Erasmus was not the only scholar who had proposed to publish a correct edition of the Holy Scriptures. The great Spaniard, Cardinal Ximenes, had announced that he meant to bring out an edition of the Holy Scriptures in which the text of the Vulgate would appear in parallel columns along with the Hebrew and the Greek. The prospectus of this Complutensian Polyglot was issued as early as 1502; the work was finished in 1517, and was published in Spain in 1520 and in other lands in 1522. Erasmus was careful to dedicate the first edition of his _Novum Instrumentum_, (1516) to Pope Leo X., who graciously received it. He sent the second edition to the same Pope in 1519, accompanied by a letter in which he says:
"I have striven with all my might to kindle men from those chilling argumentations in which they had been so long frozen up, to a zeal for theology which should be at once more pure and more serious. And that this labour has so far not been in vain I perceive from this, that certain persons are furious against me, who cannot value anything they are unable to teach and are ashamed to learn. But, trusting to Christ as my witness, whom my writings above all would guard, to the judgment of your Holiness, to my own sense of right and the approval of so many distinguished men, I have always disregarded the yelpings of these people. Whatever little talent I have, it has been, once for all, dedicated to Christ: it shall serve His glory alone; it shall serve the Roman Church, the prince of that Church, but especially your Holiness, to whom I owe more than my whole duty."
He dedicated the various parts of the _Paraphrases_ of the New Testament to Cardinal Campeggio, to Cardinal Wolsey, to Henry VIII., to Charles V., and to Francis I. of France. He deliberately placed himself under the protection of those princes, ecclesiastical and secular, who could not be suspected of having any revolutionary designs against the existing state of things in Church or in State.
In all this he was followed for the time being by the most distinguished Christian Humanists in England, France, and Germany. They were full of the brightest hopes. A Humanist Pope sat on the throne of St. Peter, young Humanist kings ruled France and England, the Emperor Maximilian had long been the patron of German Humanism, and much was expected from his grandson Charles, the young King of Spain. Erasmus, the acknowledged prince of Christian learning, was enthusiastically supported by Colet and More in England, by Buddaeus and Lefevre in France, by Johann Staupitz, Cochlaeus, Thomas Murner, Jerome Emser, Conrad Mutia.n.u.s, and George Spalatin in Germany. They all believed that the golden age was approaching, when the secular princes would forbid wars, and the ecclesiastical lay aside their rapacity, and when both would lead the peoples of Europe in a reformation of morals and in a re-establishment of pure religion. Their hopes were high that all would be effected without the "tumult" which they all dreaded, and when the storm burst, many of them became bitter opponents of Luther and his action. Luther found no deadlier enemies than Thomas Murner and Jerome Emser. Others, like George Spalatin, became his warmest supporters. Erasmus maintained to the end his att.i.tude of cautious neutrality. In a long letter to Marlia.n.u.s, Bishop of Tuy in Spain, he says that he does not like Luther"s writings, that he feared from the first that they would create a "tumult," but that he dare not altogether oppose the reformer, "because he feared that he might be fighting against G.o.d." The utmost that he could be brought to do after the strongest persuasions, was to attack Luther"s Augustinian theology in his _De Libero Arbitrio_, and to insinuate a defence of the principle of ecclesiastical authority in the interpretation of Scripture, and a proof that Luther had laid too much stress on the element of "grace" in human actions. He turned away from the whole movement as far as he possibly could, protesting that for himself he would ever cling to the Roman See.
The last years of his life were spent in excessive literary work-in editing the earlier Christian Fathers; he completed his edition of Origen in 1536, the year of his death. He settled at Louvain, and found it too hotly theological for his comfort; went to Basel; wandered off to Freiburg; then went back to Basel to die. After his death he was compelled to take the side he had so long shrunk from. Pope Paul IV. cla.s.sed him as a notorious heretic, and placed on the first papal "Index" "all his commentaries, notes, scholia, dialogues, letters, translations, books, and writings, even when they contain nothing against religion or about religion."
