake
followed forced nominations, selfishness, incompetence and a general
retrograde movement; the moral disorders among the clergy and the
people accumulated under lazy and incompetent superiors. The system of
indulgences, pilgrimages, sodalities and numerous practices connected
with the veneration of the Saints, as well as many other details of
worship, showed lamentable excesses.

Of the above-mentioned evils within the German Church, two will be
examined more closely: the interference of the Government and the
worldly-minded nobility in Church matters, and the evil ways of the
higher and lower grades of the clergy.

Not merely were the clerical dues frequently seized by the princes
and lesser authorities, but positions in the Cathedral chapters
and episcopal sees were, in many cases, handed over arbitrarily to
members of the nobility or ruling houses, so that in many places the
most important posts were held by men without a vocation and utterly
unworthy of the office. “When the ecclesiastical storm broke out at
the end of the second decade of the sixteenth century the following
archbishoprics and bishoprics were filled by the sons of princes:
Bremen, Freising, Halberstadt, Hildesheim, Magdeburg, Mayence,
Merseburg, Metz, Minden, Münster, Naumburg, Osnabrück, Paderborn,
Passau, Ratisbon, Spires, Verden and Verdun.”[93] The bishops drawn
from the princely houses were, as a rule, involved in worldly business
or in Court intrigues, even where, as was the case, for instance, with
the powerful Archbishop of Mayence, Albrecht of Brandenburg, their
early education had not been entirely anti-ecclesiastical.

Another evil was the uniting of several important bishoprics in the
hands of one individual. “The Archbishop of Bremen was at the same time
Bishop of Verden, the Bishop of Osnabrück also Bishop of Paderborn,
the Archbishop of Mayence also Archbishop of Magdeburg and Bishop of
Halberstadt. George, Palsgrave of the Rhine and Duke of Bavaria, had
already in his thirteenth year been made Cathedral Provost of Mayence
and afterwards became a Canon of Cologne and Treves, Provost of St.
Donatian’s at Bruges, patron of the livings of Hochheim and Lorch on
the Rhine and finally, in 1513, Bishop of Spires. By special privilege
of Pope Leo X, granted June 22, 1513, he, an otherwise earnest and
pious man, was permitted to hold all these benefices in addition to
his bishopric of Spires.”[94] A contemporary, reviewing the condition
of the worldly-minded bishops, complains “that the higher clergy are
chiefly to blame for the careless way in which the cure of souls is
exercised. They place unsuitable shepherds over the people, while they
themselves draw the tithes. Many seek to unite in their grasp the
greatest possible number of livings without fulfilling the duties they
entail and waste the revenues of the Church in luxury, on servants,
pages, dogs and horses. One seeks to outvie the other in ostentation
and luxury.”[95] One of the most important explanations of the fact,
that, at the very outset of the religious innovation, the falling away
from the Church took place with such astonishing celerity, is to be
found in the corruption and apathy of the episcopate.[96]

Bertold Pirstinger, Bishop of Chiemsee and author of the lament
“_Onus ecclesiæ_,” wrote sadly in 1519: “Where does the choice fall
upon a good, capable and learned bishop, where on one who is not
inexperienced, sensual and ignorant of spiritual things?... I know
of some bishops who prefer to wear a sword and armour rather than
their clerical garb. It has come to this, that the episcopate is now
given up to worldly possessions, sordid cares, stormy wars, worldly
sovereignty.... The prescribed provincial and diocesan synods are
not held. Hence many Church matters which ought to be reformed are
neglected. Besides this, the bishops do not visit their parishes at
fixed times, and yet they exact from them heavy taxes. Thus the lives
of the clergy and laity have sunk to a low level and the churches are
unadorned and falling to pieces.” The zealous bishop closes his gloomy
description, in which perhaps he is too inclined to generalise, with a
touching prayer to God for a true reformation from within: “Therefore
grant that the Church may be reformed, which has been redeemed by
Thy Blood and is now, through our fault, near to destruction.”[97]
He considers, however, that a reform of the Church undertaken from
within and preserving her faith and institutions is what is needed. The
deterioration was in his eyes, and in those of the best men of the day,
undoubtedly very great, but not irreparable.

A glance at the work of many excellent men, such as Trithemius,
Wimpfeling, Geiler of Kaysersberg and others, may serve as a warning
against an excessive generalisation with regard to the deterioration
in the ranks of the higher and lower clergy. Weaknesses, disorders and
morbid growths are far more apparent to the eyes of contemporaries than
goodness, which usually fails to attract attention. Even Johann Nider,
the Dominican, who, as a rule, is unsparing in lashing the weaknesses
of the clergy of his day, is compelled to speak a word of warning:
“Take heed never to pass a universal judgment when speaking only of
many, otherwise you will never, or hardly ever, escape passing an
unjust one.”[98]

That there was, however, the most pressing need of a reform in the
lives of both higher and lower clergy is proved by a glance at the
state of the priesthood. The position of the lower clergy, in
comparison with that of their betters “who rolled in riches and
luxury,” was one not in keeping with the dignity of their state.
“Apart from the often very precarious tithes and stole-fees they
had no stipend, so that their poverty, and sometimes also their
avarice, obliged them to turn to other means of livelihood, which ...
necessarily exposed them to the contempt of the people. There can be
no doubt that ‘a very large portion of the lower clergy had fallen
so far from the ideal of their calling, that one may speak of the
priestly proletariat of that day, using the word in both its ordinary
and its literal sense.’ This clerical proletariat was ready to join any
movement which promised to promote its own low aims.”[99]

The number of clergy, largely owing to the excessive multiplication
of small foundations without any cure of souls, had increased to such
an extent that among so many there must necessarily have been a very
large number who had no real vocation, while their lack of employment
must have spelt a real danger to their morals. Attached to two churches
at Breslau at the end of the fifteenth century were 236 clerics, all
of them mere Mass-priests, i.e. ordained simply to say Mass in the
chantry chapels founded with very small endowments. Besides the daily
celebration, these Mass-priests had as their only obligation the
recital of the Breviary. In the Cathedral at Meissen there were, in
1480, besides 14 canons, 14 Mass-priests and 60 curates. In Strasburg
the Cathedral foundation comprised 36 canonries, that of St. Thomas 20,
Old St. Peter’s 17, New St. Peter’s 15 and All Saints’ 12. In addition
to these were also numerous deputies who were prepared to officiate
at High Mass in place of the actual beneficiaries. Of such deputies
there were no fewer than 63 attached to the Cathedral, where there
were also 38 chaplaincies. In Cologne Johann Agricola gives the number
of “priests and monks” (though he adds “so it is said”) as 5000; on
another occasion he estimates the number of monks and nuns only, at
5000. What is certain is that the “German Rome” on the Rhine numbered
at that time 11 collegiate foundations, 19 parish churches, over 100
chapels, 22 monasteries, 12 hospitals and 76 religious houses.[100]

The above-mentioned Bishop of Chiemsee attributes the corruption of
the priesthood principally to the misuse by clergy and laity of their
right of patronage both in nominations and by arbitrary interference.
Geiler of Kaysersberg is of the same opinion; he attributes to the
laity, more particularly to the patrons among the nobility, the sad
condition of the parishes. Uneducated, bad, immoral men were now
presented, he says, not the good and virtuous.[101] Cardinal Nicholas
of Cusa, who did so much service to Germany, had declared quite openly
the cause of the deformation of the clerical system to be the admission
to Holy Orders of unworthy candidates, the concubinage of the clergy,
plurality of benefices, and simony. Towards the end of the fifteenth
century the complaints increased, more especially with regard to the
immorality of the clergy. “The numerous regulations of bishops and
synods leave no doubt about the fact that a large portion of the
German clergy transgressed the law of celibacy in the most flagrant
manner.”[102] A statement which was presented to the Dukes of Bavaria
in 1477 declared that in the opinion of many friends and advocates of
a healthy reform, an improvement in the morals of the clergy, where
the real cause of all the Church’s evils lay, must be taken in hand.
It is true there were districts where a blameless and praiseworthy
clergy worked, as, for example, the Rhine-Lands, Schleswig-Holstein
and the Algäu. On the other hand, in Saxony, Luther’s home, and in
Franconia and Bavaria great disorders were reported in this respect.
The “_De ruina ecclesiæ_,” an earlier work, attributed to Nicholas of
Clémanges, tells us of bishops in the commencement of the fifteenth
century who, in consideration of a money payment, permitted concubinage
to their clergy, and Hefele’s “History of the Councils” gives numerous
synodical decrees of that date forbidding the bishops to accept money
or presents in return for permitting or conniving at concubinage.[103]

