Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  Teachers of Tauler’s stamp inculcated on monks and laymen alike the highest esteem for small and insignificant tasks when performed in compliance with obedience to the duties of one’s state, whatever it might be. It was unfair to the religious life and at the same time to true Christian mysticism when Luther at a later date, after his estrangement from the Order, in emphasising the works which please God in the secular life, saw fit to speak as though this view had hitherto been unknown.

  Tauler had summed up the doctrine already well known in earlier ages in the beautiful words: “When the most trivial work is performed in real and simple obedience, such a work of an obedient man is nobler and better and more pleasing to God and is more profitable and meritorious than all the great works which he may do here below of his own choice.” Every artisan and peasant is able, according to Tauler, to serve God in perfect love in his humble calling; he need not neglect his work to tread the paths of sublime charity and lofty prayer. The mystic illustrates this also by a little anecdote: “I know one who is a very great friend of God and who has been all his days a farm-labourer, for more than two score years. He once asked our Lord whether he should leave his calling and go and sit in the churches. But the Lord said No, and that he was to earn his bread with the sweat of his brow and thus honour His true and noble Blood. Every man must choose some suitable time by day or by night during which he may go to the root of things, each one as best he can.”

  Luther, during the time of his crisis, was not only a monk of dangerously wide views, but he was also inclined to take liberties in practice.

  There is a great dearth of information with regard to the way in which Luther practised at that time the virtues of the religious life, and from his own statements we do not learn much. He complains, in 1516, to his friend Leiffer, the Erfurt Augustinian: “I am sure and know from my own experience, from yours too, and, in fact, from the general experience of all whom I have seen troubled, that it is merely the false wisdom of our own ideas which is the origin and root of our disquietude. For our eye is evil, and, to speak only of myself, into what painful misery has it brought me and still continues to bring me.”

  Luther, whose capacity for work was enormous, flung himself into the employments which pressed upon him. He reserved little time for self-examination and for cultivating his spiritual life. In addition to his lectures, his studies, the direction of the younger monks, his sermons, whether at the monastery or in the parish church, and the heavy correspondence which devolved on him as Vicar, he also undertook various other voluntary labours. Frequently he had several sermons to preach on the same day, and with his correspondence he was scarcely able to cope. This was merely a prelude to what was to come. During the first years after his public apostasy he himself kept four printing presses at work, and besides this had a vast amount of other business to attend to. His powers of work were indeed amazing.

  In 1516 in a letter he tells his friend Lang of his engagements. “I really ought to have two secretaries or chancellors. I do hardly anything all day but write letters.... I am at the same time preacher to the monastery, have to preach in the refectory and am even expected to preach daily in the parish church. I am Regent of the Studium [i.e. of the younger monks] and Vicar, that is to say Prior eleven times over [i.e. of the eleven houses under his supervision]; I have to provide for the delivery of fish from the Leitzkau pond and to manage the litigation of the Herzberg fellows [the monks] at Torgau; I am lecturing on Paul, compiling an exposition of the Psalter and, as I said before, writing letters most of the time.”

  “It is seldom,” he adds, “that I have time for the recitation of the Divine Office or to celebrate [Mass], and then, too, I have my peculiar temptations from the flesh, the world and the devil.”

  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!” 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.” 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”). 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.”

  The ironica
l description which he gives in 1516 of those who pray with a good intention runs as follows: “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.’ 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!’ 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.

  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.” 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’ [?] when I was already writing much.” In this same passage he again mentions how he recited the whole of the Office for the seven days of the week on the Saturday and adds the historic comment, that, owing to his fatigue from the Saturday fast and consequent sleeplessness, they had been obliged to dose him with “Dr. Esch’s haustum soporiferum.” It is therefore quite possible that his statements as to the circumstances under which he dispensed himself from the Breviary may contain some truth; all the facts point to the violent though confused struggle going on in the young Monk’s mind.

  Yet Luther speaks ably enough in 1517 of the urgent necessity of spiritual exercises, more particularly meditation on the Scriptures, to which the recitation of the Office in Choir was an introduction: “As we are attacked by countless distractions from without, impeded by cares and engrossed by business, and as all this leads us away from purity of heart, only one remedy remains for us, viz. with great zeal to ‘exhort each other’ (Heb. iii. 13), rouse our slumbering spirit by the Word of God, reading the same continually, and hearing it as the Apostle exhorts.” Not long after he is, however, compelled to write: “I know right well that I do not live in accordance with my teaching.”

  The exertions which his feverish activity entailed avenged themselves on his health. He became so thin that one could count his ribs, as the saying is. His incessant inward anxieties also did their part in undermining his constitution.

