Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  The Observantines were plainly in his opinion demonstrating their unruliness by seeking to stand by the old foundation principles of the Congregation. He is angered by their exemption from the General and their isolation from the other German Augustinians, and still less does he like their severities; they ought to fall into line with the Conventuals and join them. We know nothing further of the matter nor anything of the rights of the case; it may be noted, however, that the after history of the party with which Luther sided and the eventual dissolution of the Congregation, appear rather to justify the Observantines.

  On the occasion of a convention of the Order at Gotha in 1515 — at which the Conventuals must have had a decided majority, seeing that Luther was chosen as Rural Vicar — he delivered, on May 1, the strange address on slander, which has been preserved. He represents this fault as prevalent amongst the opposite party and lashes in unmeasured terms those in the Order “who wish to appear holy,” “who see no fault in themselves,” but who unearth the hidden sins and faults of others, and hinder them in doing good and “in teaching.” Thus the estrangement had proceeded very far. Perhaps, even allowing for Luther’s exaggeration, the other side may have had its weaknesses, and been guilty of precipitancy and sins of the tongue, though it is unlikely that the faults were all on one side. It is noticeable, however, that Luther’s discourse is not directed against calumniators who invent and disseminate untruths against their opponents, but only against those who bring to light the real faults of their brethren. Scattered through the Latin text of the sermon are highly opprobrious epithets in German. The preacher, for their want of charity, calls his opponents “poisonous serpents, traitors, vagabonds, murderers, tyrants, devils, and all that is evil, desperate, incredulous, envious, and haters.” He speaks in detail of their devil’s filth and of the human excrement which they busy themselves in sorting, anxious to discover the faults of their adversaries. The wealth of biblical passages quoted in this strange address cannot make up for the lack of clear ideas and of any discrimination and judgment as to the limits to be observed by a preacher in commenting on the faults of his time. Luther’s fondness for the use of filthy and repulsive figures of speech also makes a very disagreeable impression. It is true that there we must take into account the manners of the time, and his Saxon surroundings, but even Julius Köstlin, Luther’s biographer, was shocked at the indecency of the expressions which Luther uses.

  The real reason of this discourse was probably that Luther wished to enter on his office as Rural Vicar by striking a deadly blow at the Observant faction and at their habit of crying down his own party. It was this address which his friend Lang, fully alive to its range, sent at once to Mutian, the frivolous leader of the Humanists at Gotha, describing it as a sermon “Against the little Saints.”

  Returning to the Commentary on the Psalms, we find that therein Luther sometimes makes characteristic statements about himself. On one occasion, doubtless in a fit of depression, he pours out the following effusion: “If Ezechiel says the eyes wax feeble, this prophecy is largely fulfilled at the present time, as I perceive in myself and in many others. They know very well all that must be believed, but their faith and assent is so dull that they are oppressed as by sleep, are heavy of heart, and unable to raise themselves up to God.” Such states of lukewarmness were to be banished by means of fear, but woe to him who permits the feeling of self-righteousness to take the place of the weariness, for “there is no greater unrighteousness than excessive righteousness.” In the latter words he seems to be again alluding to the “little Saints” and the ostensibly self-righteous members of his Order.

  His ill-humour is partly a result of his dissatisfaction with the disorders which he knew or believed to exist in his immediate surroundings, in the Order, and in ecclesiastical life generally. He frequently speaks of them with indignation, though from the new standpoint which he was gradually taking. “We live in a false peace,” he cries, and fancy we can draw on the “Treasure of the merits of Christ and the Saints.” “Popes and bishops are flinging about graces and indulgences.” Unmindful of the consequences, he diminished the respect of his youthful hearers for the authority of the Church. As to the religious life, he was wont to speak as follows: “Here come men of religion and vaunt their confraternities and indulgences at every street corner only to get money for food and clothing. Oh! those begging friars! those begging friars! those begging friars! Perhaps you are to be excused because you receive alms in God’s name, and preach the word and perform the other services gratis. That may be, but see you look to it.” These words in the mouth of one who was himself a member of a mendicant Order, for this the Augustinian Hermits undoubtedly were, amounted to an attack on the constitution of his own Congregation.

  In his Commentary on the Psalms he frequently at one and the same time rails at the “self-righteous” and “holy by works” and at the opposition party in his Order, so that it is not easy to distinguish against whom his attacks are directed. Already at this period he shows a certain tendency to under-estimate the value of Christian good works and to insist one-sidedly on the power and efficacy of faith and on the application of the merits of Christ.