Along with concubinage many of the higher clergy displayed a luxury and
a spirit of haughty pride which repelled the people, especially the
more independent burghers. Members of the less fortunate clergy gave
themselves up to striving after gain by pressing for their tithes and
fees and rents, a tendency which was encouraged both in high and low
by the excessive demands made by Rome. Worthless so-called courtisans,
i.e. clerks furnished with briefs from the Papal Court (_corte_),
seized upon the best benefices and gave an infectious example of greed,
while at the same time their action helped to add fuel to the prejudice
and hatred already existing for the Curia.[104]

Innumerable were the causes of friction in the domain of worldly
interests which gave rise to strife and enmity between laity and
clergy. Laymen saw with displeasure how the most influential and
laborious posts were filled, not by the beneficiaries themselves, but
by incapable representatives, while the actual incumbents resided
elsewhere in comfortable ease and leisure at the expense of the old
foundations endowed by the laity. On the other hand, the churches and
monasteries complained of the rights appropriated or misused by the
princes and nobility, an abuse which often led to the monasteries
serving as homes for worn-out officials, or to the vexatious seizure
and retention of the estates of deceased priests or abbots. It is clear
that such a self-seeking policy on the part of the powerful naturally
resulted in the most serious evils and abuses in Church matters, quite
apart from the bad feeling thus aroused between the clerical and lay
elements of the State.

The richer monasteries in particular had to submit to becoming the
preserves of the nobles, who made it their practice to provide in this
way for the younger scions of their family, and for that reason sought
to prevent members of the middle classes being admitted to profession.
The efforts to reform lax monasteries, which are often met with about
the close of the Middle Ages, were frequently stifled by these and
similar worldly influences.

In the disintegration of ecclesiastical order, the power and influence
of the rulers of the land with regard to Church matters was, as might
be expected, constantly on the increase.

Many German princes, influenced by the ideas with regard to the dignity
of the State which came into such vogue in the fifteenth century, and
dissatisfied with the concessions already made to them by the Church,
arrogated still further privileges, for example, the taxation of Church
lands, the restriction of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the so-called
Government Placet and an oppressive right of visiting and supervising
the parishes within their territories. There had thus grown up in
many districts a system of secular interference in Church matters
long before the religious apostasy of the sixteenth century resulted
in the total submission of the Church to the Protestant princes of
the land. The Catholic ruler recognised in principle the doctrines
and rights of the Church. What, however, was to happen if rulers,
equipped with such twofold authority, altered their attitude to the
Church on the outbreak of the schism? Their fidelity was in many cases
already put to a severe test by the disorders of the clergy, which
were doing harm to their country and which Rome made no attempt to
suppress. The ecclesiastico-political complaints of the princes (the
famous Gravamina) against Rome are proofs of their annoyance; for
these charges, as Dr. Eck pointed out, were for the most part well
founded; Eck’s opinion was shared by other authorities, such as Bertold
von Henneberg, Wimpfeling, Duke George of Saxony, and Aleander the
Papal Nuncio, who all express themselves in the same manner regarding
the financial grievances against Rome, which were felt in Germany
throughout all ranks and classes down to the meanest individual.[105]

“On account of these and other causes the irritation and opposition
to the Holy See had, on the eve of the great German schism, reached
boiling point; this vexation is explained, as the _’Gravamina nationis
Germanicæ_’ clearly prove, by the disorders of the Curia, and still
more by its unceasing demands.” “That the smouldering discontent
broke into open flame was the doing of those scoffers without faith
or conscience, such as the Humanists, who persisted in pouring on the
fire the oil of their sophistries.”[106] The Catholic historian from
whom these words are borrowed rightly draws attention to the “mistaken
policy” entered on by Luther’s followers when they attacked the
hierarchical order on account of the disorders rampant in the life and
administration of the Church. The success of their “mistaken policy”
was a “speaking proof of the coarseness, blindness and passion of the
German people at that time,” but in its practical results their policy
helped to bring about an ever-to-be-regretted alteration and to open
a yawning chasm which still exists to-day. “That the vexation was not
altogether without cause no honest historian can deny, whatever his
enthusiasm for the Catholic Church,” for “the action of Churchmen,
whether belonging to the hierarchy or to the regular or secular clergy,
cannot be misunderstood. Throughout the whole of Christendom, and
particularly in Germany, the general state of things was deplorable....
Even though the evils of the waning Middle Ages may have been, and
still continue to be, grossly exaggerated by Protestants, and though in
the fifteenth century we see many cheering examples and some partially
successful attempts at reform, yet there still remains enough foulness
to account psychologically for the falling away.”[107]

And yet the disorders in matters ecclesiastical in Germany would
not have entailed the sad consequences they did had they not been
accompanied by a great number of social evils, especially the intense
discontent of the lower classes with their position and a hostile
jealousy of the laity against the privileges and possessions of the
clergy. Savage outbreaks of rebellion against the old traditional order
of things were of frequent occurrence. In many localities the peasants
were in arms against their princes and masters for the improvement of
their conditions; the knights and the nobility, to say nothing of the
cities, gave themselves up to the spirit of aggrandisement referred
to above. It was just this spirit of unrest and discontent of which
the coming mighty movement of intellectual and religious reform was to
avail itself.

If we look more closely at Italy and Rome we find that in Italy,
which comprised within its limits the seat of the supreme authority
in the Church and of which the influence on civilisation everywhere
was so important, complete religious indifference had taken root among
many of the most highly cultured. The Renaissance, the famed classic
regeneration, had undergone a change for the worse, and, in the name of
education, was promoting the most questionable tendencies. After having
been welcomed and encouraged by the Papacy with over-great confidence
it disappointed both the Popes and the Church with its poisonous fruits.

At the time that the Holy See was lavishing princely gifts on art and
learning, the pernicious system of Church taxation so often complained
of by the nations was becoming more and more firmly established.
This taxation, which had started at the time of the residence of the
Popes at Avignon in consequence of the real state of need in which
the central government of the Church then stood, became more and more
an oppressive burden, especially in Germany. It was exploited by
Luther in one of his earliest controversial writings where, voicing
the popular discontent in that spiteful language of which he was a
master, he joined his protest to that of the German Estates of the
realm. Combining truth and fancy, the administration of the Papal
finances became in his hands a popular and terribly effective weapon.
It has frequently been pointed out how much the authority of the Holy
See suffered in the preceding age, not only on account of the Western
Schism when three rival claimants simultaneously strove for the tiara,
but also through the so-called reforming councils and their opposition
to the constitution of the Church, through the political mistakes of
the Popes since they established their headquarters in France, through
the struggle they waged to assert their power in Italy, that apple of
discord of rising nations, and also, in the case of the Avignon Popes,
through their lack, or, at any rate, suspected lack, of independence.
To this we must add the shocking behaviour of the Curial officials and
of several of the cardinals in the Eternal City, especially at the
turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, also the disgraceful
example of Alexander VI and the Borgia family, the bearing of his
successor Julius II, more befitting a soldier than an ecclesiastic,
and the very worldly spirit of Leo X and his Court. Ostentation and
the abuse of worldly possessions and Church revenues which Alvarez
Pelayo, the Spanish Franciscan, had already bewailed in his “_De
planctu ecclesiæ_” had risen to still greater heights at Rome. The
work of this severe critic, who, in spite of his fault-finding, was
nevertheless well disposed to the Curia, was in general circulation
just previous to Luther’s appearance on the field; it was several
times reprinted, for instance, at Ulm in 1474, and again at Lyons in
1517, with a dedication to the later Pope Hadrian VI. It is there we
find the indignant assertion, that those who bear the dignity of the
primacy are God’s worst persecutors.[108] In the work “_De squaloribus
Romanæ curiæ_” various well-founded complaints were adduced, together
with much that was incorrect and exaggerated. The book “_De ruina
ecclesiæ_” (see above, p. 50) contained accusations against the Popes
and the government of the Church couched in rude and violent language,
and these too gained new and stronger significance at the end of the
fifteenth and commencement of the sixteenth century. We actually read
therein that the number of the righteous in the Church is diminutive
compared with that of the wicked.[109]

There is no doubt that the state of things, so far as it was known from
the above-mentioned books, or from observation or rumour, was busily
and impatiently discussed in the company frequented by Luther at the
University of Wittenberg. What Luther had himself seen at Rome must
have still further contributed to increase the bitterness among his
friends.