We look in vain for any indication that those Christian Humanists perceived that they were actually living in a time of revolution, and were really standing on the edge of a crater which was about to change European history by its eruption. Sir Thomas More"s instincts of religious life were all mediaeval. Colet had persuaded him to abandon his earlier impulse to enter a monastic order, but More wore a hair shirt next his skin till the day of his death. Yet in his sketch of an ideal commonwealth, he expanded St. Paul"s thought of the equality of all men before Christ into the conception that no man was to be asked to work more than six hours a day, and showed that religious freedom could only flourish where there was nothing in the form of the mediaeval Church. The lovable and pious young Englishman never imagined that his academic dream would be translated into rude practical thoughts and ruder actions by leaders of peasant and artisan insurgents, and that his _Utopia_ (1515), within ten years after its publication, and ten years before his own death (1535), would furnish texts for communist sermons, preached in obscure public-houses or to excited audiences on village greens. The satirical criticisms of the hierarchy, the monastic orders, and the popular religious life, which Erasmus flung broadcast so recklessly in his lighter and more serious writings, furnished the weapons for the leaders in that "tumult" which he had dreaded all his days; and when he complained that few seemed to care for the picture of a truly pious life, given in his _Enchiridion_, he did not foresee that it would become a wonderfully popular book among those who renounced all connection with the See of Rome to which the author had promised a life-long obedience. The Christian Humanists, one and all, were strangely blind to the signs of the times in which they lived.
No one can fail to appreciate the n.o.bility of the purpose to work for a great moral renovation of mankind which the Christian Humanists ever kept before them, or refuse to see that they were always and everywhere preachers of righteousness. When we remember the century and a half of wars, so largely excited by ecclesiastical motives, which desolated Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, few can withhold their sympathy from the Christian Humanist idea that the path of reformation lay through a great readjustment of the existing conditions of the religious life, rather than through ecclesiastical revolution to a thorough-going reconstruction; although we may sadly recognise that the dynastic struggles of secular princes, the rapacity and religious impotence of Popes and ecclesiastical authorities, and the imperious pressure of social and industrial discontent, made the path of peace impossible. But what must fill us with surprise is that the Christian Humanists seemed to believe with a childlike innocence that the const.i.tuted authorities, secular and ecclesiastical, would lead the way in this peaceful reform, mainly because they were tinged with Humanist culture, and were the patrons of artists and men of learning. Humanism meant to Pope Leo X. and to the young Archbishop of Mainz additional sources of enjoyment, represented by costly pictures, collections of MSS., and rare books, the gratification of their taste for jewels and cameos, to say nothing of less harmless indulgences, and the adulation of the circle of scholars whom they had attracted to their courts; and it meant little more to the younger secular princes.
It is also to be feared that the Christian Humanists had no real sense of what was needed for that renovation of morals, public and private, which they ardently desired to see. Pictures of a Christian life lived according to the principles of reason, sharp polemic against the hierarchy, and biting mockery of the stupidity of the popular religion, did not help the ma.s.ses of the people. The mult.i.tude in those early decades of the sixteenth century were scourged by constant visitations of the plague and other new and strange diseases, and they lived in perpetual dread of a Turkish invasion. The fear of death and the judgment thereafter was always before their eyes. What they wanted was a sense of G.o.d"s forgiveness for their sins, and they greedily seized on Indulgences, pilgrimages to holy places, and relic-worship to secure the pardon they longed for. The aristocratic and intellectual reform, contemplated by the Christian Humanists, scarcely appealed to them. Their longing for a certainty of salvation could not be satisfied with recommendations to virtuous living according to the rules of Neo-Platonic ethics. It is pathetic to listen to the appeals made to Erasmus for something more than he could ever give:
" "Oh! Erasmus of Rotterdam, where art thou?" said Albert Durer.
"See what the unjust tyranny of earthly power, the power of darkness, can do. Hear, thou knight of Christ! Ride forth by the side of the Lord Christ; defend the truth, gain the martyr"s crown! As it is, thou art but an old man. I have heard thee say that thou hast given thyself but a couple more years of active service; spend them, I pray, to the profit of the gospel and the true Christian faith, and believe me the gates of h.e.l.l, the See of Rome, as Christ has said, will not prevail against thee." "(129)
The Reformation needed a man who had himself felt that commanding need of pardon which was sending his fellows travelling from shrine to shrine, who could tell them in plain homely words, which the common man could understand, how each one of them could win that pardon for himself, who could deliver them from the fear of the priest, and show them the way to the peace of G.o.d. The Reformation needed Luther.
BOOK II. THE REFORMATION.
Chapter I. Luther to the Beginning of the Controversy About Indulgences.(130)
-- 1. Why Luther was successful as the Leader in a Reformation.
Reformation had been attempted in various ways. Learned ecclesiastical Jurists had sought to bring it about in the fifteenth century by what was called _Conciliar Reform_. The sincerity and ability of the leaders of the movement are unquestioned; but they had failed ignominiously, and the Papacy with all its abuses had never been so powerful ecclesiastically as when its superior diplomacy had vanquished the endeavour to hold it in tutelage to a council.
