LUTHER (Vol. 1-6). Grisar Hartmann
ranked first. Our thoughts revert to those of his brother monks, whose cause he had at first defended in the internal struggle within the Congregation, only to turn on them unmercifully afterwards. On one occasion he mentions by name the “Observants,” reproaching them with trying to outshine one another in their zeal for God, while at the same time they had no love of their neighbour, whereas, according to the passage he is just expounding, “the fulness of the law is love.”[497] He would also appear to be referring to them, when, on another occasion, he rails at such monks, who by their behaviour bring their whole profession into disgrace.
“They exalt themselves against other members of their profession,” he cries, “as though they were clean and had no evil odour about them,”[498] and continues in the style of his monastic discourse on the “Little Saints” mentioned above (p. 69 f.). “And yet before, behind and within they are a pig-market and sty of sows ... they wish to withdraw from the rest, whereas they ought, were they really virtuous, to help them to conceal their faults. But in place of patient succour there is nothing in them but peevishness and a desire to be far away (‘quærunt fugam ... tediosi sunt et nolunt esse in communione aliorum’). They will not serve those who are good for nothing nor be their companions; they only desire to be the superiors and companions of the worthy, the perfect and the sound. Therefore they run from one place to another.”[499]
The struggle of which this is a picture continued among the German Augustinians. In the spring, 1520, a similar conflict broke out in the Cologne Province, one side having the sympathy of the Roman Conventuals.[500] We can well understand how the General of the Order in Rome was not disposed to grant the exemptions claimed by the Observantines of the Saxon Congregation against his own Provincials.
Luther brandishes his sharp blade against the “spiritually minded, the proud, the stiff-necked, who seek peace in works and in the flesh, the iustitiarii,”[501] without making any sharp distinction between the actual Observantines and the “self-righteous.”
With regard to himself, he admits that he is so antagonistic to the “iustitiarii,” that he is opposed to all scrupulous observance of “iustitia,” to all regulations and strict ordinances:
“The very word righteousness vexes me: if anyone were to steal from me, it would hurt me less than being obliged to listen to the word righteousness. It is a word which the jurists always have on their lips, but there is no more unlearned race than these men of the law, save, perhaps, the men of good intention and superior reason (‘bonæ-intentionarii seu sublimatæ rationis’); for I have experienced both in myself and in others, that when we were righteous, God mocked at us.”[502]
4. Attack on Predisposition to Good and on Free Will
The assertion of the complete corruption of human nature owing to the continuance of original sin and the inextinguishable tinder of concupiscence, arose from the above-mentioned position which Luther had taken up with regard to self-righteousness.
Man remains, according to what Luther says in the Commentary on Romans, in spite of all his veneer of good works, so alienated from God that he “does not love but hates the law which forces him to what is good and forbids what is evil; his will, far from seeking the law, detests it. Nature persists in its evil desires contrary to the law; it is always full of evil concupiscence when it is not assisted from above.” This concupiscence, however, is sin. Everything that is good is due only to grace, and grace must bring us to acknowledge this and to “seek Christ humbly and so be saved.”[503]
The descriptions of human doings which the author gives us in eloquent language are not wanting in fidelity and truth to nature, though we cannot approve his inferences. He has a keen eye on others and is unmerciful in his delineation of the faults which he perceived in the pious people around him.
He spies out many who only act from a desire for the praise of men, and who wish to appear, but not really to be, good. How ready are such, he says, to depreciate themselves with apparent humility. Others only do what is right because it gives them pleasure, i.e. from inclination and without any higher motive. Others do it from vain self-complacency; yea, selfishness is present in almost all, and mars their works. Outward routine and a business-like righteousness spoils a great deal. It is to be deplored that, like the Pharisees, they only keep what is commanded in view and long for the rewards of a busy and petty virtue.[504]
In such descriptions he is easily carried too far and is sometimes even obviously unjust. Thus, for instance, of evil practices he makes conscious theories, in order the more readily to gain the upper hand of his adversaries. “They teach,” he cries, “that it is only necessary to keep the law by works and not with the heart ... their efforts are not accompanied with the least inward effort, everything is wholly external.”[505]
In respect of the doctrine of original sin and its consequences in man, he not only magnifies enormously the strength of the concupiscence which remains after baptism, without sufficiently taking into account the spiritual means by which it can be repressed, but gives the most open expression to his belief that concupiscence is actually sin; it is the persistence of original sin, rendering every man actually culpable, even without any consent of the will. The “Non concupisces” of the Ten Commandments—which the Apostle emphasises in his Epistle to the Romans, though in another sense—Luther makes out to be such a prohibition that, by the mere existence of concupiscence, it is daily and hourly sinfully transgressed. He pays no attention to the theology of the Church, which had hitherto seen in the “Non concupisces” a prohibition of any voluntary consent to a concupiscence existing without actual sin.
His attack on free will is very closely bound up with his ideas on concupiscence.
“Concupiscence with weakness is against the law ‘Thou shalt not covet,’ and it is deadly [a mortal sin], but the gracious God does not impute it on account of the work of salvation which has been commenced in [pardoned] man.” “Even a venial sin,” he teaches in the same passage, “is, according to its nature [owing to human nature which is entirely alienated from God], a mortal sin, but the Creator does not impute (‘imputat’) it as mortal sin to the man whom he chooses to perfect and render whole.”[506]
He makes various attempts to deduce from concupiscence the absolute want in the will of freedom to do what is good. There is not the slightest doubt that he does deny this freedom, though, on the other hand, he grants so much to liberty in his admonitions concerning predestination (see below, p. 219) that he practically retracts his denial. The position he takes up with regard to grace ought to be a test of what he actually held: did he look upon grace as in every case irresistible? But on this very point he is as yet indisposed to commit himself as he will not hesitate to do later, to a positive, erroneous “yes.” In short, though he stands for a denial of liberty, he has not yet seen his way to solve all the difficulties.
If we seek some specimens illustrating the course of his ideas regarding lack of liberty, we find, perhaps, the strongest utterance in his comments on Romans viii. 28: “Free will apart from grace possesses absolutely no power for righteousness, it is necessarily in sin. Therefore St. Augustine in his book against Julian terms