to introduce whatever he pleases from the stores of his knowledge. With some truth Luther himself said of his work in a letter to Spalatin, dated December 26, 1515, that it was not worth printing, that it contained too much superficial matter, and deserved rather to be effaced with a sponge than to be perpetuated by the press.[177] There is something unfinished about the work, because the author himself was still feeling his way towards that great alteration which he had at heart; as yet he has no wish to seek for a reform from without the Church, he not only values the authority of the Church and the belief she expounds, but also, on the whole, the learned tradition of previous ages with which his rather scanty knowledge of Scholasticism made him conversant. This, however, did not prevent him attacking the real or imaginary abuses of the Schoolmen, nor was his esteem for the Church and his Order great enough to hinder him from criticising, rightly or wrongly, the condition and institutions of the Church and of monasticism.
The statement made by him in 1537, that he discovered his new doctrine at the time he took his degree as Doctor, i.e. in 1512, cannot therefore be taken as chronologically accurate. His words, in a sermon preached on May 21, were: “Now we have again reached the light, but I reached it when I became a Doctor ... you should know that Christ is not sent as a judge.”[178]
3. Excerpts from the Oldest Sermons. His Adversaries
In the sermons which Luther, during his professorship, preached at Wittenberg in 1515-16, we notice the cutting, and at times ironical, censure with which he speaks to the people of the abuses and excesses which pervaded the exercise of the priestly office, particularly preaching. He is displeased with certain excesses in the veneration of the Saints, and reproves what he considers wrong in the popular celebration of the festivals of the Church and in other matters. These religious discourses contain many beautiful thoughts and give proof, as do the lectures also, of a rich imagination and great knowledge of the Bible. But even apart from the harsh denunciation of the conditions in the Church, the prevailing tone is one of too great hastiness and self-sufficiency, nor are the Faithful treated justly. It was not surprising that remarks were made, and that he was jeered at as a “greenhorn” by the listeners, who told him that he could not “convert old rogues” with that sort of thing.[179]
He complains bitterly, and with some show of reason, that at that time preaching had fallen to a very low ebb in Germany. The preachers too often treated of trivial and useless subjects, enlarged, with distinctions and sub-distinctions, on subjects belonging to the province of philosophy and theology, and lost themselves in artificial allegorical interpretations of the Bible. In their recommendation of popular devotions they sometimes went to extremes and sometimes lapsed into platitude. There was too little of the wealth of thought, power and inward unction of Brother Bertold of Regensburg and his school to be found in the pulpits of that day. Even in Luther’s own sermons during these years we meet with numerous defects of the time, barren speculations in the style of the nominalistic school through which he had passed, too much forcing and allegorising of the Bible text, and too much coarse and exaggerated declamation. To be pert and provoking was then more usual than now, and owing to his natural tendency he was very prone to assume that tone. The shyness which more recent biographers and admirers frequently ascribe to the young professor is not recognisable in his sermons. That he ever was shy can only be established by remarks dropped by Luther in later life, and, as is well known, such remarks cannot be taken as reliable sources of information concerning his early years. Were Luther’s later account correct, then we should be forced to ascribe to the young preacher and professor a burning desire to live in the solitude of his cell and to spend his days quite apart from the world and the debates and struggles going forward in the Church outside. Yet, in reality, there was nothing to which he was more inclined in his sermons than to allow his personal opinions to carry him to violent polemics against people and things displeasing to him; he was also in the habit of crediting opponents more friendly to the Church than he, or even the Church itself, with views which they certainly did not hold. Johann Mensing, one of his then pupils at the University of Wittenberg, speaks of this in words to which little attention has hitherto been paid: “I may say,” he writes, “and have often heard it myself, that when Luther had something especially good or new to say in a sermon he was wont to attribute to other theologians the opposite opinion, and in spite of their having written and taught just the same, and of his very likely taking it from them himself, to represent it as a precious thing he had just discovered and of which others were ignorant; all this in order to make a name for himself, like Herostratus, who set fire to the temple of Diana.”[180] We may also mention here a remark of Hieronymus Emser. After saying that Luther’s sermons were not those of a cleric, he adds: “I may say with truth that I have never in all my life heard such an audacious preacher.”[181] These, it is true, are testimonies from the camp of Luther’s opponents, but some passages from his early sermons will show the tone which frequently prevails in them.
Already in the Christmas sermons of 1515 Luther does not scruple to place himself, as it were, on the same footing with the prophets, wise men and those learned in the Scriptures, whose persecution Christ foretold, more particularly among the last of the three groups. Even then his view was unorthodox.
“There are some,” he says, “who by the study of Holy Scripture form themselves into teachers and who are taught neither by men nor directly by God alone.” These are the learned in the Scriptures. “They exercise themselves in the knowledge of the truth by meditation and research. Thus they become able to interpret the Bible and to write for the instruction of others.” But such men are persecuted, he continues, and, as the Lord prophesied of the prophets and wise men and scribes that they would not be received, but attacked, so is it also with me. They murmur against my teaching, as I am aware, and oppose it. They reproach me with being in error because “I preach always of Christ as the hen under whose wings all who wish to be righteous must gather.” Thus his ideas with regard to righteousness must have been looked upon as importunate or exaggerated, and, by some, in all probability, as erroneous. He immediately launches out into an apology: “What I have said is this: We are not saved by all our righteousness, but it is the wings of the hen which protect us against the birds of prey, i.e. against the devil ... but, as it was with the Jews, who persecuted righteousness, so it is to-day. My adversaries do not know what righteousness is, they call their own fancies grace. They become birds of prey and pounce upon the chicks who hope for salvation through the mercy of our hen.”[182]
Such rude treatment meted out to those who found fault with him (and one naturally thinks of clergy and religious, perhaps even of his very brethren, as the culprits), the denouncing them from the pulpit as “birds of prey,” and his claim to lay down the law, this, and similar passages in the sermons, throw a strong light on his disputatious temper.
In a well-ordered condition of things the Superiors of the Augustinians or the diocesan authorities would have intervened to put a stop to sermons so scandalously offensive; at Wittenberg, however, the evil was left unchecked and allowed to take deeper root. The students, the younger monks and some of the burghers, became loud and enthusiastic followers of the bold preacher. Staupitz was altogether on his side, and, owing to him, also the Elector of Saxony. The Prince was, however, so little of an authority on matters theological that Luther once writes of him that he was “in things concerning God and the salvation of the soul almost seven times blind.”[183]
Luther’s notes on his Sunday sermons during the summer of 1516—a time when he had already expressed his errors quite plainly in his lectures on the Epistle to the Romans—afford us a glimpse of an acute controversy.