  The outward appearance of the Monk was specially remarkable on account of the brilliancy of his deep-set eyes, to which Pollich, his professor at the University of Wittenberg, had already drawn attention (). The impression which this remarkable look, which always remained with him, made on others, was very varied. His subsequent friends and followers found in his eyes something grand and noble, something of the eagle, while, on the other hand, some remarks made by his opponents on the uncanny effect of his magic glance will be mentioned later. Anger intensified this look, and the strange power which Luther exerted over those who opposed him, drew many under the spell of his influence and worked upon them like a kind of suggestion.

  Many remarked with concern on the youthful Luther’s too great self-sufficiency.

  His then pupil Johann Oldecop describes him as “a man of sense,” but “proud by nature.” “He began to be still more haughty,” Oldecop observes, when speaking of the incipient schism. He will have it that at the University. Luther had always shown himself quarrelsome and disputatious. Oldecop could never forget that Luther, his professor, never held a disputation which did not end in strife and quarrels. Luther’s close connection with Johann Lang, the Augustinian and rather freethinking Humanist, was also remarked upon, he says. We know from other sources that Lang encouraged Luther in his peculiar ideas, especially in his mysticism and in his contempt for the theology of the schools.

  3. Luther’s Ultra-Spiritualism and calls for Reform. Is Self-improvement possible? Penance

  It is clear from the above, that the passionate zeal for reform which inspired the Augustinian proceeded chiefly from his pseudo-mysticism. It would, however, be incorrect to attribute all this zeal simply to mysticism, but neither would it be in accordance with the facts of history were we to deny the connection between his repeated complaints and calls for reform and his spiritualistic ideas.

  It may be worth while to listen here to what the youthful Luther had to say of the reforming notions which already inspired him, for it opens up a wide horizon against which his psychology stands out in clear relief. Plans so far-reaching can only have been the result of the exaggerated and one-sided spiritualistic point of view, from which he regarded the perversity of the world at large. The following passages show what were the motives which urged him on. He declared it to be the duty of ecclesiastical superiors to show more indulgence to those who scorn their position and “the rights and privileges of the Church,” and this from the motive of mystical resignation; theologians ought to teach, in place of their traditional science, how we are “humbly to sigh after grace”; philosophy must for the future be silent because it is nothing but “the wisdom of the flesh”; lay authorities, moreover, who now begin to see through our wickedness, ought to seize upon the temporalities of the Church in order that she may be set free to devote herself entirely to the interior Christian life. Luther’s view of the position and actual character of the worldly powers at that time was absolutely untrue to life, and one that could have been cherished only by a mystic looking out on the world from the narrow walls of his cell. A strange self-sufficiency, of which he himself appears to have been utterly unaware, and which is therefore all the more curious, was at the root of these ideas.

  Such a tone unmistakably pervades the projects of reform expressed not
only in the Commentary on Romans, but also in his exposition of the Psalms; but a comparison of these two works shows the increased stress which Luther lays upon his own opinion in the later work, and the still greater inconsideration with which he rejects everything which clashes with his views, a fact which proves that Luther was progressing. In his Commentary on Romans he appeals formally to the “apostolic authority” of his Doctor’s degree, when giving vent to the most unheard-of vituperation of the highest powers, ecclesiastical and lay. He declares it to be his duty to reprove what he finds amiss in all, and almost at the same moment denounces the bishops who defend the rights of the Church as “Pharaonici, Sathanici, Behemotici”; so convinced is he that their supposed abuse of power entitles him to reprove them.

  The language in which the mystic unhesitatingly passes the severest possible judgments could scarcely be stronger.

  “We have fallen under a Jewish bondage ... our preachers have concealed from the people the truth regarding the right way of worshipping God, and the Apostles must needs come again to preach to us.”

  “When shall we at last listen to reason,” he cries, “and understand that we must spend our valuable time more profitably [than in the study of philosophy]? ‘We are ignorant of what is necessary,’ thus we should complain with Seneca, ‘because we merely learn what is superfluous.’ We remain ignorant of what might be of use to us while we busy ourselves with what is worse than worthless.” He speaks thus because others were not alive to the state of things, or had not the courage to open their mouths: “Perhaps they would not be believed, but I have spent years in these studies, have seen and heard much and know that they are vain and perverse” (“studium vanitatis et perditionis”). Therefore let us rise and destroy them! “We must learn to know Jesus Christ, and Him Crucified.... Is it not a strange madness to praise and belaud philosophy, a doctrine which is merely the perverse wisdom of the flesh advocated by so-called wise men and theologians!”