  Most emphatically, as opposed to trust in good works and merits, does he insist on the grace of Christ, the “nuda et sola misericordia Dei et benignitas gratuita” which must be our support and stay. His exhortations against works and human efforts sound as though intended to dissuade from any such, whether inward or outward, as though the merits of Christ and the righteousness which God gives us might thereby suffer. Man’s interior efforts towards repentance by means of the contemplation of the misery and the consequences of sin, do not appeal to him. He is well aware that repentance consists in sorrow for and hatred of sin, but he says that he himself has no personal experience of this kind of compunction. He complains that so many turn to exterior works, they “follow their own inventions and make rules of their own at their choice; their ceremonies and the works they have devised are everything to them”: but to act thus is to set up “a new standard of righteousness instead of cultivating the spiritual things which God prescribes, namely, the Word of God, Grace and Salvation. These persons are in so much the greater error because it is a fine spiritual by-path, they are obstinate and stiff-necked, full of hidden pride in spite of the wonderful humility of which they make a show.” At last, carried away by his anger with what is mostly a phantom of his own creation, he exclaims: “Yes, they are given up to spiritual idolatry, a sin against the Holy Ghost for which there is no forgiveness.”

  With such-like harsh accusations of presumptuous zeal for good works he frequently attacks the “capitosi et ostentiosi monachi et sacerdotes.” Let us go for them, he cries, since they are proud of despising others. Obedience and humility they have none, for they are seduced by the angel of darkness, who assumes the garb of an angel of light. They wish to do great works and they set themselves above the small and insignificant things demanded by obedience. These devotees in religious dress (“religiosi devotarii”) should beware of putting their trust in the pious exercises peculiar to them, while they remain lazy, languid, careless, and disobedient in the common life of the Order. The last words “si in iis quæ sunt conventualia et communia” are, in the MS., pointed to by a hand drawn in the margin. The term “conventualia” seems reminiscent of the Conventuals, but not much further on, in the Commentary on the same Psalm (cxviii.), we find the word “observance.” The Psalmist, he says, implicitly condemns “those who are proud of their holiness, and observance, who destroy humility and obedience.” He goes on to advocate something akin to Quietism, saying we should do, not our own works, but God’s works, i.e. “those which God works in us”: everything we do of ourselves belongs only to outward or carnal righteousness. It is quite possible that he did not wish to deny the correct sense these words might convey, for, elsewhere in his controversies, he appears unaware of the exaggeration of his language. But the skirmish with the so-called self-righteous had a
deeper explanation. Luther was so fascinated with the righteousness which God gives through faith, that man’s share in securing the same is already relegated too much to the background.

  Thus he explains the verse of Psalm cxlii. where the words occur “Give ear to my supplication in Thy truth and hear me in Thy righteousness” as follows: “Hear me by Thy mercy and truth, i.e. through the truth of Thy promises of mercy to the penitent and those who beseech Thee, not for my merits’ sake; hear me in Thy righteousness, not in my righteousness, but in that which Thou givest and wilt give me through faith.” With words of remarkable forcefulness he declares that, to be in sin, only makes more evident the value of the “iustitia” which comes through Christ. “It is therefore fitting that we become unrighteous and sinners”; what he really means to say is, that we should feel ourselves to be such. Elsewhere he dwells, not incorrectly, but with startling emphasis, on the fact that justification comes only from God and without any effort on our part (gratis), and that it is not due to works; sanctification must proceed not from our own righteousness and according to the letter, but from the heart, and with grace, spirit and truth. The desire for justification is to him the same as the desire for “a lively and strong faith in which I live and am justified.” “Enliven me,” he says, “i.e. penetrate me with faith, because the just man lives by faith; faith is our life.”

  Even at that time he was not averse to dwelling on the strength of concupiscence and, in his usual hyperbolical style, he lays stress on the weakness and wickedness of human nature. “We are all a lost lump”; “whoever is without God sins necessarily, i.e. he is in sin”; “unconquerable” or “necessary” are terms he is fond of applying to concupiscence in his discourses. From other passages it would almost appear as if, even then, he admitted the persistence of original sin, even after baptism; for instance, he says that the whole world is “in peccatis originalibus,” though unaware of it, and must therefore cry “mea culpa”; our righteousness is nothing but sin; understanding, will, and memory, even in the baptised, are all fallen, and, like the wounded Jew, await the coming of the Samaritan. He also speaks of the imputation of righteousness by God who, instead of attributing to us our sins, “imputes [the merits of Christ] unto our righteousness.”