The Christian Humanists had made their attempt-preaching a moral renovation and the application of the existing laws of the Church to punish ecclesiastical wrong-doers. Colet eloquently a.s.sured the Anglican Convocation that the Church possessed laws which, if only enforced, contained provisions ample enough to curb and master the ills which all felt to be rampant. Erasmus had held up to scorn the debased religious life of the times, and had denounced its Judaism and Paganism. Both were men of scholarship and genius; but they had never been able to move society to its depths, and awaken a new religious life, which was the one thing needful.
History knows nothing of revivals of moral living apart from some new religious impulse. The motive power needed has always come through leaders who have had communion with the unseen. Humanism had supplied a superfluity of teachers; the times needed a prophet. They received one; a man of the people; bone of their bone, and flesh of their flesh; one who had himself lived that popular religious life with all the thoroughness of a strong, earnest nature, who had sounded all its depths and tested its capacities, and gained in the end no relief for his burdened conscience; who had at last found his way into the presence of G.o.d, and who knew, by his own personal experience, that the living G.o.d was accessible to every Christian. He had won the freedom of a Christian man, and had reached through faith a joy in living far deeper than that which Humanism boasted.
He became a leader of men, because his joyous faith made him a hero by delivering him from all fear of Church or of clergy-the fear which had weighed down the consciences of men for generations. Men could _see_ what faith was when they looked at Luther.
It must never be forgotten that to his contemporaries Luther was the embodiment of personal piety. All spoke of his sensitiveness to religious impressions of all kinds in his early years. While he was inside the convent, whether before or after he had found deliverance for his troubles of soul, his fellows regarded him as a model of piety. In later days, when he stood forth as a Reformer, he became such a power in the hearts of men of all sorts and ranks, because he was seen to be a thoroughly pious man.
Albert Durer may be taken as a type. In the great painter"s diary of the journey he made with his wife and her maid Susanna to the Netherlands (1520),-a mere summary of the places he visited and the persons he saw, of what he paid for food and lodging and travel, of the prices he got for his pictures, and what he paid for his purchases, literary and artistic,-he tells how he heard of Luther"s condemnation at Worms, of the Reformer"s disappearance, of his supposed murder by Popish emissaries (for so the report went through Germany), and the news compelled him to that pouring forth of prayers, of exclamations, of fervent appeals, and of bitter regrets, which fills three out of the whole forty-six pages. The Luther he almost worships is the "pious man," the "follower of the Lord and of the true Christian faith," the "man enlightened by the Holy Spirit," the man who had been done to death by the Pope and the priests of his day, as the Son of G.o.d had been murdered by the priests of Jerusalem. The one thing which fills the great painter"s mind is the personal religious life of the man Martin Luther.(131)
Another source of Luther"s power was that he had been led step by step, and that his countrymen could follow him deliberately without being startled by any too sudden changes. He was one of themselves; he took them into his confidence at every stage of his public career; they knew him thoroughly. He had been a monk, and that was natural for a youth of his exemplary piety. He had lived a model monastic life; his companions and his superiors were unwearied in commending him. He had spoken openly what almost all good men had been feeling privately about Indulgences in plain language which all could understand; and he had gradually taught himself and his countrymen, who were following his career breathlessly, that the man who trusted in G.o.d did not need to fear the censures of Pope or of the clergy. He emanc.i.p.ated not merely the learned and cultivated cla.s.ses, but the common people, from the fear of the Church; and this was the one thing needful for a true reformation. So long as the people of Europe believed that the priesthood had some mysterious powers, no matter how vague or indefinite, over the spiritual and eternal welfare of men and women, freedom of conscience and a renovation of the public and private moral life was impossible. The spiritual world will always have its anxieties and terrors for every Christian soul, and the greatest achievement of Luther was that by teaching and, above all, by example, he showed the common man that he was in G.o.d"s hands, and not dependent on the blessing or banning of a clerical caste. For Luther"s doctrine of Justification by Faith, as he himself showed in his tract on the _Liberty of a Christian Man_ (1520), was simply that there was nothing in the indefinite claim which the mediaeval Church had always made. From the moment the common people, simple men and women, knew and felt this, they were freed from the mysterious dread of Church and priesthood; they could look the clergy fairly in the face, and could care little for their threats. It was because Luther had freed himself from this dread, because the people, who knew him to be a deeply pious man, saw that he was free from it, and therefore that they need be in no concern about it, that he became the great reformer and the popular leader in an age which was compelled to revise its thoughts about spiritual things.
