Luther's heart was carried by storm.
He learned to appreciate and to accept the doctrine ofjustification hy faith, in contradistinction from the ethical system of Aristotle, then universally in vogue, which inculcated the old Pagan idea, which Socrates taught two thousand years ago in the streets of Athens, of an ideal moralitv, and which Luther had imbibed at the schools.
But from this time Luther held to the grace of God as the sheet-anchor of his hope.
Still it will hardly be imagined, from what has preceded, that Luther was remiss in his observance of the peculiar rites of the monastery.
" Augustine went straight to heaven from the Avails of an abbey, I too ought to do so: all my brethren will bear me this testimony.
I mortified, I practised all the cenobite severities, till I absolutely made myself iU."
" If there was ever any one under the papacy, before the gospel again was brought to light, who truly esteemed the traditions of the pope and of the fathers, and contended for them with unfeigned ardor, I may say that I did so especially ; contending for them with great earnestness and sincerity, and defending them as if they had been holiness itself."
" I was a pious monk, and so strictly observed the rules of my order, that I can declare that if ever a monk by monastic exercises obtained salvation, I would have obtained it too.
In this, all my monastic associates who knew me will bear me witness; for if I had continued longer, I would have tormented myself to death by keeping vigils, saying prayers, by reading, and by other works."
Luther had some dijfficulty in supporting the obligations imposed upon him by the monastic regulations.
It will be readily understood how heavily they must have weighed upon an energetic and impetuous temperament like his.
" If I had done nothing," he said in the twilight of his life, "but relieve men from this tyranny, they would owe me a large debt of gratitude."
This constant repetition, at a fixed hour, of the same meditations, this mechanization of prayer, which weighed so heavily upon the impatient mind of Luther, his contemporary, Ignatius Loyola, endeavored a little later to exalt into still greater honor by his singular
" Religious Exercises.'"'^ But in 1507, the future colossus of the Keformation bade fair to become one of the chief pillars of the temple of Komanism.
The traits which are most prominent in his cloister life, are his stout defence of the minutest and most ludicrous trifles of his creed, his rigid adherence to the papal decretals, his monastic obedience, his deference to his ecclesiastical superiors, and his remorseless asceticism— characteristics as rare in the rotten morals of that epoch, as they were honorable to the honesty and convictions of the recluse monk.
Indeed the flaming zeal, the manifold labors, the submissive spirit, and the tireless energy of Luther at this time, would have called forth the enthusias- * Michelet's Life of Luther, p. 9.
THE LIFE AND TIMES tic encomiums of the most rigorous ascetic that ever trod barefoot the sands of the Syrian deserts, made proselytes in the depths of the Peru"vdan mines, or taught in barbarous tongues on the shores of the Spice islands, and at the marts of the African slave caravans.
Gian Pietro Caraffa would have welcomed him as a brother and an equal, and Ignatius Loyola would have gotten from him brave help in the organization of that protean j)ropaganda, the It now becomes of interest to the student of Luther's life, to trace some of the causes which served to awaken the young cenobite from his dream of monastic piety, and Avhich opened his eyes to the true nature of the ecclesiastical polity whose interests he so blindly struggled to advance.
And in the first place, there was an inner fact which troubled Luther.
He " did not find, in the tranquillity of the cloister and in monkish perfection, that peace of mind which he had looked for there.
He wished to have the assurance of salvation : this was the great want of his soul.
Without it there was no repose for him.
But the fears that had agitated him in the world pursued him to his cell : nay, they were increased.
The faintest cry of his heart reechoed loud beneath the silent arches of the cloister.
God had sent him thither that he might learn to know himself, and to despair of his own strength and virtue.
His conscience, enlightened by the divine word, told him what it was to be holy; but he was filled with terror at finding neither in his heart nor in liis life, that image of hoHness which he had contempkited with admiration in the word of God,
A sad discovery, and one that is made by every sincere man.
No righteousness within, no righteousness without; all was omission, sin, impurity."* The monks and divines of the day encouraged him to satisfy the divine requirements by meritorious works.