  Still, taken in their context, none of these passages furnish any decisive proof of a deviation from the Church’s faith. They forebode, indeed, Luther’s later errors, but contain as yet no explicit denial of Catholic doctrine. In this we must subscribe to Denifle’s view, and admit that no teaching actually heretical is found in the Commentary on the Psalms.

  With reference to man’s natural powers, that cardinal point of Luther’s later teaching, neither the ability to be good and pleasing to God, nor the freedom of choosing what is right and good in spite of concupiscence, is denied. Concupiscence, as he frequently admonishes us, must be driven back, “it must not be allowed the mastery,” though it will always make itself felt; it is like a Red Sea through the midst of which we must pass, refusing our consent to the temptations which press upon us like an advancing tide. Luther lays great weight on the so-called Syntheresis, the inner voice which, according to the explanation of the schoolmen, he believes cries longingly to God, by whom also it is heard; it is the ineradicable precious remnant of good left in us, and upon which grace acts. Man’s salvation is in his own hands inasmuch as he is able either to accept or to reject the law of God. Luther also speaks of a preparation for grace (“dispositio et præparatio”) which God’s preventing, supernatural grace assists. He expressly invokes the traditional theological axiom that “God’s grace is vouchsafed to everyone who does his part.” He even teaches, following Occam’s school, that such self-preparation constitutes a merit “de congruo.” He speaks as a Catholic of the doctrine of merit, admits the so-called thesaurus meritorum from which indulgences derive their efficacy, and, without taking offence, alludes to satisfaction (satisfactio operis),” to works of supererogation, as also to the place of purification in the next world (purgatorium).

  Regarding God’s imputing of righteousness he follows, it is true, the Occamist doctrine, and on this subject the following words are the most interesting: faith and grace by which we to-day (i.e. in the present order of things) are justified, would not justify without the intervention of the pactum Dei; i.e. of God’s mercy, who has so ordained it, but who might have ordained otherwise. Friedrich Loofs rightly says regarding imputation in the Commentary on the Psalms: “It must be noted that the reputari iustum, i.e. the being-declared-justified, is not considered by Luther as the reverse of making righteous; on the contrary, the sine merito iustificari in the sense of absolvi is at the same time the beginning of a new life.” “The faith,” so A. Hunzinger opines of the passages in question in the same work, “is as yet no imputative faith,” i.e. not in the later Lutheran sense.

  The Protestant scholar last mentioned has dissected the Commentary on the Psalms in detail; particularly did he examine its connection with the philosophical and mystical system sometimes designated as Augustinian Neo-Platonism. It may be left an open question whether his complicated researches have succeeded in proving that in the Commentary — interpreted in the light of some of the older sermons and the marginal glosses in the Zwickau books — Luther’s teaching resolves itself into a “somewhat loose and contradictory mixture of four elements,” namely, Augustinian Neo-Platonism, an Augustinian doctrine on sin and grace, a trace of scholastic theology, and some of the mysticism of St. Bernard. His researches and his comparison of many passages in the Commentary on the Psalms with the works of Augustine, especially with the “Soliloquia” and the book “De vera religione,” have certainly shown that Luther was indebted for his expressions and to a certain extent for his line of thought, to those works of Augustine with which he was then acquainted. He had probably been attracted by the mystical tendency of these writings, by that reflection of Platonism, which, however, neither in St. Augustine’s nor in Luther’s case, as Hunzinger himself admits, involved any real acceptance of the erroneous ideas of the heathen Neo-Platonism. Luther was weary of the dry Scholasticism he had learned at the schools and greedily absorbed the theology of the Bishop of Hippo, which appealed far more to him, though his previous studies had been insufficient to equip him for its proper understanding. His own words in 1532 express his case fairly accurately. He says: “In the beginning I devoured rather than read Augustine.” In a marginal note on the Sentences of Peter Lombard he speaks, in 1509, of this Doctor as “numquam satis laudatus,” like him, he, too, would fain send the “moderni” and that “fabulator Aristoteles” about their business.

  The obscure and tangled mysticism which the young author of the Commentary on the Psalms built up on Augustine — whose spirit was far more profound than Luther’s — the smattering of Augustinian theology, altered to suit his controversial purposes, with which he supplemented his own scholastic, or rather Occamistic, theology, and the needless length of the work, make his Commentary into an unattractive congeries of moral, philosophical and theological thoughts, undigested, disconnected and sometimes unintelligible. Various causes contributed to this tangle, not the least being the nature of the subject itself. Most of the Psalms present all sorts of ideas and figures, and give the theological and practical commentator opportunity 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. 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 no
t 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.”

  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.

  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.” 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.” 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.