Hence it is that we may say without exaggeration that the Reformation was embodied in Martin Luther, that it lived in him as in no one else, and that its inner religious history may be best studied in the record of his spiritual experiences and in the growth of his religious convictions.
-- 2. Luther"s Youth and Education.
Martin Luther was born in 1483 (Nov. 10th) at Eisleben, and spent his childhood in the small mining town of Mansfeld. His father, Hans Luther, had belonged to Mohra (Moortown), a small peasant township lying in the north-east corner of the Thuringian Wald, and his mother, Margarethe Ziegler, had come from a burgher family in Eisenach. It was a custom among these Thuringian peasants that only one son, and that usually the youngest, inherited the family house and the croft. The others were sent out one by one, furnished with a small store of money from the family strong-box, to make their way in the world. Hans Luther had determined to become a miner in the Mansfeld district, where the policy of the Counts of Mansfeld, of building and letting out on hire small smelting furnaces, enabled thrifty and skilled workmen to rise in the world. The father soon made his way. He leased one and then three of these furnaces. He won the respect of his neighbours, for he became, in 1491, one of the four members of the village council, and we are told that the Counts of Mansfeld held him in esteem.
In the earlier years, when Luther was a child, the family life was one of grinding poverty, and Luther often recalled the hard struggles of his parents. He had often seen his mother carrying the wood for the family fire from the forest on her poor shoulders. The child grew up among the hard, grimy, coa.r.s.e surroundings of the German working-cla.s.s life, protected from much that was evil by the wise severity of his parents. He imbibed its simple political and ecclesiastical ideas. He learned that the Emperor was G.o.d"s ruler on earth, who would protect poor people against the Turk, and that the Church was the "Pope"s House," in which the Bishop of Rome was the house-father. He was taught the Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord"s Prayer. He sang such simple evangelical hymns as "Ein Kindelein so lobelich," "Nun bitten wir den heiligen Geist," and "Crist ist erstanden." He was a dreamy, contemplative child; and the unseen world was never out of his thoughts. He knew that some of the miners practised sorcery in dark corners below the earth. He feared an old woman who lived near; she was a witch, and the priest himself was afraid of her. He was taught about h.e.l.l and Purgatory and the Judgment to come.
He shivered whenever he looked at the stained-gla.s.s window in the parish church and saw the frowning face of Jesus, who, seated on a rainbow and with a flaming sword in His hand, was coming to judge him, he knew not when. He saw the crowds of pilgrims who streamed past Mansfeld, carrying their crucifixes high, and chanting their pilgrim songs, going to the Bruno Quertfort chapel or to the old church at Wimmelberg. He saw paralytics and maimed folk carried along the roads, going to embrace the wooden cross at Kyffhauser, and find a miraculous cure; and sick people on their way to the cloister church at Wimmelberg to be cured by the sound of the blessed bells.
The boy Luther went to the village school in Mansfeld, and endured the cruelties of a merciless pedagogue. He was sent for a year, in 1497, to a school of the Brethren of the Common Lot in Magdeburg. Then he went to St.
George"s school in Eisenach, where he remained three years. He was a "poor scholar," which meant a boy who received his lodging and education free, was obliged to sing in the church choir, and was allowed to sing in the streets, begging for food. The whole town was under the spell of St.
Elizabeth, the pious landgravine, who had given up family life and all earthly comforts to earn a mediaeval saintship. It contained nine monasteries and nunneries, many of them dating back to the days of St.
Elizabeth; her good deeds were emblazoned on the windows of the church in which Luther sang as choir-boy; he had long conversations with the monks who belonged to her foundations. The boy was being almost insensibly attracted to that revival of the mediaeval religious life which was the popular religious force of these days. He had glimpses of the old homely evangelical piety, this time accompanied by a refinement of manners Luther had hitherto been unacquainted with, in the house of a lady who is identified by biographers with a certain Frau Cotta. The boy enjoyed it intensely, and his naturally sunny nature expanded under its influence.
But it did not touch him religiously. He has recorded that it was with incredulous surprise that he heard his hostess say that there was nothing on earth more lovely than the love of husband and wife, when it is in the fear of the Lord.