When the Monk of Wittenberg openly commenced his attacks on the Papacy,
it became apparent how far the disorders just alluded to had prepared
the way for his plans. It was clear that all the currents adverse to
the Papacy were, so to speak, waiting for the coming of one man, who
should unchain them with his powerful hand. Amongst those who hitherto
had been faithful adherents of the Church, Luther found combustible
material—social, moral and political—heaped up so high that a
stunning result was not surprising. Had there arisen a saint like St.
Bernard, on whose words the world of the Middle Ages had hung, with the
Divine gift of teaching and writing as the times demanded, who can say
what course events would have taken? But Luther arrived on the scene
with his terrible, mighty voice, pressed all the elements of the storm
into his service, and, launching a defiance of which the world had
never before heard the like, succeeded in winning an immense success
for the standard he had raised.[110]

Luther from the very outset of his career was too liberal in his blame
of the customs and conditions in the Church which happened to meet with
his disapproval.

Scarcely had he finished his course of studies as a learner than
he already began to wax eloquent against various abuses. In his
characteristic love of exaggeration of language he did not fear to use
the sharpest epithets, nor to magnify the evil, whether in his academic
lectures or in the pulpit, or in his letters and writings. He wrote,
for instance, to Spalatin in 1516 to dissuade the Elector of Saxony,
Frederick the Wise, from promoting Staupitz to a bishopric: he who
becomes a bishop in these days falls into the most evil of company,
all the wickedness of Greece, Rome and Sodom were to be found in the
bishops; Spalatin should compare the carryings-on of the present
bishops with those of the bishops of Christian antiquity; now a pastor
of souls was considered quite exemplary if he merely pursued his
worldly business and built up for himself with his riches an insatiable
hell.[111]

In his first lectures at Wittenberg he complains that “neither
monasteries nor colleges, nor Cathedral churches will in any sort
accept discipline.”[112] The clergy, he says, in another place,
generalising after the fashion common among preachers, should be the
eyes of the Church, but to-day they do not direct the body, i.e. the
Faithful, for they are blinded: they are the soul, but they do not
give life, but rather kill by their deadly example; about nothing do
they trouble less than about souls.[113] In similar language he, in
these lectures, represents the bishops and priests as simply “full of
the most abominable unchastity”; according to him, they bring to the
pulpit nothing but “their views and fables, nothing but masquerading
and buffoonery,” so that the Church can do nothing but cry aloud over
the misery in which it is sunk. “The strength of her youth has forsaken
her.”[114]

One of the earliest portions of Luther’s correspondence which has been
preserved and which takes us back to his little world at Wittenberg,
throws a clearer light on his character at that time. It deals with an
unpleasant dispute with his brother monks at Erfurt, which he became
involved in owing to his having taken his doctorate at Wittenberg
instead of at Erfurt. The Erfurt monastery reproached him with a
serious infringement of the rules and disrespect for the Theological
Faculty there; he had, they said, entered the teaching Corporation
of Erfurt in virtue of the oath which he had taken in the customary
manner on his appointment as Sententiarius, and was therefore under
strict obligation to take his degree of Doctor in this Faculty and not
elsewhere. Other unknown charges were also made against him, but were
speedily withdrawn. It is highly probable that the tension between
Observantines and Conventuals increased the misunderstanding.

 Nathin, the Erfurt Augustinian, first wrote a rather tactless letter
 to Luther about it all, as it would appear in the name of the
 council of the monastery. Luther was extremely angry and allowed his
 excitement free play. He first expresses his surprise in two letters
 to the Prior and the council, and was about to despatch a third when
 he learnt that the accusations against him, with the exception of that
 regarding his doctorate, had been withdrawn. While Nathin’s letter and
 also the two passionate replies of the young Doctor have been lost,
 two other letters of the latter regarding the matter exist, and are
 professedly letters of excuse. The first is in reality nothing of the
 kind, but rather the opposite. In this letter, dated June 16, 1514,
 and addressed to the Prior and the council, Luther to begin with
 complains vehemently of the evil reports against his person which,
 according to his information, some of those he was addressing at
 Erfurt had circulated previously. Nathin’s letter had, however, been
 the last straw. “This letter,” he says, which was written in the name
 of all, angered him so much with its lies and its provoking, poisonous
 scorn, that “I had almost poured out the vials of my wrath and
 indignation on his head and the whole monastery, as Master Paltz did.”
 They had probably received the two “amazed replies”; as however the
 other charges had been withdrawn, he would hold the majority of those
 he was addressing as excused; they must now, on their part, forget
 any hurt they had felt at his previous replies; “Lay all that I have
 done,” these are his words, “to the account of the furious epistle
 of Master Nathin, for my anger was only too well justified. Now,
 however, I hear still worse things of this man, viz. that he accuses
 me everywhere of being a dishonourable perjurer on account of the
 oath to the Faculty which I am supposed to have taken and not kept.”
 He goes on to explain that he had been guilty of no such crime, for
 the Biblical lectures at the commencement of which he was supposed to
 have taken the oath, and at which, it is true, in accordance with the
 customs of the University, such an oath was generally taken, had not
 been begun by him at Erfurt; at his opening lecture on the Sentences
 in that town he had, so far as he remembers, taken no oath, nor could
 he recall having ever taken any oath in the Faculty at Erfurt. He
 closes with an expression of respect and gratitude to the Erfurt
 Faculty. Though he was the injured party, he was calm and contented
 and joyful, for he had deserved much worse of God: they too should
 lay their bitterness aside, “as God has clearly willed my departure
 (_excorporatio_) from Erfurt, and we must not withstand God.”[115]
 This letter and Luther’s previous steps cannot be regarded as giving
 proof of a harmoniously attuned disposition. He may have been in the
 right in the matter of the oath, a question of which it is difficult
 to judge. It was not, however, very surprising that the Erfurt monks
 took steps to force Luther to make more satisfactory amends to the
 Faculty than the strange letter of excuse given above. It is plain
 that under pressure of some higher authority invoked by them, a second
 letter, this time of more correct character, was despatched by the
 Wittenberg Doctor. In judging of this academic dispute, we must bear
 in mind the store that was set in those days on University traditions.

 The second letter in question, dated December 21, 1514, is addressed
 to the “excellent Fathers and Gentlemen, the Dean and other Doctors of
 the Theological Faculty of Studies at Erfurt” and in the very first
 words shows itself to be a humble apology and request for pardon.
 It contains further information regarding the affair. He begs them
 at least not to deem him guilty of a fault committed knowingly and
 out of malice; if he had done anything unseemly, at least it was
 unintentionally (“_extra dolum et conscientiam_”); he begs them to
 dispense and ratify, to supply what is wanting and to remit, if not
 the penalty, at least the fault.[116]

We learn nothing further about the dispute. The negotiations did not
lead to the renewal of the good relations with Erfurt, which had been
interrupted by his brusque departure. The people of Erfurt were amongst
the first to object to the new, so-called Augustinism and Paulinism of
the Wittenberg Professor.

CHAPTER II

HARBINGERS OF CHANGE

1. Sources, Old and New

THE history of Luther’s inward development during his first years
at Wittenberg up to 1517, is, to a certain extent, rather obscure.
The study of deep psychological processes must always be reckoned
amongst the most complex of problems, and in our case the difficulty
is increased by the nature of Luther’s own statements with regard
to himself. These belong without exception to his later years, are
uncertain and contradictory in character, and in nearly every instance
represent views influenced by his controversies and such as he was
wont to advocate in his old age. Thanks to more recent discoveries,
however, we are now possessed of works written by Luther in his youth
which supply us with better information. By a proper use of these, we
are able to obtain a much clearer picture of his development than was
formerly possible.

Many false ideas which were once current have now been dispelled;
more especially there can no longer be any question of the customary
Protestant view, namely, that the Monk of Wittenberg was first led to
his new doctrine through some unusual inward religious experience by
which he attained the joyful assurance of salvation by faith alone,
and not by means of the good works of Popery and monasticism. This
so-called inner experience, which used to be placed in the forefront
of his change of opinions, as a “Divine Experience,” as shown below,
must disappear altogether from history.[117] Objection must equally
be taken to some of the views with which Catholics have been wont to
explain Luther’s apostasy. The path Luther followed, though subject to
numerous and varied influences, is now seen to be much less complicated
than was hitherto supposed.

Two results already brought to light by other authors are now
confirmed. First, the process of his falling away from the Church’s
teaching was already accomplished in Luther’s mind before he began
the dispute about Indulgences with Tetzel; secondly, a certain moral
change, the outlines of which are clearly marked, went hand in hand
with his theological views, indeed, if anything, preceded them;
the signs of such an ethical change are apparent in his growing
indifference to good works, and to the aims and rules of conventual
life, and in the quite extraordinary self-confidence he displayed, more
especially when disputes arose.

