Life of Luther. Julius Köstlin
of Erfurt could boast of one of the most distinguished men of learning of that time, Henning Goede, who was now in the prime of his vigour. Luther, accordingly, began to attend the lectures on law, and his father allowed him to buy some valuable books for that purpose, particularly a 'Corpus Juris.'
Meanwhile, however, in his inner religious life a change was being prepared, which proved the turning-point of his career.
Luther himself, as we have seen, frequently pointed out in after life the influences which, even from childhood, under the discipline of home, the experiences of school, and the teaching of the Church, combined to bring about this result. He could never shake off for any length of time, even when in the midst of learned study or the enjoyment of student life, the consciousness that he must be pious and satisfy all the strict commands of God, that he must make good all the shortcomings of his life, and reconcile himself with Heaven, and that an angry Judge was throned above who threatened him with damnation. Inner voices of this kind, in a man of sensitive and tender conscience, were bound to assert themselves the more loudly and earnestly, as, in his progress from youth to manhood, he realised more fully his personal responsibility to God, and also his personal independence. To religious observances, in which he had been trained from childhood, Luther, as a student, remained faithful. Regularly he began his day with prayer, and as regularly attended mass. But of any new or comforting means of access to God and salvation, he heard nothing, even here. In the town of Erfurt there was an earnest and powerful preacher, named Sebastian Weinmann, who denounced in incisive language the prevalent vices of the day, and exposed the corruption of ecclesiastical life, and whom the students thronged to hear. But even he had nothing to offer to satisfy Luther's inward cravings of the soul. It was an episode in his life when he once found a Latin Bible in the library of the university. Though then nearly twenty years of age, he had never yet seen a Bible. Now for the first time he saw how much more it contained than was ever read out and explained in the churches. With delight he perused the story of Samuel and his mother, on the first pages that met his eye; though, as yet, he could make nothing more out of the Sacred Book. It was not on account of any particular offences, such as youthful excesses, that Luther feared the wrath of God. Staunch Catholics at Erfurt, including even later avowed enemies of the Reformer, who knew him there as a student, have never hinted at anything of that sort against him. 'The more we wash our hands, the fouler they become,' was a favourite saying of Luther's. He referred, no doubt, to the numerous faults in thought, word, and deed, which, in spite of human carefulness, every day brings, and which, however insignificant they might seem to others, his conscience told him were sins against God's holy law. Disquieting questions, moreover, now arose in his mind, so sorely troubled with temptation; and his subtle and penetrating intellect, so far from being able to solve them, only plunged him deeper in distress. Was it then really God's own will, he asked himself, that he should become actually purged from sin and thereby be saved? Was not the way to hell or the way to heaven already fixed for him immutably in God's will and decree, by which everything is determined and preordained? And did not the very futility of his own endeavours hitherto prove that it was the former fate that hung over him? He was in danger of going utterly astray in his conception of such a God. Expressions in the Bible such as those which speak of serving Him with fear became to him intolerable and hateful. He was seized at times with fits of despair such as might have tempted him to blaspheme God. It was this that he afterwards referred to as the greatest temptation he had experienced when young.
His physical condition probably contributed to this gloomy frame of mind. Already during his baccalaureate we hear of an illness of his, which awakened in him thoughts of death. A friend, represented by later tradition as an aged priest, said to him on his sick bed, 'Take courage; God will yet make you the means of comfort to many others;' and these words impressed him strongly even then. An accident also, which threatened to be fatal, must have tended to alarm him. As he was travelling home at Easter, and was within an hour's distance of Erfurt, he accidentally injured the main artery of his leg with the rapier which, like other students, he carried at his side. Whilst a friend who was with him had gone for a doctor, and he was left alone, he pressed the wound tightly as he lay on his back, but the leg continued to swell. In the anguish of death he called upon the Virgin to help him. That night his terror was renewed when the wound broke open afresh, and again he invoked the Mother of God. It was during his convalescence after this accident that he resolved upon learning to play the lute.
He was terribly distressed also, a few months after he had taken his degree as Master, by the sudden death of one of his friends, not further known to us, who was either assassinated or snatched away by some other fatality.
Well might the thought even then have occurred to him, while so disturbed in his mind and overpowered by feelings of sadness, whether it would not be better to seek his cure in the monastic holiness recommended by the Church, and to renounce altogether the world and all the success he had hitherto aspired to. The young Master of Arts, as he tells us himself in later years, was indeed a sorrowful man.
Suddenly and offhand he was hurried into a most momentous decision. Towards the end of June 1505, when several Church festivals fall together, he paid a visit to his home at Mansfeld, in quest, very possibly, of rest and comfort to his mind. Returning on July 2, the feast of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary, he was already near Erfurt, when, at the village of Stotternheim a terrific storm broke over his head. A fearful flash of lightning darted from heaven before his eyes. Trembling with fear, he fell to the earth, and exclaimed, 'Help, Anna, beloved Saint! I will be a monk.' A few days after, when quietly settled again at Erfurt, he repented having used these words. But he felt that he had taken a vow, and that, on the strength of that vow, he had obtained a hearing. The time, he knew, was past for doubt or indecision. Nor did he think it necessary to get his father's consent; his own conviction and the teaching of the Church told him that no objection on the part of his father could release him from his vow. Thus he severed himself at once from his former life and companions. On July 16 he called his best friends together to bid them leave. Once more they tried to keep him back; he answered them, 'To-day you see me, and never again.' The next day, that of St. Alexius, they accompanied him with tears to the gates of the Augustinian convent in the town, which he thought was to receive him for ever.
It is chiefly from what Luther himself has told us that we are enabled to picture to ourselves this remarkable occurrence. Rumour, and rumour only, has given the name of Alexius to that unknown friend whose death so terrified him, and has represented this friend as having been struck dead by lightning at his side.
The Luther of later days declared that his monastic vow was a compulsory one, forced from him by terror and the fear of death. But, at the same time, he never doubted that it was God who urged him. Thus he said afterwards, 'I never thought to leave again the convent. I was entirely dead to the world, until God thought that the time had come.'
PART II.
LUTHER AS MONK AND PROFESSOR, UNTIL HIS ENTRY ON THE WAR OF REFORMATION—1505–1517.
CHAPTER I.
AT THE CONTENT AT ERFURT, TILL 1508.
Luther's resolve to follow a monastic life was arrived at suddenly, as we have seen. But he weighed that resolve well in his mind, and just as carefully considered the choice of the convent which he entered.
The Augustinian monks, whose society he announced his intention to join, belonged at that time to the most important monastic order in Germany. So much had already been said with justice, in the way of complaint and ridicule, of the depravation of monastic life, its idleness, hypocrisy, and gross immorality, that many of them fancied that the solemn renunciation of marriage and the world's goods, and the absolute submission of their wills to the commands of their superiors and the regulations of their Order, constituted true service to God, and raised them to a peculiar position of holiness and merit.