weak; such suffering makes a man like Christ who also bore the same.[284]
When in 1518 he published his Latin sermon on Penance, its chief thesis was that man’s part in his reconciliation with God counted for nought; we must despair in order to attain contrition, at least from the motive of fear of God; we must merely submit with faith to the action of grace. “Whoever trusts to his contrition when receiving absolution, builds on the sand of his works and is guilty of shameless presumption.”[285]
He writes in the same year that blinded adversaries accuse him of condemning good works, more especially that he dared to declare war against rosaries, the Little Office, and other prayers, and yet the sum of his sermon was only this: “that we must not place our confidence in our own work.”[286]
Thus the depreciation of works is the prevailing note, even in his first public utterances; this it also remains.
When he began his attack on religious vows, he supported his campaign by preference on the ostensible worthlessness of human works for obtaining merit in heaven; vows were to be rejected because the heart must not seek its stay in works,[287] and in his attacks on the celibacy of the clergy and religious, he again declared that he was attacking the “false saints” who intrench themselves behind the holiness of the works accomplished by them in a state superior to that of family life, but that faith makes all outward things free.[288] This prejudice against works is the principal feature in his polemics; for instance, he explains to King Henry VIII in a rejoinder directed against him that the enemy he was called upon to overcome was the pestilential doctrine of the necessity of appearing before God with works (“velle per opera coram Deo agere”), whereas works were good only in the eyes of man.[289] In season and out of season, he pours forth his rage against the works in the Papacy with such words as these: Away with masses, pilgrimages, Office in Choir, saint-worship, cowls, virginity, confraternities, rules, and such-like, away with “the lousy works”;[290] and so he preached to his very end in 1546.[291]
It is not, however, sufficient to take as Luther’s starting-point his opposition to good works, though this always remains the chief feature in his doctrine. Further fresh light may be thrown on the enigmatical process of his inner change if we consider various influences which contributed to lead him to his new doctrine and to develop the same.
A preliminary glance at the case shows us, first of all, that Luther in his youth was trained in the theological school of Occam, i.e. in a form of theology showing great signs of decadence. The nominalistic, and more particularly the false anthropological speculations of Occam, d’Ailly and Biel, which did not allow its full rights to grace, called forth his opposition, and he soon lost all confidence in the old theology; in his exaggeration he went to the theological extreme contrary to Occamism and declared war against the ability of nature to do good. This was a negative effect of Occamism. This view encouraged him in his opposition to the “self-righteousness” which he fancied he saw everywhere, even in the zeal of the Observantines for their rule, especially when he had already fallen away from the ideals of his profession, from monastic piety and the spirit of the priesthood. A boundless self-reliance began to possess him, and led him forward regardless of all. This was the “wisdom of his own mind” of which he accuses himself in 1516 in a letter to a friend in the Order, speaking of it as the “foundation and root” of much unrest; bitterly he exclaims: “Oh, how much pain has the evil eye [this self-conceit] already caused me, and how much does it continue to plague me.”[292] We may take these words more seriously than they were probably meant. His egotism and pride were flattered to such an extent by his imagination that he seemed to find everywhere confirmation of his own preconceived notions. Having read Tauler he at once considered him as the greatest of writers, because he was able to credit him with some of his own sentiments. Then again in Augustine, the Doctor of the Church, he found, as he imagined, a true reflection of his new doctrine. Devoid of the necessary intellectual and moral discipline, he allowed himself to be blinded by a fanatic attachment to his own opinion.
Carried away by his own judgment and regardless of the teaching of all the schools, yea, even of the Church herself, he passed into the camp of the enemy, perhaps without at first being aware of it; he came to deny entirely the merit of good works as though they were of no importance for our salvation as compared with the power of faith, an idea in which he fortified himself by his one-sided study of Holy Scripture and by his misinterpretation of the Epistles of St. Paul, that preacher of the power of faith and of the grace of Christ. He was always accustomed to consider the Bible as his special province, and, given his character, it was not difficult for him to identify himself with it, and to ascribe to himself the discovery of great Scriptural truths till then misunderstood or forgotten; for instance, the destruction of man’s powers by original sin and their renewal by faith and grace. The false doctrine of the outward imputation of the merits of Christ came next. The school of Occam here prepared the way for him by its views on sanctifying grace and “acceptation” (imputation). Luther found in Occam’s views on this subject no obstacle, but rather a support. This positive influence on him of Occam will be dealt with below (chap. iv. 3), together with other positive effects which decadent Scholasticism exercised upon him. Just as it suited his violent character to declare in no gentle words the renunciation of personal merit of every kind for the imputation of the merits of Christ, so the tendency of his own religious life, which had become alienated from the ideals of his Order, encouraged him to make the whole moral task consist in a simple, trustful appropriation of the saving merits of Christ, in confidence, comfort and safety, notwithstanding the dissentient inner voices.
Further, his study of false mysticism (see below, chap. v.) helped to clothe his new ideas in the deceptive dress of piety. To himself he seemed to be fulfilling perfectly the precepts of the mystics to seek everywhere the spirit and make small account of outward things: he imagined that Christ would be truly honoured, and the importance of Divine grace effectually made manifest, by despair of our own works, yea, even of ourself. The power which a mysticism gone astray exercised in those early stages upon a mind so full of imagination and feeling cannot be overestimated.
The oldest letter we have of Luther to Staupitz is in itself a witness to its writer’s self-deception; to his fatherly friend he speaks quite openly and even appeals to his sermons “on the Love of God” in support of his own errors. Staupitz had warned him in a friendly manner that in many places his name stood in very bad repute. Luther admits in this letter, written four months after he had affixed the well-known Wittenberg Theses, that his doctrine of justification, his sermons on the worthlessness of works, and his opposition to the theology in vogue in the schools had raised a storm against him. People said that he rejected pious practices and all good works. And yet he was merely a disciple of Tauler’s theology, and, like Staupitz, had taught nothing else but that “we should place our confidence in none other than Jesus Christ, not in any prayers and merits and good works, because we are saved not by our works, but by God’s mercy.” If God were working in him, so he concludes enthusiastically, then no one can turn him aside; but if it was not God’s work, then, indeed, no one can advance his cause.[293]
We must assume that at the beginning of his alienation from the Church among other motives he was largely deceived by the appearance of good; there is, in any case, nothing decisive to show the process as purely material, as a result of his efforts to relieve himself from his moral obligations, or as due to a worldly spirit. His responsibility, of course, became much greater when, as he advanced and was able to review things more calmly, he obstinately adhered to his new views, and, as his sermons and