Characteristic of the ethical side of his nature are the remarks
and marginal annotations we have of his, which were published by
Buchwald in 1893; these notes were written by Luther in many of the
books he made use of in his early days as theological lecturer at
Erfurt (1509-10). These books are the oldest available sources for
a correct estimation of his intellectual activity. They were found
in the Ratsschul-Library at Zwickau. Of special interest is a volume
containing various writings of St. Augustine, and a copy of the
Sentences of Peter Lombard, which is of great importance on account
of the notes. The running commentary in Luther’s early handwriting
shows his great industry, enables us to see what especially impressed
him, and betrays also his marvellous belief in himself as well as his
stormy, unbridled temper.

Of Luther’s letters written previous to 1514 only five remain, and are
of comparatively little historical interest. Of the year 1515 there is
only one, of 1516 there are nineteen, of 1517 already twenty-one, and
they increase in importance as well as in number.

In 1513 he began, at Wittenberg University, his Commentary on the
Psalms, which has been known since 1876, and continued those lectures
up to 1515 or 1516. Following his lively and practical bent, he refers
therein to the most varied questions of theology and the religious
life, and occasionally even introduces contemporary matters, so that
these lectures afford many opportunities by which to judge of his
development and mode of thought. First the scholia, which till then
had been known only in part, were edited in a somewhat cumbersome
form by Seidemann, then a better edition by Kawerau, containing both
the scholia and the glosses, followed in 1885.[118] In dividing this
exegetical work into scholia and glosses, Luther was following the
traditional method of the Middle Ages. The glosses are very short, as
was customary; they were written by Luther between the lines of the
text itself or in the margin and explained the words and grammatical
construction; on the sense they touch only in the most meagre fashion.
On the other hand, the detailed scholia seek to unfold the meaning of
the verses and often expand into free digressions. In addition to the
glosses and the scholia on the Psalms, Kawerau’s edition also includes
the preparatory notes, written by Luther in a copy of the first edition
of the “_Psalterium quincuplex_” of Faber Stapulensis (Paris, 1509),
which, like the glosses and scholia, attest both the learning of their
author and the peculiar tendency of his mind. Luther used for his
text the Latin Vulgate, making a very sparing use of his rudimentary
Hebrew. The glosses and the scholia were, however, intended chiefly
for the professor himself; to the students who attended his biblical
lectures Luther was in the habit of giving a short dictation comprising
a summary of what he had prepared, and then, with the assistance of
his glosses and scholia, dilating more fully on the subject. Scholars’
notebooks containing such dictations given by Luther in early days
together with his fuller explanation are in existence, but have never
been printed.

After the Psalms, the lectures of our Wittenberg “Doctor of the
Bible” dealt with St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. This work—of
such supreme importance for the comprehension of Luther’s spiritual
development—with its glosses and scholia complete, was published
only in 1908 in Ficker’s edition.[119] The lectures on the Book of
Judges, edited in 1884 by Buchwald and then again by Kawerau as a work
of Luther supposed to have been delivered in 1516, are, according
to Denifle, not Luther’s at all; they are largely borrowed from St.
Augustine, and, at the very most, are a redaction by another hand of
the notes of one of Luther’s pupils.[120] Transcripts of Luther’s
lectures on the Epistle to Titus, and Epistle to the Hebrews, delivered
in 1516 and 1517 respectively, are still lying unedited in the Vatican
Library.[121] On the other hand, his lectures on the Epistle to the
Galatians (1516-17) were brought out by himself in 1519.

Further light may be shed on them by the publication of a hitherto
unedited student’s notebook, discovered at Cologne in 1877.

To the years 1514-20 belongs a rich mine of information in the sermons
preached by Luther in the monastery church of the Augustinians, or in
the parish church of the town. They consist of more or less detailed
notes, written in Latin, on the Gospels and Epistles of the Sundays
and Feast days; some are the merest sketches, but all, as we may
assume, were written down by himself for his own use, or to be handed
to others.[122] Chronologically, they are headed by three sermons for
Christmas time, probably dating from 1515. The exact dating of these
older sermons is sometimes rather difficult, and will have to be
undertaken in the future, the Weimar edition of Luther’s works having
made no attempt at this. The sermons were all of them printed in 1720,
with the exception of two printed only in 1886. A complete discourse
held at a synodal meeting at Leitzkau, near Zerbst, and printed in
1708, stands apart, and probably belongs to 1515, a year of the
greatest consequence in Luther’s development. To the same year belongs,
without a doubt, the lecture delivered at a chapter of the Order, which
may aptly be entitled: “Against the little Saints.” (See below, p. 69.)

The first of the works written and published by Luther himself was of
a homiletic nature; this was his Commentary on the Seven Penitential
Psalms, published in 1517. To the same year, or the next, belong his
expositions of the Lord’s Prayer and Ten Commandments, consisting of
excerpts from his sermons sent by him to the press. The celebrated
ninety-five Theses, which led directly to the dispute on Indulgences,
followed next in point of time.

Just as the Theses referred to throw light upon his development,[123]
so also, and to an even greater extent, do the Disputations which
took place at academic festivals about that same period. In these
Disputations propositions drawn up either by himself or by his
colleagues, were defended by his pupils under his own direction. They
display his theological views as he was wont to vent them at home, and
are therefore all the more natural and reliable. Of such Disputations
we have that of Bartholomew Bernhardi in 1516 “On the Powers and
the Will of Man without Grace”; that of Francis Günther in 1517
“Concerning Grace and Nature,” also entitled “Against the Theology of
the Schoolmen,” and the Heidelberg Disputation of 1518, with Leonard
Beyer as defendant of twenty-eight philosophical and twelve theological
theses. In the latter theses there are also various notes in Luther’s
handwriting.

Of Luther’s writings, dating from the strenuous year 1518, some of
which are in Latin and others in German and which throw some light on
his previous development, we may mention in their chronological order:
the sermon on “Indulgence and Grace,” the detailed “Resolutions” on the
Indulgence Theses, the discourse on Penance, the “Asterisci” against
Eck, the pamphlet “Freedom of the Sermon on Indulgence and Grace,”
an exposition of Psalm cx., the reply to Prierias, the sermon on the
power of excommunication, then the report of his trial at Augsburg and
the sermon on the “Threefold Righteousness.” To these we must add his
complete edition of “Theologia Deutsch,” an anonymous mystical pamphlet
of the fourteenth century a portion of which he had brought out in 1516
with a preface of his own.[124]

These are the sources which Luther himself has left behind him and from
which the inner history of his apostasy and of his new theology must
principally be taken. The further evidence derivable from his later
works, his sermons, letters and Table-Talk, will be dealt with in due
course.

Only at the end of 1518 was his new teaching practically complete.
At that time a new and final element had been added, the doctrine
of absolute individual certainty of salvation by “Fiducial Faith.”
This was regarded by Luther and his followers as the corner-stone of
evangelical Christianity now once again recovered. At the commencement
of 1519, we find it expressed in the new Commentary on the Epistle to
the Galatians (a new and enlarged edition of the earlier lectures), and
in the new Commentary on the Psalms, which was printed simultaneously.
Hence Luther’s whole process of development up to that time may be
divided into two stages by the doctrine of the assurance of salvation;
in the first, up to 1517, this essential element was still wanting:
the doctrine of the necessity of belief in personal justification and
future salvation does not appear, and for this reason Luther himself,
later on, speaks of this time as a period of unstable, and in part
despairing, search.[125] The second stage covers the years 1517-18, and
commences with the Resolutions and the Augsburg trial, where we find
the Professor gradually acquiring that absolute certainty of salvation
to which he finally attained through an illumination which he was wont
to regard as God’s own work.[126]

In the next section we deal merely with the first stage, which we shall
seek to elucidate from the psychological, theological and ethical
standpoint.

2. Luther’s Commentary on the Psalms (1513-15). Dispute with the
Observantines and the “Self-righteous”

Presages of the storm which Luther was about to raise were visible in
his first course of lectures on the Psalms given at Wittenberg. With
regard to several particularly important parts of his work on the
Psalms, it would be desirable to determine to what precise time during
the period 1513-15 they belong; but this is a matter of considerable
difficulty. The polemics they contain against the so-called “Saints by
works,” the “Self-righteous” and the Observantines, the last of which
must here be considered first, seem to belong to the earlier part of
the period. In particular his animus against the Observantines, traces
of which are plentiful, seems to have been of early growth. It also
deserves more attention than has hitherto been bestowed on it, on
account of its psychological and theological influence on Luther.[127]

Under the Observantines Luther in his Commentary on the Psalms
refers, openly or covertly, to the members of the German Augustinian
Congregation, i.e. to those who adhered to that party to which, since
his return from Rome, he had been opposed.