But his letters written from the cloister show that he was sad and dejected from the very outset, getting no consolation from the ijater-nosters, the ceaseless vigils, and the physical mortifications prescribed for penitents by the formulas of Eomanism, and pronounced so efficacious by the possessors of the forged keys of St. Peter.
Proving their inefficacy by his own bitter experience, he eventually became suspicious of their potency in other cases.
This reflection unquestionably gave Luther great anxiety and deep distress long before he formally broke the fetters which bound him to the j)ontifical throne.
In seeking for the exterior and more perceptible causes which influenced the mind and action of the nascent reformer, it will be necessary to recur once more to history, and to recite the several ecclesiastical abuses which first engrossed his attention, and provoked the thunders of his dissenting eloquence.
* D'Aubigne's Hist, of the Kef., Vol.
In 1502, Frederic, Elector of Saxony, surnamed the Wise, founded at Wittemberg the celebrated university within whose cloisters the Reformation was born.
This humane and enlightened prince, who was born at Torgau in the year 1463, had succeeded his father Ernest in the electorate in 1486, when in his twenty-fourth year, though he shared a divided throne—his brother, Duke John of Saxony, participating with him in the government of his dominions.
Although Frederic never openly accepted the tenets of the Reformation, he frequently bent from his throne to succor and defend the menaced reformers, who in return gratefully bestowed upon him the magnificent but then dangerous appellation of " Protector of the Reformation."
He had, some years previous to the foundation of the Universit}'' of "Wittemberg, contracted an intimate friendship with Frederic determined upon the establishment of his school, he selected Dr. Staupitz, and another distinguished opponent of the prevailing scholastic system, Pollich de Mcllerstadt, doctor of medicine, law, and philosophy, and charged them with the arrangement of its details.
Staupitz being especially anxi6us to promote the study of religious pliilosopliy in the new University—so that it should become indeed what the Elector, in his charter confirming its privileges, had declared that he and his subjects would alv/ays regard it, an oracle—famiUar with Luther's earnest piety, rhetorical abihty, profound scholarship, and brilliant genius, determined to seat the young Angus tinian in the chair of metaphysics.
Accordingly in the latter part of 1508, Frederic sent a missive to Luther inviting him to assume the professorial gown at his University of Wittemberg, and enjoining upon him to make all haste in repairing to his post, should he acce^Dt the appointment.
Instantly deciding to comply with this request, he quitted his monastery so hastily that he had not even time to acquaint his most intimate friends with this great change in his life.
Writing several months later from Wittemberg to his well-beloved master, John Brauu, curate of " My departure was so hasty that those with whom I was living were almost ignorant of it.
I am further away, I confess, but the better part of me remains with you.""
Ignoring the artificial systems of the schoolmen, unperplexed by the sophistical babble of the philosophers, Luther had made in the dreamy quiet of his cloister rapid progress in the study of divinitj'.
He had acquired dm'ing his three years' residence in the monastery an intimate knowledge of the Greek and Hebrew tongues.
THE LIFE AND TIMES met and mastered the cavilling dialectics of the age, and tlie ethics of Aristotle; and he had recently been engaged in the still more difficult task of attempting to reconcile the subtle soiDhistries of the Roman see with the word of God.
Probably no theologian of the age received a more careful and elaborate preparatory training.
It is certain that his theological course was singularly broad, thorough, and complete.
Thus naturally and educationally biased towards theology, Luther declared that he would greatly have preferred to fill that chair at the University; but since it seemed ordered otherwise, he was forced to acquiesce.
The universities of that age were customarily connected with some one of the various monastic orders, and the monks were the instructors of the students who resorted to them.
Frederic had selected St. Augustine as the patron of the Wittemberg school, and it was therefore under the supervision of the Augustinians.
Luther, as a priest, was not suffered on account of his professorship to relax the austere discipline of his order ; but, inhabiting a cell as at Erfurth, occupied his leisure hours as before, in practising all the mummeries of the Roman ritual.
