LUTHER (Vol. 1-6). Grisar Hartmann
up penitential works and satisfaction as the principal thing, but they extol them, solely with a view to inducing the faithful to secure the remission of satisfaction by their rich offerings in return for Indulgences. Therefore he has been obliged, though unwillingly, to emerge from his retirement in order to defend the doctrine that it is better to make real satisfaction than merely to have it remitted by securing an Indulgence.
Staupitz, a shortsighted man, was not to be convinced that, by Luther’s teaching and the commotion which it was arousing, the very existence of the Augustinian Congregation was endangered and the Catholic Church herself menaced in her dogma and discipline.
Instead of watching over the communities committed to his care he spent his days in travelling from place to place, a welcome and witty guest at the tables of great men, devoting his spare time to writing pious and learned books. The sad instances of disobedience, dissension and want of discipline which became more and more prevalent in his monasteries did not induce him to lay a restraining hand upon them. Too many exemptions from regular observance and the common life had already been permitted in the Congregation in the past, and of this the effect was highly pernicious.[781] Luther himself had scarcely ever had the opportunity of acquiring any practical experience of the monastic life at its best during his conventual days; it offered no splendid picture which might have roused his admiration and enthusiasm. This circumstance must be taken into account in considering his growing coldness in his profession and his gradually increasing animosity towards the religious life. He and Staupitz helped to destroy the fine foundation of Andreas Proles at a time when it already showed signs of deterioration.
On one occasion, when referring to his administration, Staupitz told Luther, that at first he had sought to carry out his plans for the good of the Order, later he had followed the advice of the Fathers of the Order, and, then, entrusted the matter to God, but, now, he was letting things take their course. Luther himself adds when recounting this: “Then I came on the scene and started something new.”[782] It is a proof of the weakness which was coming upon the institution, that a man holding principles such as Luther was advocating in his lectures and sermons should have been allowed to retain for three years the position of Vicar with jurisdiction over eleven monasteries. When he laid down his office in the Chapter at Heidelberg in 1518 we do not even learn that the Chapter carried out the measures which had meanwhile been decreed against Luther by the General of the Augustinians at Rome. The election of the Prior of Erfurt, Johann Lang, Luther’s friend and sympathiser, as his successor, and the Heidelberg disputation in the Augustinian monastery of that town, of which the result was a victory for the new teaching, show sufficiently the feelings of the Chapter. This election was the final triumph of the non-Observantine party.
A later hand has added against Lang’s name in the Register of the University of Erfurt the words “Hussita apostata,”[783] intended to stigmatise his falling away to the Lutheran heresy comparable only with that of Hus. On leaving the Order he wrote an insulting vindication of his conduct, in which among other things he says all the Priors are donkeys. While he was Prior at Erfurt, a Prior was appointed at Wittenberg whom Luther, as Rural Vicar, raised to this dignity almost before he had finished his year of noviceship. Only Luther’s strange power over men can account for the fact that so many of the monks were convinced that he was animated by the true Spirit of God in his new ideas with regard to conventual life and religion generally, and even in his overhauling of theology. Later, when the Catholic Church had spoken, they did not see their way to retract and submit, but preferred to marry. Staupitz himself, the inexperienced theologian, deceived by his protégé’s talents, often said to him: “Christ speaks through you.” It is true, that, at a later date, he sternly represented to Luther that he was going too far. After most of the monks had ranged themselves under the new standard, their apathetic and disappointed Superior withdrew to a Catholic monastery at Salzburg, where he expired in peace in 1524 as a Benedictine Abbot.
At that period Church discipline in Germany was already ruined. The man who was responsible for the downfall reveals a mental state capable of going to any extreme when in 1518 he writes to his fatherly friend Staupitz in almost fanatical language: “Let Christ see to it whether the words I have hitherto spoken are mine or His. Without His permission no Pope or Prince can give a decision (Cp. Prov. xxi. 1).... I have no temporal possessions to lose, I have only my weak body, tried by many labours. Should they desire to take my life by treachery or violence they will but shorten my existence by a few hours. I am content with my sweetest Saviour and Redeemer, our Lord Jesus Christ. Him I will praise as long as life lasts (Ps. ciii. 33). Should others refuse to sing with me, what matters it? Let them howl alone if it pleases them. May our Lord Jesus Christ ever preserve you, my sweetest father.”[784]
The ultra-spiritualism which had cast its spell over Luther was compounded, as we may see from what has gone before, of pseudo-mysticism, bad theology, a distaste for practical works of piety, a tendency to polemics and a misguided zeal for reform, not to speak of other elements. This it was which animated him during the years which preceded his public apostasy. On the other hand, in the subsequent struggle against the Church it is rather less apparent, being, to a certain extent, kept within bounds by the conflict he was obliged to wage in his own camp against dangerous fanatics such as Münzer and Carlstadt. Nevertheless, his spirit had not been entirely tamed, and, when occasion arose, as we shall see later, was still capable of all its former violence.
The Monk, at the time he was at work on the Epistle to the Romans, by dint of studying the Bible and Tauler, had, as he thought, attained to the mystical light of a higher knowledge, and begins accordingly to speak of hearing the inward voice. He tries to persuade himself that he hears this voice speaking in his soul; he looks upon it as so imperative that he is obliged, so he says, to do what it commands, “whether it be foolish or evil or great or small.”[785] Thus the way is already paved for his mysterious comprehension of the Scriptures through the inner word, as his letter to Spalatin shows;[786] we have also here the beginning of what he supposed was the ratification of his Divine mission as proclaimer of the new teaching.
Even before much was known of the data furnished by the Commentary on Romans regarding Luther’s development, Fr. Loofs, on the strength of the fragments which Denifle had made public, ventured to predict that, on the publication of the whole work, it would be seen, “that Luther was at that time following a road which might justly be described as a peculiar form of quietistic mysticism.”[787] To-day we must go further and say that Luther’s whole character was steeped in ultra-spiritualism.
Johann Adam Möhler says of Luther’s public work as a teacher: “In his theological views he showed himself a one-sided mystic.”[788] He adds, “had he lived in the second century Luther would have been a gnostic like Marcion, with some of whose peculiarities he is in singular agreement,” a statement which is borne out by what we have seen of Luther’s work so far. Neander, the Protestant historian, also compares the growth and development of Luther’s mind with that of Marcion.[789] Neander looks upon Marcion as Luther’s spiritual comrade, in fact as a Protestant, because he, like the founder of Protestantism, emphasised the evil in man everywhere, set up an antagonism between righteousness and grace, between the law and the gospel, and preached freedom from the works of the law. This Marcion did by appealing to the gnosis, or deeper knowledge. Luther likewise bases his very first utterances on this teaching and appeals to the more profound theology; he possesses that seductive enthusiasm which Marcion also displayed at the commencement of his career. Soon we shall see that Luther, again like Marcion, brushed aside such books of the Bible as stood in his way; the canon of Holy Scripture must be brought into agreement with his special