No sooner had Luther, as Cochlæus remarked (p. 38), “deserted to
Staupitz” and begun to defend his opinions, the aim of which was
to surrender the privileged position of the Congregation and the
stringency of the Rule, than his fiery temper led him to constitute
himself the champion of the monasteries with whose cause he had
allied himself, particularly that of Wittenberg; indeed, he was, if
not actually the first, one of the earliest to take up the cudgels on
their behalf. The mission to Rome with which he had previously been
entrusted lent him special authority, and his expert knowledge of the
case seemed to entitle him to a voice on the subject. To this was added
the importance of his position at the University, his reputation as
a talented and eloquent lecturer, and his power as a preacher. His
sociability drew many to him, especially among the young, and his
readiness of tongue marked him out as a real party man.

 In his lectures on the Psalms his fiery nature led him to attack
 sharply the Observantines, whom he frequently mentions by name; even
 in the lecture-room his aim was to prejudice the young Augustinians
 who were his audience against the defenders of the traditional
 constitution; instead of encouraging the rising generation of monks
 to strive after perfection on the tried and proved lines of their
 Congregation, he broke out into declamatory attacks against those
 monks who took their vocation seriously as they received it from their
 predecessors, and abused them as Pharisees and hypocrites; according
 to him, they were puffed up by their carnal mind because they esteemed
 “fasting and lengthy prayers.”

 There are Pharisees, he cries, even now who extol fasting and
 long-drawn prayer; “they make rules,” but “their zeal is directed
 against the Lord.” There are many in the Church who “dispute
 about ceremonies and are enthusiastic for the hollowness of
 exterior observances.” “I am acquainted with still more obstinate
 hypocrites.”[128] “It is to be feared that all Observantines, all
 exempted, and privileged religious, must be reckoned among those
 puffed up in their carnal mind. How harmful they are to the Church
 has not yet become clear, but the fact remains and will make itself
 apparent in time. If we ask why they insist upon isolation, they
 reply: On account of the protection of the cloistral discipline. But
 that is the light of an angel of Satan.”[129]

 The following attack on the Observantines in the lectures on the
 Psalms is on the same lines: There are plenty of “men proud of their
 holiness and observance, hypocrites and false brothers.”[130] “But
 the fate of a Divine condemnation” will fall upon “all the proud and
 stiff-necked, all the superstitious, rebellious, disobedient, also, as
 I fear, on our Observantines, who under a show of strict discipline
 are only loading themselves with insubordination and rebellion.”[131]

 The Observantines were plainly in his opinion demonstrating their
 unruliness by seeking to stand by the old foundation principles of
 the Congregation. He is angered by their exemption from the General
 and their isolation from the other German Augustinians, and still
 less does he like their severities; they ought to fall into line with
 the Conventuals and join them. We know nothing further of the matter
 nor anything of the rights of the case; it may be noted, however,
 that the after history of the party with which Luther sided and the
 eventual dissolution of the Congregation, appear rather to justify the
 Observantines.

 On the occasion of a convention of the Order at Gotha in 1515—at
 which the Conventuals must have had a decided majority, seeing
 that Luther was chosen as Rural Vicar—he delivered, on May 1, the
 strange address on slander, which has been preserved. He represents
 this fault as prevalent amongst the opposite party and lashes in
 unmeasured terms those in the Order “who wish to appear holy,” “who
 see no fault in themselves,” but who unearth the hidden sins and
 faults of others, and hinder them in doing good and “in teaching.”
 Thus the estrangement had proceeded very far. Perhaps, even allowing
 for Luther’s exaggeration, the other side may have had its weaknesses,
 and been guilty of precipitancy and sins of the tongue, though it
 is unlikely that the faults were all on one side. It is noticeable,
 however, that Luther’s discourse is not directed against calumniators
 who invent and disseminate untruths against their opponents, but only
 against those who bring to light the real faults of their brethren.
 Scattered through the Latin text of the sermon are highly opprobrious
 epithets in German. The preacher, for their want of charity, calls
 his opponents “poisonous serpents, traitors, vagabonds, murderers,
 tyrants, devils, and all that is evil, desperate, incredulous,
 envious, and haters.” He speaks in detail of their devil’s filth and
 of the human excrement which they busy themselves in sorting, anxious
 to discover the faults of their adversaries.[132] The wealth of
 biblical passages quoted in this strange address cannot make up for
 the lack of clear ideas and of any discrimination and judgment as to
 the limits to be observed by a preacher in commenting on the faults
 of his time. Luther’s fondness for the use of filthy and repulsive
 figures of speech also makes a very disagreeable impression. It is
 true that there we must take into account the manners of the time, and
 his Saxon surroundings, but even Julius Köstlin, Luther’s biographer,
 was shocked at the indecency of the expressions which Luther uses.[133]

 The real reason of this discourse was probably that Luther wished to
 enter on his office as Rural Vicar by striking a deadly blow at the
 Observant faction and at their habit of crying down his own party. It
 was this address which his friend Lang, fully alive to its range, sent
 at once to Mutian, the frivolous leader of the Humanists at Gotha,
 describing it as a sermon “Against the little Saints.”

Returning to the Commentary on the Psalms, we find that therein Luther
sometimes makes characteristic statements about himself. On one
occasion, doubtless in a fit of depression, he pours out the following
effusion: “If Ezechiel says the eyes wax feeble, this prophecy is
largely fulfilled at the present time, as I perceive in myself and in
many others. They know very well all that must be believed, but their
faith and assent is so dull that they are oppressed as by sleep, are
heavy of heart, and unable to raise themselves up to God.” Such states
of lukewarmness were to be banished by means of fear, but woe to him
who permits the feeling of self-righteousness to take the place of the
weariness, for “there is no greater unrighteousness than excessive
righteousness.”[134] In the latter words he seems to be again alluding
to the “little Saints” and the ostensibly self-righteous members of his
Order.

His ill-humour is partly a result of his dissatisfaction with the
disorders which he knew or believed to exist in his immediate
surroundings, in the Order, and in ecclesiastical life generally.
He frequently speaks of them with indignation, though from the new
standpoint which he was gradually taking. “We live in a false peace,”
he cries, and fancy we can draw on the “Treasure of the merits of
Christ and the Saints.” “Popes and bishops are flinging about graces
and indulgences.”[135] Unmindful of the consequences, he diminished
the respect of his youthful hearers for the authority of the Church.
As to the religious life, he was wont to speak as follows: “Here come
men of religion and vaunt their confraternities and indulgences at
every street corner only to get money for food and clothing. Oh! those
begging friars! those begging friars! those begging friars! Perhaps
you are to be excused because you receive alms in God’s name, and
preach the word and perform the other services gratis. That may be,
but see you look to it.”[136] These words in the mouth of one who was
himself a member of a mendicant Order, for this the Augustinian Hermits
undoubtedly were, amounted to an attack on the constitution of his own
Congregation.

In his Commentary on the Psalms he frequently at one and the same time
rails at the “self-righteous” and “holy by works” and at the opposition
party in his Order, so that it is not easy to distinguish against whom
his attacks are directed. Already at this period he shows a certain
tendency to under-estimate the value of Christian good works and to
insist one-sidedly on the power and efficacy of faith and on the
application of the merits of Christ.

