LUTHER (Vol. 1-6). Grisar Hartmann
or to celebrate [Mass], and then, too, I have my peculiar temptations from the flesh, the world and the devil.”[719]
Thus at the time he was constantly omitting Office in Choir, the Breviary and the celebration of Mass, or performing these sacred duties in the greatest haste in order to get back to his business. We must dwell a little on this confession, as it represents the only definite information we have with regard to his spiritual life. If, as he says, he had strong temptations to bewail, it should have been his first care to strengthen his soul by spiritual exercises and to implore God’s assistance in the Holy Mass and by diligence in Choir. Daily celebration of Mass had been earnestly recommended by teachers of the spiritual life to all priests, more particularly to those belonging to religious Orders. The punctual recitation of the canonical Hours, i.e. of the Breviary, was enjoined as a most serious duty not merely by the laws of the Church, but also by the constitutions of the Augustine Congregation. The latter declared that no excuse could be alleged for the omission, and that whoever neglected the canonical Hours was to be considered as a schismatic. It is incomprehensible how Luther could dispense himself from both these obligations by alleging his want of time, as, according to his Rule, spiritual exercises especially in the case of a Superior, took precedence of all other duties, and it was for him to give an example to others in the punctual performance of the same.
There was probably another reason for his omitting to celebrate Mass.
He felt a repugnance for the Holy Sacrifice, perhaps on account of his frequent fits of anxiety. He says, at a later date, that he never took pleasure in saying Mass when a monk; this statement, however, cannot be taken to include the very earliest period of his priestly life, when the good effects of his novitiate were still apparent, for one reason because this would not agree with the enthusiasm of his letter of invitation to his first Mass.
Religious services generally, he says in 1515-16 to the young monks, with a boldness which he takes little pains to conceal, “are in fact to-day more a hindrance than a help” to true piety. Speaking of the manner of their performance he says with manifest exaggeration, that it is such as to be no longer prayer. “We only insult God more when we recite them.... We acquire a false security of conscience as though we had really prayed, and that is a terrible danger!”[720] Then he goes on to explain “Almost all follow their calling at the present day with distaste and without love, and those who are zealous place their trust in it and merely crucify their conscience.” He speaks of the “superstitious exercises of piety” which are performed from gross ignorance, and sets up as the ideal, that each one should be at liberty to decide what he will undertake in the way of priestly or monastic observances, among which he enumerates expressly “celibacy, the tonsure, the habit and the recitation of the Breviary.”[721] We see from this that he was not much attached even to the actual obligations of his profession, and we may fairly surmise that such a disposition had not come upon him suddenly; these were rather the moral accompaniments of the change in his theological views and really date from an earlier period. We can also recognise in them the practical results of his strong opposition to the Observantines of the Order, which grew into an antagonism to all zeal in the religious life and in the service of God, and even to the observance of the duties, great or small, of one’s state of life.
With his mystical idealism he demands, on the other hand, what is contrary to reason and impossible of attainment. Prayer, according to him, if rightly performed, is the “most strenuous work and calls for the greatest energy”; “the spirit must be raised to God by the employment of constant violence”; this must be done “with fear and trembling,” because the biblical precept says: “work out your salvation with fear and trembling”; in short, it is, he declares, “the most difficult and most tedious affair” (“difficillima et tædiosissima”).[722] Only then is it not so “when the Spirit of God takes us beneath His wings and carries us, or when misfortune forces us to pray from our hearts.”
He can describe graphically the lukewarmness and distractions which accompany the recitation of the Divine Office, and can do so from experience if we may trust what he says in 1535 of himself: “I have in my day spent much time in the recitation of the canonical Hours, and often the Psalm or Hour was ended before I knew whether I was at the beginning or in the middle of it.”[723]
The ironical description which he gives in 1516 of those who pray with a good intention runs as follows:[724] “They form their good intention and make a virtue of necessity. But the devil laughs at them behind their backs and says: ‘put on your best clothes, Kitty, we are going to have company.’[725] They get up and go into the choir and say to themselves [under the impression that they are doing something praiseworthy]: ‘See, little owl, how fine you are, surely you are growing peacock’s feathers!’[726] But I know you are like the ass in the fable, otherwise I should have taken you for lions, you roar so; but though you have got into a lion’s skin, I know you by your ears! Soon, whilst they are praying, weariness comes over them, they count up the pages still to be gone through, and look at the number of verses to see if they are nearly at the end. Then they console themselves [for their tepidity] with their Scotus, who teaches that a virtual intention suffices and an actual intention is unnecessary. But the devil says to them: ‘excellent, quite right, be at peace and secure!’ Thus we become,” so the amusing description concludes, “a laughing-stock to our enemy.”
He thinks he has found a way out of the dualism which formerly tormented him, and has become more independent. But what has he found to replace it? Merely fallacies, the inadequacy and inconsistency of which are hidden from him by his egotism and self-deception. “This good intention,” he says of the teaching of Scotus—which was perfectly correct, though liable to be misunderstood, as it certainly was by Luther—“is not so easy and under our own control, as Scotus would have it to our undoing; as though we possessed free will to make good intentions whenever we wish! That is a very dangerous and widespread fallacy, which leads us to carelessness and to snore in false security.” We must, on the contrary, he continues, prostrate in our cell, implore this intention of God’s mercy with all our might and wait for it, instead of presumptuously producing it from within ourselves; and in the same way after doing any good works we must not examine whether we have acted wickedly by deed or omission (“neque quid mali fecimus aut omisimus”), but with what interior fervour and gladness of heart we have performed the action.[727]
As the recitation of the Hours in the monastery was one of the duties of the day in the same way as the recitation of the Breviary and Office in Choir is to-day, i.e. an obligation which expired when the day was over, it is rather surprising to hear it said of Luther that, at a later period, “after the rise of the Evangel [i.e. actually during his conflict with the Church], he frequently shut himself up in his cell at the end of the week and recited, fasting, all the prayers he had omitted, until his head swam and he became for weeks incapable of working or hearing.” This strange tale about Luther reads rather differently in Melanchthon’s version which he reports having had from Luther himself: “At the commencement it was Luther’s custom on the days on which he was not obliged to preach to spend a whole day in repeating the Hours seven times over [i.e. for the whole week], getting up at 2 a.m. for that purpose. But then Amsdorf said to him: ‘If it is a sin to omit the Breviary, then you sinned when you omitted it. But if it is not a sin, then why torment yourself now?’ Then when his work increased still more he threw away the Breviary.”[728] The latter statement may indeed be true, as Luther himself says in his Table-Talk: “Our Lord God tore me away by force ‘ab horis canonicis an. 1520’