LUTHER (Vol. 1-6). Grisar Hartmann
houses—for the popular manuals of that day set it forth clearly—that for an action to be good the motive of perfect love, which Luther represented as indispensable,[713] was not requisite, but that other religious motives, such as the fear of punishment of sin, were sufficient though it was, indeed, desirable to rise to a higher level. Above all, it was well known that the disinclination towards what is good, which springs from man’s sensual nature like the temptation to indolence which still held sway even in religious, are not sin but may be made the subject of a meritorious struggle.
The formalism which it is true was widely prevalent in the religious life at that time was due not so much to a faulty conception of the religious state as to the inadequate fulfilment of its obligations and its ideals. This deterioration was not likely to be remedied by the application of the mistaken idea which Luther advocated, namely, that not the slightest trace of human weakness must be allowed to enter into the performance of good works, otherwise they became utterly worthless. His stipulation that everything must be done from the highest “spiritus internus,” could only be the result of his extravagant mysticism. The Rules of no Order, not even that of the Augustinians, went so far as this. Yet the Rule of Luther’s Augustinian Congregation did not seek a merely outward, Pharisaical carrying out of its regulations, but a life where the duties of the religious state were performed in accordance with the inward spirit of the Order.
Luther’s master, the Augustinian Johann Paltz, emphasises this spirit very strongly in the instructions which he issued for the preservation of the true ideals of the Order.
“Love,” he there says, “pays more heed to the inward than to the outward, but the spirit of the world mocks at what is inward and sets great value on what is outward.” He opposed the principles tending to formalism and the deterioration of the religious life and shows himself to be imbued with a true and deep appreciation of his profession. He entitles that portion of his treatise directed against deviations from the Rule: “Concerning the wild beasts who lay waste the religious life.” He writes with so much feeling and in so vivid a manner that the reader of to-day almost fancies that he must have foreseen the approaching storm and the destruction of his Congregation. He scourges those who allow themselves to be led away by the appearance of what is good (“sub specie boni”), who introduce new roads to perfection according to their own ideas and require men to do what lies beyond them; they thus endanger the carrying out of the ordinary good works and practices of the religious life which all were able to perform. This, he says, was a temptation of the enemy from the beginning, who seduced such innovators to rely upon their own ideas and to consider themselves alone as good, wise and enlightened. “If the Babylonians [this is the name he gives to the instigators of such disturbances] force their way into the Order and if they obtain the upper hand, that will be the end of discipline, or at least it will be undermined; but if the spirits of Jerusalem [the city of Peace] retain the mastery, then the religious life will flourish and its development will not be hindered by certain defects which are, as a matter of fact, unavoidable in this life.” These words are found in a book written by the clear-sighted and zealous Augustinian and published at Erfurt the year before Luther begged for admittance at the gate of the Augustinian monastery of that town.[714] The monk of liberal views was already on the point of becoming to his Order one of the “Babylonians” above referred to.
Luther wished to introduce into the religious life the confused ideas begotten of his mysticism, at the expense of the observances which all were bound to fulfil. In this connection it should not be forgotten that Tauler, the teacher whom Luther so much admired, had shown that religious obedience if exercised in the right spirit was capable, by the observance of the Rule in small matters, of leading to greater perfection than could be arrived at by the performance of great works or by contemplation when these were self-chosen. Luther must have been acquainted with the instructive story which Tauler relates and which was often told in conventual houses, of the Child Jesus and the nun. The Divine Child appears to her during her meditation, but, on being suddenly called away to perform some allotted task and obeying the summons, as a reward she finds on her return the Divine Child wearing a still more benign and friendly countenance, and her visitor is also at pains to point out to her that the humble task for which she had left Him, pleases Him better than the meditation in which she had been engaged when He first appeared to her.[715]
Teachers of Tauler’s stamp inculcated on monks and laymen alike the highest esteem for small and insignificant tasks when performed in compliance with obedience to the duties of one’s state, whatever it might be. It was unfair to the religious life and at the same time to true Christian mysticism when Luther at a later date, after his estrangement from the Order, in emphasising the works which please God in the secular life, saw fit to speak as though this view had hitherto been unknown.
Tauler had summed up the doctrine already well known in earlier ages in the beautiful words: “When the most trivial work is performed in real and simple obedience, such a work of an obedient man is nobler and better and more pleasing to God and is more profitable and meritorious than all the great works which he may do here below of his own choice.”[716] Every artisan and peasant is able, according to Tauler, to serve God in perfect love in his humble calling; he need not neglect his work to tread the paths of sublime charity and lofty prayer. The mystic illustrates this also by a little anecdote: “I know one who is a very great friend of God and who has been all his days a farm-labourer, for more than two score years. He once asked our Lord whether he should leave his calling and go and sit in the churches. But the Lord said No, and that he was to earn his bread with the sweat of his brow and thus honour His true and noble Blood. Every man must choose some suitable time by day or by night during which he may go to the root of things, each one as best he can.”[717]
Luther, during the time of his crisis, was not only a monk of dangerously wide views, but he was also inclined to take liberties in practice.
There is a great dearth of information with regard to the way in which Luther practised at that time the virtues of the religious life, and from his own statements we do not learn much. He complains, in 1516, to his friend Leiffer, the Erfurt Augustinian: “I am sure and know from my own experience, from yours too, and, in fact, from the general experience of all whom I have seen troubled, that it is merely the false wisdom of our own ideas which is the origin and root of our disquietude. For our eye is evil, and, to speak only of myself, into what painful misery has it brought me and still continues to bring me.”[718]
Luther, whose capacity for work was enormous, flung himself into the employments which pressed upon him. He reserved little time for self-examination and for cultivating his spiritual life. In addition to his lectures, his studies, the direction of the younger monks, his sermons, whether at the monastery or in the parish church, and the heavy correspondence which devolved on him as Vicar, he also undertook various other voluntary labours. Frequently he had several sermons to preach on the same day, and with his correspondence he was scarcely able to cope. This was merely a prelude to what was to come. During the first years after his public apostasy he himself kept four printing presses at work, and besides this had a vast amount of other business to attend to. His powers of work were indeed amazing.
In 1516 in a letter he tells his friend Lang of his engagements. “I really ought to have two secretaries or chancellors. I do hardly anything all day but write letters.... I am at the same time preacher to the monastery, have to preach in the refectory and am even expected to preach daily in the parish church. I am Regent of the Studium [i.e. of the younger monks] and Vicar, that is to say Prior eleven times over [i.e. of the eleven houses under his supervision]; I have to provide for the delivery of fish from the Leitzkau pond and to manage the litigation of the Herzberg fellows [the monks] at Torgau; I am lecturing on Paul, compiling an exposition of the Psalter and, as I said before, writing letters most of the time.”
“It