 Most emphatically, as opposed to trust in good works and merits, does
 he insist on the grace of Christ, the “_nuda et sola misericordia Dei
 et benignitas gratuita_” which must be our support and stay.[137]
 His exhortations against works and human efforts sound as though
 intended to dissuade from any such, whether inward or outward, as
 though the merits of Christ and the righteousness which God gives us
 might thereby suffer.[138] Man’s interior efforts towards repentance
 by means of the contemplation of the misery and the consequences of
 sin, do not appeal to him. He is well aware that repentance consists
 in sorrow for and hatred of sin,[139] but he says that he himself has
 no personal experience of this kind of compunction.[140] He complains
 that so many turn to exterior works, they “follow their own inventions
 and make rules of their own at their choice; their ceremonies and the
 works they have devised are everything to them”: but to act thus is
 to set up “a new standard of righteousness instead of cultivating the
 spiritual things which God prescribes, namely, the Word of God, Grace
 and Salvation. These persons are in so much the greater error because
 it is a fine spiritual by-path, they are obstinate and stiff-necked,
 full of hidden pride in spite of the wonderful humility of which they
 make a show.” At last, carried away by his anger with what is mostly a
 phantom of his own creation, he exclaims: “Yes, they are given up to
 spiritual idolatry, a sin against the Holy Ghost for which there is no
 forgiveness.”[141]

 With such-like harsh accusations of presumptuous zeal for good
 works he frequently attacks the “_capitosi et ostentiosi monachi et
 sacerdotes_.” Let us go for them, he cries, since they are proud of
 despising others.[142] Obedience and humility they have none, for
 they are seduced by the angel of darkness, who assumes the garb of an
 angel of light. They wish to do great works and they set themselves
 above the small and insignificant things demanded by obedience. These
 devotees in religious dress (“_religiosi devotarii_”) should beware
 of putting their trust in the pious exercises peculiar to them,
 while they remain lazy, languid, careless, and disobedient in the
 common life of the Order.[143] The last words “_si in iis quæ sunt
 conventualia et communia_” are, in the MS., pointed to by a hand
 drawn in the margin. The term “_conventualia_” seems reminiscent of
 the Conventuals, but not much further on, in the Commentary on the
 same Psalm (cxviii.), we find the word “observance.” The Psalmist,
 he says, implicitly condemns “those who are proud of their holiness,
 and observance, who destroy humility and obedience.”[144] He goes
 on to advocate something akin to Quietism, saying we should do, not
 our own works, but God’s works, i.e. “those which God works in us”:
 everything we do of ourselves belongs only to outward or carnal
 righteousness.[145] It is quite possible that he did not wish to deny
 the correct sense these words might convey, for, elsewhere in his
 controversies, he appears unaware of the exaggeration of his language.
 But the skirmish with the so-called self-righteous had a deeper
 explanation. Luther was so fascinated with the righteousness which God
 gives through faith, that man’s share in securing the same is already
 relegated too much to the background.

 Thus he explains the verse of Psalm cxlii. where the words occur “Give
 ear to my supplication in Thy truth and hear me in Thy righteousness”
 as follows: “Hear me by Thy mercy and truth, i.e. through the truth
 of Thy promises of mercy to the penitent and those who beseech
 Thee, not for my merits’ sake; hear me in Thy righteousness, not
 in my righteousness, but in that which Thou givest and wilt give
 me through faith.”[146] With words of remarkable forcefulness he
 declares that, to be in sin, only makes more evident the value of the
 “_iustitia_” which comes through Christ. “It is therefore fitting
 that we become unrighteous and sinners”; what he really means to
 say is, that we should feel ourselves to be such.[147] Elsewhere he
 dwells, not incorrectly, but with startling emphasis, on the fact that
 justification comes only from God and without any effort on our part
 (_gratis_),[148] and that it is not due to works;[149] sanctification
 must proceed not from our own righteousness and according to the
 letter, but from the heart, and with grace, spirit and truth.[150]
 The desire for justification is to him the same as the desire for “a
 lively and strong faith in which I live and am justified.” “Enliven
 me,” he says, “i.e. penetrate me with faith, because the just man
 lives by faith; faith is our life.”[151]

 Even at that time he was not averse to dwelling on the strength of
 concupiscence and, in his usual hyperbolical style, he lays stress
 on the weakness and wickedness of human nature. “We are all a lost
 lump”;[152] “whoever is without God sins necessarily, i.e. he is in
 sin”;[153] “unconquerable” or “necessary” are terms he is fond of
 applying to concupiscence in his discourses.[154] From other passages
 it would almost appear as if, even then, he admitted the persistence
 of original sin, even after baptism; for instance, he says that the
 whole world is “_in peccatis originalibus_,” though unaware of it, and
 must therefore cry “_mea culpa_”;[155] our righteousness is nothing
 but sin;[156] understanding, will, and memory, even in the baptised,
 are all fallen, and, like the wounded Jew, await the coming of the
 Samaritan.[157] He also speaks of the imputation of righteousness by
 God who, instead of attributing to us our sins, “imputes [the merits
 of Christ] unto our righteousness.”[158]

Still, taken in their context, none of these passages furnish any
decisive proof of a deviation from the Church’s faith. They forebode,
indeed, Luther’s later errors, but contain as yet no explicit denial
of Catholic doctrine. In this we must subscribe to Denifle’s view, and
admit that no teaching actually heretical is found in the Commentary on
the Psalms.[159]

 With reference to man’s natural powers, that cardinal point of
 Luther’s later teaching, neither the ability to be good and pleasing
 to God, nor the freedom of choosing what is right and good in spite
 of concupiscence, is denied.[160] Concupiscence, as he frequently
 admonishes us, must be driven back, “it must not be allowed the
 mastery,” though it will always make itself felt; it is like a Red
 Sea through the midst of which we must pass, refusing our consent
 to the temptations which press upon us like an advancing tide.[161]
 Luther lays great weight on the so-called Syntheresis, the inner
 voice which, according to the explanation of the schoolmen, he
 believes cries longingly to God, by whom also it is heard; it is the
 ineradicable precious remnant of good left in us,[162] and upon which
 grace acts. Man’s salvation is in his own hands inasmuch as he is
 able either to accept or to reject the law of God.[163] Luther also
 speaks of a preparation for grace (“_dispositio et præparatio_”)
 which God’s preventing, supernatural grace assists.[164] He expressly
 invokes the traditional theological axiom that “God’s grace is
 vouchsafed to everyone who does his part.”[165] He even teaches,
 following Occam’s school, that such self-preparation constitutes a
 merit “_de congruo_.”[166] He speaks as a Catholic of the doctrine
 of merit, admits the so-called _thesaurus meritorum_ from which
 indulgences derive their efficacy, and, without taking offence,
 alludes to satisfaction (_satisfactio operis_),”[167] to works of
 supererogation,[168] as also to the place of purification in the next
 world (_purgatorium_).[169]

 Regarding God’s imputing of righteousness he follows, it is true, the
 Occamist doctrine, and on this subject the following words are the
 most interesting: faith and grace by which we to-day (i.e. in the
 present order of things) are justified, would not justify without the
 intervention of the _pactum Dei_; i.e. of God’s mercy, who has so
 ordained it, but who might have ordained otherwise.[170] Friedrich
 Loofs rightly says regarding imputation in the Commentary on the
 Psalms: “It must be noted that the _reputari iustum_, i.e. the
 being-declared-justified, is not considered by Luther as the reverse
 of making righteous; on the contrary, the _sine merito iustificari_
 in the sense of _absolvi_ is at the same time the beginning of a new
 life.”[171] “The faith,” so A. Hunzinger opines of the passages in
 question in the same work, “is as yet no imputative faith,” i.e. not
 in the later Lutheran sense.[172]

The Protestant scholar last mentioned has dissected the Commentary
on the Psalms in detail; particularly did he examine its connection
with the philosophical and mystical system sometimes designated as
Augustinian Neo-Platonism.[173] It may be left an open question
whether his complicated researches have succeeded in proving that in
the Commentary—interpreted in the light of some of the older sermons
and the marginal glosses in the Zwickau books—Luther’s teaching
resolves itself into a “somewhat loose and contradictory mixture of
four elements,” namely, Augustinian Neo-Platonism, an Augustinian
doctrine on sin and grace, a trace of scholastic theology, and some of
the mysticism of St. Bernard.[174] His researches and his comparison
of many passages in the Commentary on the Psalms with the works of
Augustine, especially with the “_Soliloquia_” and the book “_De vera
religione_,” have certainly shown that Luther was indebted for his
expressions and to a certain extent for his line of thought, to those
works of Augustine with which he was then acquainted. He had probably
been attracted by the mystical tendency of these writings, by that
reflection of Platonism, which, however, neither in St. Augustine’s
nor in Luther’s case, as Hunzinger himself admits, involved any real
acceptance of the erroneous ideas of the heathen Neo-Platonism. Luther
was weary of the dry Scholasticism he had learned at the schools and
greedily absorbed the theology of the Bishop of Hippo, which appealed
far more to him, though his previous studies had been insufficient to
equip him for its proper understanding. His own words in 1532 express
his case fairly accurately. He says: “In the beginning I devoured
rather than read Augustine.”[175] In a marginal note on the Sentences
of Peter Lombard he speaks, in 1509, of this Doctor as “_numquam satis
laudatus_,” like him, he, too, would fain send the “_moderni_” and that
“fabulator Aristoteles” about their business.[176]

The obscure and tangled mysticism which the young author of the
Commentary on the Psalms built up on Augustine—whose spirit was far
more profound than Luther’s—the smattering of Augustinian theology,
altered to suit his controversial purposes, with which he supplemented
his own scholastic, or rather Occamistic, theology, and the needless
length of the work, make his Commentary into an unattractive congeries
of moral, philosophical and theological thoughts, undigested,
disconnected and sometimes unintelligible. Various causes contributed
to this tangle, not the least being the nature of the subject itself.
Most of the Psalms present all sorts of ideas and figures, and give
the theological and practical commentator opportunity to introduce
whatever he pleases from the stores of his knowledge. With some truth
Luther himself said of his work in a letter to Spalatin, dated December
26, 1515, that it was not worth printing, that it contained too much
superficial matter, and deserved rather to be effaced with a sponge
than to be perpetuated by the press.[177] There is something unfinished
about the work, because the author himself was still feeling his way
towards that great alteration which he had at heart; as yet he has no
wish to seek for a reform from without the Church, he not only values
the authority of the Church and the belief she expounds, but also, on
the whole, the learned tradition of previous ages with which his rather
scanty knowledge of Scholasticism made him conversant. This, however,
did not prevent him attacking the real or imaginary abuses of the
Schoolmen, nor was his esteem for the Church and his Order great enough
to hinder him from criticising, rightly or wrongly, the condition and
institutions of the Church and of monasticism.

