Part 2 (2/2)

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

What leisure remained, after his other monastic duties were over, he devoted most industriously to the study of theology. He read, in particular, the writings of the later Scholastic theologians, with whom he had partly occupied himself during his philosophical course.

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

What at all times in his theological studies enlisted his warmest personal interest was the difficult question, how sinners could obtain everlasting salvation. And all that he came to read on that subject in the writings of those theologians, and to hear from his learned teachers in the convent, served only to increase his fruitless inward wrestlings, and his anxiety and sense of need. The great father of the Church, from whom his Order was named, and to whom their rules were ascribed, had once, on the ground of his own experiences of the struggle with sin and the flesh, laid down with great force, and in a triumphant controversy with his opponents, the doctrine that, as the Apostle says, salvation depends not on the conduct of man, but on the grace of G.o.d, not on the will of man, but on the willingness of G.o.d to pardon, Who alone transforms the sinner, and grants him the power and the will for good. But any knowledge or understanding of this theology of Augustine was as strange to his own Order as to the Scholastics. It was taught, indeed, that heaven was too high for man to attain to otherwise than by the grace of G.o.d. But it was also taught that the sinner, by his own natural strength, both could and ought to do enough in G.o.d's sight to earn that grace which would then help him further on the way to heaven. He who had thus obtained that grace, it was said, felt himself enabled and impelled to do even more than G.o.d's commands require. Reference to the bitter pa.s.sion and death of the Saviour was not omitted, it is true, by the theologians with whom Luther had to do, and frequently, as, for example, by his teacher Palz, was impressed on Christian hearts in words full of feeling.

But the chief stress was laid, not on the redeeming love on which man could rest his confident a.s.surance, but on the necessity of offering oneself to Him who had offered Himself for man, and of submitting even to the pains of death, in imitation of Him, and to pay the penalty of sin. In this way, again and again, Luther saw before him claims on the part of G.o.d which he could never hope to satisfy. His sorest trial was caused by the thought that G.o.d Himself should have the will to let him fail after all his fruitless efforts, and finally be numbered with the lost. And it was just with the later Scholastics that he found, not indeed a theory according to which G.o.d had simply predestined a part of mankind to perdition, but a general conception of G.o.d which would represent Him as a Being not so much of holy love, as of arbitrary, absolute will.

Luther spent two years in the convent amidst these strivings and inward sufferings. His spiritual life, as it was called, of strict discipline and asceticism was quoted in other convents as a model for imitation. Now and then, indeed, he felt himself puffed up with a sense of superior sanct.i.ty--'a proud saint,' as he afterwards called himself. But humility was the ruling temper of his mind.

Frequently, in after life, he described his condition as a warning to others. Thus he speaks of the disciples of the law, who try by their own works, by constant labour, by wearing s.h.i.+rts of hair, by self-scourging, by fasting, by every means, in short, to satisfy the law. Such a one, he tells us, he himself had been. But he had also learned by experience, he adds, what happens when a man is tempted, and death or danger frightens him; how he despairs, nay, would fly from G.o.d as from the devil, and would rather that there were no G.o.d at all. So great became his inward sufferings, that he thought both body and soul must succ.u.mb. Thus he tells us later on, when speaking of the torments of purgatory, of a man, who doubtless was himself, how he had often endured such agony, only momentary it is true, but so h.e.l.lish in its violence, that no tongue could express nor pen describe it; that, had it lasted longer, even for half an hour, or only five minutes, he must have died then and there, and his bones have been consumed to ashes. He himself saw afterwards in these pains, visitations of a special kind, such as G.o.d does not send to everyone. But they served him then as a proof, and one of universal application, that that school of the law, as he called it, would bring no real holiness either to others or himself, but must teach a man to despair of himself and of any claims or merits of his own.

And, indeed, as we know from all that had gone before, it was not simply the external barrenness of the regulations of Church and convent, or a sense of imperfect fulfilment on his part, that caused his restlessness of conscience; what gave him the deepest anxiety and hara.s.sed him the most were those very inward stirrings, which revealed to him his opposition to G.o.d's eternal demands, the fulfilment of which he thought indispensable for reconciliation to G.o.d.

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

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

Luther's teacher at the convent, by whom we shall have to understand the superintendent of the novices, had already made a deep impression upon him, by reminding him of the words of the Apostles'

Creed about the forgiveness of sins, and representing to him, what Luther had never ventured to apply to himself, that the Lord himself had commanded us to hope. For this he referred him to a pa.s.sage in the writings of St. Bernard, where that fervent preacher, imbued though he was in his theology with the Church notions of the middle ages, insists on the importance of this very faith in G.o.d's forgiveness, and appeals to the words of St. Paul that man is justified by grace through faith. Remarks of this kind sank into Luther's mind, and took root there, though their fruit only ripened by degrees. Of his teacher Arnoldi, also, he spoke with admiration and grat.i.tude, for the comfort he had known how to impart to him.

But the one who at this time acquired by far the most potent, wholesome, and lasting influence upon Luther, was the Vicar-General, John von Staupitz. He was a remarkable man, of a n.o.ble and pious disposition, and a refined and far-seeing mind. A master of the forms of Scholastic theology, he was also deeply read in Scripture; he made its teachings the special standard of his life, and was careful to enjoin others to do the same. He strove after an inward, practical life in G.o.d, not confined to mere forms and observances.

Sharp conflicts and controversies were not to his taste; but mildly and discreetly he sought to plant, in his own field of work, and to leave what he had planted in G.o.d's name to grow up.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 5.--STAUPITZ. (From the Portrait in St. Peter's Convent at Salzburg.)]

It was during his visits to Erfurt that Staupitz came in contact with the gifted, thoughtful, and melancholy young monk. He treated Luther, both in conversation and letter, with fatherly confidence, and Luther unlocked to him, as to a father, his heart and its cares.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

After their ordination the monks received the t.i.tle of fathers.

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

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

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