Luther seized every moment which he could spare from his university duties, and from the exercise of his monastic forms, to devote to private study, and applied himself with special zeal and success to the perfect, acquisition of the ancient languages, or MARTIN LUTHEE. particularly Greek and Hebrew.
He was all bis life indefatigable in labor.* His studies weaned liim more and more fi'om tlie superficial ethics of Romanism, and tauglit him to lean upon the oracles of the living God.
In the March of 1509, the theological degree of Baccalaureus tanquam ad Bihlia was conferred upon the young professor, with the special summons to devote himself to biblical theology.f
Every day, at one in the afternoon, Luther was called to lecture to the students on the Bible—a precious hour both for the professor and his pupils, and which led them deeper and deeper into the divine meaning of those revelations so long lost to the people and to the schools.:}:
Yery early in this course of biblical lectures, Luther attacked with remarkable skill and power the cumbersome and artificial system of unbelief, superstition, and vain speculations which then received universal credence, and which was styled the " scholastic theology
"—a system of ethics which was derived partly from the mystic writings of the mediaeval schoolmen, and partly from the pagan philosophy of Aristotle.
The Wittemberg professor boldly proclaimed that the writings of the prophets and apostles, as proceeding from God himself, were infinitely more profound and certain than the empty
* In studiis literaram, corpore ac mente indefessus.
Pallavicini, Hist. Cone. Trident., Vol. t D'Aiibigne's History of the Reformation, Vol.
74THE LIFE AND TIMES babble of the heathen philosophers, or than the later soiDhistries of conceited schoolmen.
Singular as it may now appear, this plain and unquestionable truth excited the indignant surprise and dissent of the papal theologians of that generation, and the epithet
" heretic " was hurled at the audacious monk from countless pulpits.
These doctrines, so new and startling, made from the outset a great noise, and attracted to the newly established university a crowd of students.
Indeed "Luther's lectures, thus prepared, had little similarity to what had been heard till then.
It was not an eloquent rhetorician alone, or a pedantic schoolman, that spoke, but a Christian who had felt the power of revealed truths—who drew them from the Bible, poured them out from the treasures of his heart, and presented them all full of life to his astonished hearers.
It Avas not the teaching of a man, but of God."^ This brave preaching, though receiving the execrations of the apostles of scholasticism, still called several eminent thinkers to the side of the young
Augustiuian; among others. Dr. Mellerstadt, first rector of the university, who had already at Leipsic combated the ridiculous instructions of the scholastics, and who used frequently to say, after hstening attentively to one of Luther's discourses, "This monk will confound all our doctors, establish new doctrines, and reform the whole Roman church
; for he bases himself upon the writings of the prophets * D'Aubigne's History of the Reformation, Vol. and apostles, and is firmly planted on the word of : this no one can successfully oppose or eventually subvert, be it with philosophy, sophistry, albertistry, thomastry, or the whole array of authorities."*
" who was the instrument of God to develop many of the gifts and treasures hidden in Luther," remarking the singular eloquence of the young monk, his mastery over the passions of his auditors, his felicitous acquaintance with the strong idioms and with the elegancies of his native tongue, and the overpowering energy of his oratory, insisted upon his preaching regularly in the village chapel of the Augustinians.
Luther, solemnly impressed with the august nature of that work, long refused to comply with this request of the vicar-general of his order.
" Ascend the pulpit and preach," said Staupitz.
"No," said the modest professor, "it is no light thing to speak to man in God's stead."t "Fifteen arguments, pretexts, or evasions," reports a contemporary,
Luther find to excuse himself from this service."
" Ah, worthy doctor," he supplicated, " it would be the death of me."
" What then ?" was the response ; " be it so, in God's name.":}:
The pertinacity of his ecclesiastical superior at length triumphed, and the over-humble monk began to preach.
* Meurer's Life of Luther.
IMLlner, Maimbourg, Varillcas, Du Pin. t Adam's "Words that Shook the World," p. 29.