The statement made by him in 1537, that he discovered his new doctrine
at the time he took his degree as Doctor, i.e. in 1512, cannot
therefore be taken as chronologically accurate. His words, in a sermon
preached on May 21, were: “Now we have again reached the light, but I
reached it when I became a Doctor ... you should know that Christ is
not sent as a judge.”[178]

3. Excerpts from the Oldest Sermons. His Adversaries

In the sermons which Luther, during his professorship, preached at
Wittenberg in 1515-16, we notice the cutting, and at times ironical,
censure with which he speaks to the people of the abuses and excesses
which pervaded the exercise of the priestly office, particularly
preaching. He is displeased with certain excesses in the veneration
of the Saints, and reproves what he considers wrong in the popular
celebration of the festivals of the Church and in other matters. These
religious discourses contain many beautiful thoughts and give proof,
as do the lectures also, of a rich imagination and great knowledge of
the Bible. But even apart from the harsh denunciation of the conditions
in the Church, the prevailing tone is one of too great hastiness and
self-sufficiency, nor are the Faithful treated justly. It was not
surprising that remarks were made, and that he was jeered at as a
“greenhorn” by the listeners, who told him that he could not “convert
old rogues” with that sort of thing.[179]

He complains bitterly, and with some show of reason, that at that
time preaching had fallen to a very low ebb in Germany. The preachers
too often treated of trivial and useless subjects, enlarged, with
distinctions and sub-distinctions, on subjects belonging to the
province of philosophy and theology, and lost themselves in artificial
allegorical interpretations of the Bible. In their recommendation of
popular devotions they sometimes went to extremes and sometimes lapsed
into platitude. There was too little of the wealth of thought, power
and inward unction of Brother Bertold of Regensburg and his school
to be found in the pulpits of that day. Even in Luther’s own sermons
during these years we meet with numerous defects of the time, barren
speculations in the style of the nominalistic school through which he
had passed, too much forcing and allegorising of the Bible text, and
too much coarse and exaggerated declamation. To be pert and provoking
was then more usual than now, and owing to his natural tendency he
was very prone to assume that tone. The shyness which more recent
biographers and admirers frequently ascribe to the young professor
is not recognisable in his sermons. That he ever was shy can only be
established by remarks dropped by Luther in later life, and, as is well
known, such remarks cannot be taken as reliable sources of information
concerning his early years. Were Luther’s later account correct, then
we should be forced to ascribe to the young preacher and professor a
burning desire to live in the solitude of his cell and to spend his
days quite apart from the world and the debates and struggles going
forward in the Church outside. Yet, in reality, there was nothing to
which he was more inclined in his sermons than to allow his personal
opinions to carry him to violent polemics against people and things
displeasing to him; he was also in the habit of crediting opponents
more friendly to the Church than he, or even the Church itself, with
views which they certainly did not hold. Johann Mensing, one of his
then pupils at the University of Wittenberg, speaks of this in words
to which little attention has hitherto been paid: “I may say,” he
writes, “and have often heard it myself, that when Luther had something
especially good or new to say in a sermon he was wont to attribute to
other theologians the opposite opinion, and in spite of their having
written and taught just the same, and of his very likely taking it
from them himself, to represent it as a precious thing he had just
discovered and of which others were ignorant; all this in order to
make a name for himself, like Herostratus, who set fire to the temple
of Diana.”[180] We may also mention here a remark of Hieronymus Emser.
After saying that Luther’s sermons were not those of a cleric, he adds:
“I may say with truth that I have never in all my life heard such an
audacious preacher.”[181] These, it is true, are testimonies from the
camp of Luther’s opponents, but some passages from his early sermons
will show the tone which frequently prevails in them.

Already in the Christmas sermons of 1515 Luther does not scruple to
place himself, as it were, on the same footing with the prophets, wise
men and those learned in the Scriptures, whose persecution Christ
foretold, more particularly among the last of the three groups. Even
then his view was unorthodox.

 “There are some,” he says, “who by the study of Holy Scripture form
 themselves into teachers and who are taught neither by men nor
 directly by God alone.” These are the learned in the Scriptures.
 “They exercise themselves in the knowledge of the truth by meditation
 and research. Thus they become able to interpret the Bible and to
 write for the instruction of others.” But such men are persecuted,
 he continues, and, as the Lord prophesied of the prophets and wise
 men and scribes that they would not be received, but attacked, so is
 it also with me. They murmur against my teaching, as I am aware, and
 oppose it. They reproach me with being in error because “I preach
 always of Christ as the hen under whose wings all who wish to be
 righteous must gather.” Thus his ideas with regard to righteousness
 must have been looked upon as importunate or exaggerated, and, by
 some, in all probability, as erroneous. He immediately launches out
 into an apology: “What I have said is this: We are not saved by all
 our righteousness, but it is the wings of the hen which protect us
 against the birds of prey, i.e. against the devil ... but, as it was
 with the Jews, who persecuted righteousness, so it is to-day. My
 adversaries do not know what righteousness is, they call their own
 fancies grace. They become birds of prey and pounce upon the chicks
 who hope for salvation through the mercy of our hen.”[182]

Such rude treatment meted out to those who found fault with him (and
one naturally thinks of clergy and religious, perhaps even of his very
brethren, as the culprits), the denouncing them from the pulpit as
“birds of prey,” and his claim to lay down the law, this, and similar
passages in the sermons, throw a strong light on his disputatious
temper.

In a well-ordered condition of things the Superiors of the Augustinians
or the diocesan authorities would have intervened to put a stop to
sermons so scandalously offensive; at Wittenberg, however, the evil
was left unchecked and allowed to take deeper root. The students, the
younger monks and some of the burghers, became loud and enthusiastic
followers of the bold preacher. Staupitz was altogether on his side,
and, owing to him, also the Elector of Saxony. The Prince was, however,
so little of an authority on matters theological that Luther once
writes of him that he was “in things concerning God and the salvation
of the soul almost seven times blind.”[183]

Luther’s notes on his Sunday sermons during the summer of 1516—a
time when he had already expressed his errors quite plainly in his
lectures on the Epistle to the Romans—afford us a glimpse of an acute
controversy. At this time his sermons dealt with the first Commandment.

 The Gospel for the 7th Sunday after Pentecost with the words: “Beware
 of false prophets” gives him an all too tempting opportunity for a
 brush with his adversaries, and, on July 6, he attacks them from
 the standpoint of his new ideas on righteousness. “Much fasting,
 and long prayers,” he cries, “study, preaching, watching, and poor
 clothing, these are the pious lambskins under which ravening wolves
 hide themselves.” In their case these are only “works done for show.”
 These Observantines, for all their great outward display of holiness,
 are “heretics and schismatics.” Thus does he storm, evidently applying
 his words to his brother monks of the Observantine party, who probably
 had been among the first to criticise him. The following remarks on
 rebellion and defamation make this application all the clearer.[184]
 “The true works by which we may recognise the prophets are done in
 the inner and hidden man. But these proud men are wanting above all
 in patience and the charity which is forgetful of self, but concerned
 for others.” “When they have to do works which are not to their liking
 they are slow, rebellious, obstinate, but they well know how to
 take away the name of others and to pass judgment on them.... There
 is no greater plague in the Church to-day than these men with the
 words: ‘Good works are necessary’ in their mouths; men who refuse to
 distinguish between what is good and evil because they are enemies of
 the Cross, i.e. of the good things of God.”[185]

 Such a daring challenge on Luther’s part did not fail in its effect.
 Within as well as outside the Order united preparations were being
 made for a strong resistance, his foes working both openly and in
 secret.