After three years" stay at Eisenach, Luther entered the University of Erfurt (1501), then the most famous in Germany. It had been founded in 1392 by the burghers of the town, who were intensely proud of their own University, and especially of the fact that it had far surpa.s.sed other seats of learning which owed their origin to princes. The academic and burgher life were allied at Erfurt as they were in no other University town. The days of graduation were always town holidays, and at the graduation processions the officials of the city walked with the University authorities. Luther tells us that when he first saw the newly made graduates marching in their new graduation robes in the middle of the procession, he thought that they had attained to the summit of earthly felicity. The University of Erfurt was also strictly allied to the Church.
Different Popes had enriched it with privileges; the Primate of Germany, the Archbishop of Mainz, was its Chancellor: many of its professors held ecclesiastical prebends, or were monks; each faculty was under the protection of a tutelary saint; the teachers had to swear to teach nothing opposed to the doctrines of the Roman Church; and special pains were taken to prevent the rise and spread of heresy.
Its students were exposed to a greater variety of influences than those of any other seat of learning in Germany. Its theology represented the more modern type of scholastic, the Scotist; its philosophy was the nominalist teaching of William of Occam, whose great disciple, Gabriel Biel (d.
1495), had been one of its most celebrated professors; the system of biblical interpretation, first introduced by Nicholas de Lyra(132) (d.
1340), had been long taught at Erfurt by a succession of able masters; Humanism had won an early entrance, and in Luther"s time the Erfurt circle of "Poets" was already famous. The strongly anti-clerical teaching of John of Wessel, who had lectured in Erfurt for fifteen years (1445-1460), had left its mark on the University, and was not forgotten. Hussite propagandists, Luther tells us, appeared from time to time, whispering among the students their strange, anti-clerical Christian socialism.
While, as if by way of antidote, there came Papal Legates, whose magnificence bore witness to the might of the Roman Church.
Luther had been sent to Erfurt to learn Law, and the Faculty of Philosophy gave the preliminary training required. The young student worked hard at the prescribed tasks. The Scholastic Philosophy, he said, left him little time for cla.s.sical studies, and he attended none of the Humanist lectures.
He found time, however, to read a good many Latin authors privately, and also to learn something of Greek. Virgil and Plautus were his favourite authors; Cicero also charmed him; he read Livy, Terence, and Horace. He seems also to have read a volume of selections from Propertius, Persius, Lucretius, Tibullus, Silvius Italicus, Statius, and Claudian. But he was never a member of the Humanist circle; he was too much in earnest about religious questions, and of too practical a turn of mind.
The scanty accounts of Luther"s student days show that he was a hardworking, bright, sociable youth, and musical to the core. His companions called him "the Philosopher," "the Musician," and spoke of his lute-playing, of his singing, and of his ready power in debate. He took his various degrees in unusually short time. He was Bachelor in 1502, and Master in 1505. His father, proud of his son"s success, had sent him the costly present of a _Corpus Juris_. He may have begun to attend the lectures in the Faculty of Law, when he suddenly plunged into the Erfurt Convent of the Augustinian Eremites.
The action was so sudden and unexpected, that contemporaries felt bound to give all manner of explanations, and these have been woven together into accounts which are legendary.(133) Luther himself has told us that he entered the monastery because he _doubted of himself_; that in his case the proverb was true, "Doubt makes a monk." He also said that his resolve was a sudden one, because he knew that his decision would grieve his father and his mother.
What was the doubting? We are tempted in these days to think of intellectual difficulties, and Luther"s doubting is frequently attributed to the self-questioning which his contact with Humanism at Erfurt had engendered. But this idea, if not foreign to the age, was strange to Luther. His was a simple pious nature, practical rather than speculative, sensitive and imaginative. He could play with abstract questions; but it was pictures that compelled him to action. He has left on record a series of pictures which were making deeper and more permanent impression on him as the years pa.s.sed; they go far to reveal the history of his struggles, and to tell us what the doubts were which drove him into the convent. The picture on the window in Mansfeld church of Jesus sitting on a rainbow, with frowning countenance and drawn sword in His hand, coming to judge the wicked; the altar-piece at Magdeburg representing a great ship sailing heavenwards, no one within the ship but priests or monks, and in the sea laymen drowning, or saved by ropes thrown to them by the priests and monks who were safe on board; the living picture of the prince of Anhalt, who to save his soul had become a friar, and carried the begging sack on his bent shoulders through the streets of Magdeburg; the history of St. Elizabeth blazoned on the windows of the church at Eisenach; the young Carthusian at Eisenach, who the boy thought was the holiest man he had ever talked to, and who had so mortified his body that he had come to look like a very old man; the terrible deathbed scene of the Erfurt ecclesiastical dignitary, a man who held twenty-two benefices, and whom Luther had often seen riding in state in the great processions, who was known to be an evil-liver, and who when he came to die filled the room with his frantic cries. Luther doubted whether he could ever do what he believed had to be done by him to save his soul if he remained in the world. That was what compelled him to become a monk, and bury himself in the convent. The lurid fires of h.e.l.l and the pale shades of Purgatory, which are the permanent background to Dante"s Paradise, were present to Luther"s mind from childhood. Could he escape the one and gain entrance to the other if he remained in the world?
He doubted it, and entered the convent.
-- 3. Luther in the Erfurt Convent.
It was a convent of the Augustinian Eremites, perhaps the most highly esteemed of monastic orders by the common people of Germany during the earlier decades of the sixteenth century. They represented the very best type of that superst.i.tious mediaeval revival which has been already described.(134) It is a mistake to suppose that because they bore the name of Augustine, the evangelical theology of the great Western Father was known to them. Their leading theologians belonged to another and very different school. The two teachers of theology in the Erfurt convent, when Luther entered in 1505, were John Genser of Paltz, and John Nathin of Neuenkirchen. The former was widely known from his writings in favour of the strictest form of papal absolutism, of the doctrine of _Attrition_, and of the efficacy of papal _Indulgences_. It is not probable that Luther was one of his pupils; for he retired broken in health and burdened with old age in 1507.(135) The latter, though unknown beyond the walls of the convent, was an able and severe master. He was an ardent admirer of Gabriel Biel, of Peter d"Ailly, and of William of Occam their common master. He thought little of any independent study of the Holy Scriptures.
"Brother Martin," he once said to Luther, "let the Bible alone; read the old teachers; they give you the whole marrow of the Bible; reading the Bible simply breeds unrest."(136) Afterwards he commanded Luther on his canonical obedience to refrain from Bible study.(137) It was he who made Luther read and re-read the writings of Biel, d"Ailly, and Occam, until he had committed to memory long pa.s.sages; and who taught the Reformer to consider Occam "his dear Master." Nathin was a determined opponent of the Reformation until his death in 1529; but Luther always spoke of him with respect, and said that he was "a Christian man in spite of his monk"s cowl."
Luther had not come to the convent to study theology; he had entered it to save his soul. These studies were part of the convent discipline; to engage in them, part of his vow of obedience. He worked hard at them, and pleased his superiors greatly; worked because he was a submissive monk.
They left a deeper impress on him than most of his biographers have cared to acknowledge. He had more of the Schoolman in him and less of the Humanist than any other of the men who stood in the first line of leaders in the Reformation movement. Some of his later doctrines, and especially his theory of the Sacrament of the Supper, came to him from these convent studies in d"Ailly and Occam. But in his one great quest-how to save his soul, how to win the sense of G.o.d"s pardon-they were more a hindrance than a help. His teachers might be Augustinian Eremites, but they had not the faintest knowledge of Augustinian experimental theology. They belonged to the most pelagianising school of mediaeval Scholastic; and their last word always was that man must work out his own salvation. Luther tried to work it out in the most approved later mediaeval fashion, by the strictest asceticism. He fasted and scourged himself; he practised all the ordinary forms of maceration, and invented new ones; but all to no purpose. For when an awakened soul, as he said long afterwards, seeks to find rest in work-righteousness, it stands on a foundation of loose sand which it feels running and travelling beneath it; and it must go from one good work to another and to another, and so on without end. Luther was undergoing all unconsciously the experience of Augustine, and what tortured and terrified the great African was torturing him. He had learned that man"s goodness is not to be measured by his neighbour"s but by G.o.d"s, and that man"s sin is not to be weighed against the sins of his neighbours, but against the righteousness of G.o.d. His theological studies told him that G.o.d"s pardon could be had through the Sacrament of Penance, and that the first part of that sacrament was sorrow for sin. But then came a difficulty. The older, and surely the better theology, explained that this G.o.dly sorrow (_contritio_) must be based on love to G.o.d. Had he this love? G.o.d always appeared to him as an implacable Judge, inexorably threatening punishment for the breaking of a law which it seemed impossible to keep. He had to confess to himself that he sometimes almost hated this arbitrary Will which the nominalist Schoolmen called G.o.d. The more modern theology, that taught by the chief convent theologian, John of Paltz, a.s.serted that the sorrow might be based on meaner motives (_attritio_), and that this attrition was changed into contrition in the Sacrament of Penance itself.
So Luther wearied his superiors by his continual use of this sacrament.