 Luther’s adversaries were again made the object of his public
 vituperation in two sermons preached on the same day a little
 later. This was on July 27, the 10th Sunday after Pentecost. In one
 sermon the passionate orator attempted to show the danger of the
 times; he describes how powerful the devil had become and how under
 the appearance of good works he was making certain persons “fine
 breakers” of the first Commandment. “And these venture,” he says, “to
 shoot arrows secretly against those who are right of heart.”[186]
 In the other sermon his opponents had to submit to being called—in
 allusion to the Sunday’s Gospel of the Pharisee and the Publican—real
 “Pharisees, who by reason of their assumed holiness and merits seek
 the praise of men,” whereas in reality, with their self-righteousness,
 they have merely erected an idol in their hearts.[187]

 Even this was not enough however. The continuous complaints of those
 who thought differently from himself called Luther into the field
 again the very next Sunday (August 3).[188] They heard what they might
 have anticipated, as soon as the fiery preacher, whose appearance was
 doubtless greeted by his pupils and adherents with looks of joy, got
 to work on his thesis: To place our hope in anything but God, even in
 the merit of our good works, is to have false idols before God. Then
 the stream of words flowed apace against the “proud saints,” against
 the presumptuous assurance of salvation on the part of the servitors
 of works, against the fools who make the narrow way to heaven still
 narrower, against the A B C pupils, who know nothing outside their
 own works. “These are old stagers,” he cries, because, like certain
 horses who only go along one track, they know only the one path of
 their own works. As though he recollected his own short-lived zeal for
 the work of the Order, he adds: “At the commencement, when a man first
 enters on the path of the religious life he has to exercise himself in
 many good works, fasts, vigils, prayers, works of mercy, submission,
 obedience and other such-like.” But to remain permanently stuck fast
 in these, that is what makes a man a Pharisee. “The truly pious who
 are led by the Spirit,” he continues, in a vein of peculiar mysticism,
 “once initiated into these things, do not trouble much more about
 them. Rather they offer themselves to God, ready for any work to which
 He may call them, and are led through many sufferings and humiliations
 without knowing whither they are going.”[189]

Luther frequently spoke at that time in the language of a certain
school of mysticism with which he was much enamoured. The following
extract from the sermon under consideration, together with some
thoughts on similar lines, from his synodal address at Leitzau, belong
here.

 “The man of God leaves himself entirely in God’s hands and does
 not attach himself to any works. His works are nameless at the
 commencement, though not at the end, because he does not act, but
 remains passive; he does not calculate with his own cleverness, or
 make projects, but allows himself to be led and does differently
 from what he had intended; thus he is calm and at rest in God.
 Whereas the self-righteous who abound in their own sense (‘_sensuales
 iustitiarii_’) are apt to despair of their own works—for they want to
 determine and name every word beforehand, and with them the name is
 the first thing and this they follow up with their works—the man of
 God on the contrary hurries forward in advance of every name.”

 In the discourse which Luther wrote, probably in the autumn or winter
 months of 1515, for Georg Mascov, provost of Leitzau (see above, p.
 65), and which was intended for a synodal meeting of the clergy, he
 says, in his most exaggerated fashion: “The whole world lies as it
 were under a deluge of false and filthy teaching.” The Word of God
 like a tiny flame is barely kept alive. Egoism, worldliness and vice
 are predominant. And the remedy? He will cry it aloud over the whole
 world: the only remedy is to preach “the word of truth” with much
 greater zeal. The greatest, “nay almost the only sin of the priests”
 is the neglect of the “word of truth” and it is much to be deplored,
 according to him, “that priests who fall into sins of the flesh make
 more account of them than of the neglect of the preaching of the word
 of truth.”[190]

 The address deals further at great length with the holy regeneration
 of man in God. This is something which God works in us while we remain
 altogether passive: a man’s seeking, praying, knocking has nothing to
 do with it because mercy alone effects it. Man does nothing (“_ipso
 nihil agente, petente, merente_”); in this mystical regeneration by
 God, it is as with the natural generation of man: “he who is generated
 in both cases does not count, and can do nothing by his work or merits
 towards his begetting, but lies wholly in the will of the Father.”

 As sons of God we must bear fruit—here the discourse becomes quite
 practical—and the purpose of this meeting is to demand it of the
 clergy. “We must not expose our Synod to the scorn of our enemies.”
 It is more important that chastity and every virtue should dwell in
 the priests than that statutes should be made with regard to readings,
 prayers, festivals, and ceremonies.

The vague, obscure mysticism which played a part in Luther’s
spiritual development at that time, as well as his wrong, one-sided
interpretation of the Epistle to the Romans, had, as already stated,
led him into a heterodox by-way.

A cursory glance at the influence of Scholasticism and Mysticism on his
mental progress, may perhaps be here in place.

4. Preliminary Remarks on Young Luther’s Relations to Scholasticism and
Mysticism

In the years of Luther’s development the two great intellectual forces
of the Middle Ages, Scholasticism and Mysticism, no longer exercised
quite so powerful an influence as of yore, when they ruled over the
world of intellect. Their influence on Luther’s views and his career
was diverse. Scholasticism in its then state of decay, with its endless
subtilties and disputatiousness, which, moreover, he knew only under
the form of Occam’s nominalism, repelled him, to his own great loss.
As a result he never acquired those elements of knowledge of true
and lasting value to be found in the better schools, of which the
traditions embodied the work of centuries of intellectual effort on the
part of some of the world’s greatest minds. Mysticism, on the other
hand, attracted him on account of his natural disposition, so full of
feeling and imagination. He had been initiated into it at the monastery
by the works of Bernard of Clairvaux, Bonaventure and Gerson, and,
later, by the sermons of Tauler and the so-called German Theology. This
study had been recommended him by Staupitz and also by his brother
monks, especially by Johann Lang. It was, however, the more obscure and
ambiguous writings and extracts from mystic works which appealed to him
most, owing to his being able to read into them his own ideas.

As regards Scholasticism, his character predisposed him against it.
Scholastic learning is founded on conceptual operations of reason; it
aims at clear definitions, logical proofs and a systematic linking
together of propositions. Luther’s mind, on the other hand, inclined
more to a free treatment of the subject, one which allowed for feeling
and imagination, and to such descriptions as offered a field for his
eloquence. One of the chief reasons, however, for his lifelong dislike
of Scholasticism was his very partial acquaintance with the same.
He had, as we shall see, never studied its great representatives in
the thirteenth century; he had made acquaintance only with its later
exponents, viz. the Nominalists of Occam’s school, who gave the tone to
his theological instructions and whose teachings were very prevalent in
the schools in that day. He speaks repeatedly of William of Occam as
his teacher. Of Luther’s relations to his doctrines we shall have to
speak later: some of Occam’s views he opposed, others, which happened
to be at variance with those of St. Thomas of Aquin, he approved. He
would not have attributed to the latter and to other exponents of the
better school of Scholasticism such foolish theses as he did—theses
of which they never even dreamt—had he possessed any clear notion of
their teaching. There can be no doubt that he also imbibed during his
first years as a student at Erfurt, the spirit of antagonism against
Scholasticism which Humanism with its craving for novelty displayed,
an antagonism based ostensibly on disgust at the unclassic form of the
former.

Already during the earliest period of his career at Wittenberg, as
soon, indeed, as he began to preach and lecture, he commenced his
attacks against Scholasticism.

 He considers that Aristotle, on whom in the Middle Ages both
 theologians and philosophers had set such store, had been grossly
 misunderstood by most of the scholastics; all the good there is
 in Aristotle, he says, he has stolen from others; whatever in him
 is right, others must understand and make use of better than he
 himself.[191]

 He often passes judgment on the theology of the Middle Ages from the
 point of view of the narrow, one-sided school of Occam, and then, with
 his lively imagination, he grossly exaggerates the opposition between
 it and St. Thomas of Aquin and the more classic schoolmen. The whole
 herd of theologians, he says, has been led astray by Aristotle; nor
 have they understood him in the least; according to him, Thomas of
 Aquin—the Doctor whom the Church has so greatly honoured and placed
 at the head of all theologians—did not expound a single chapter of
 Aristotle aright; “all the Thomists together” have not understood
 one chapter. Aristotle has only led them all to lay too much stress
 upon the importance and merit of human effort and human works to
 the disadvantage of God’s grace. Here lay Aristotle’s chief crime
 discovered by Luther, thanks to his own new theology.[192]

 In his lectures on the Psalms Luther already tells his hearers that
 the bold loquacity of theology was due to Aristotle;[193] he makes
 highly exaggerated remarks regarding the disputes between the Scotists