Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  This Prior also had complained of the numerous contrarieties which he experienced from his subordinates, and that he was unable to enjoy any peace of soul. Luther says to him among other things: “The man whom no one troubles is not at peace, that is rather the peace of this world, but the man to whom people bring all their troubles and who nevertheless remains calm and bears everything that happens with joy. You say with Israel: ‘Peace, peace, and there is no peace!’ Say rather with Christ: the cross, the cross, there is no cross. The cross will at once cease to be a cross when a man accepts it joyfully and says: Blessed cross, sacred wood, so holy and venerable!... He who with readiness embraces the cross in everything that he feels, thinks and understands will in time find the fruit of his suffering to be sweet peace. That is God’s peace, under which our thoughts and desires must be hidden in order that they may be nailed to the cross, i.e. to the cross of contradiction and oppression. Thus is peace truly established above all our thinking and desiring, and becomes the most precious jewel. Therefore take up all these disturbances of your peace with joy and clasp them to you as holy relics, instead of endeavouring to seek peace according to your own ideas.”

  When Luther afterwards visited the monastery of this same Prior, on the occasion of an official visitation, he found the community estranged from its head. He did not at that time take any steps, but after a few weeks he suddenly removed Michael Dressel from his office. In confidence he informed Johann Lang, rather cryptically, that: “I did this because I hoped to rule there myself for the half-year.” Do the words perhaps mean that he was anxious to secure a victory for that party in the Order which was devoted to himself and opposed to Dressel, who on this hypothesis was an Observantine? His action was peculiar from the fact that his letter addressed to the community at Neustadt and to Dressel himself gave no reason for the measure against the Prior other than that the brothers were unable to live with him in peace and agreement; the Prior, he says, had always had the best intentions, but it is not enough for a Superior to be good and pious, “it is also necessary that the others should be at peace and in agreement with him”; when a Superior’s measures fail to establish concord, then he should revoke them. Still more unusual than such advice was the circumstance that Luther would not allow the Prior to make any defence, and cut short any excuses by his sudden action. In another letter to the monks he justified his measure simply by stating that there was no peace. In short, the rebellious monks speedily got the better of the Superior whom they disliked. The ex-Prior, Luther tells him, must on no account murmur because he has been judged without a hearing (“quia te non auditum iudicaverim”); he himself (Luther) was convinced of his good will and also hoped that all the inmates of the convent were grateful to him for the good intentions which he had displayed. In the new election ordered by the Rural Vicar, Heinrich Zwetze was chosen as Prior. Of the latter or how the matter ended nothing more is known.

  The office of Rural Vicar required above all, that, when making his regular visitation of the religious houses, the Vicar should have a personal interview with each brother, hear what he had to say, and give him any spiritual direction of which he might stand in need. We learn the following of a visitation of this kind which Luther made in 1516: At the Gotha monastery the whole of the visitation occupied only one hour; at Langensalza two hours. He informs Lang: “In these places the Lord will work without us and direct the spiritual and temporal affairs in spite of the devil.” He at once proceeded on the same journey to the house at Nordhausen and then on to those at Eisleben and Magdeburg. In two days the Rural Vicar was back in his beloved Wittenberg. There is no doubt that such summary treatment of his most important duties was not favourable to discipline.

  At Leitzkau the Augustinians possessed rights over the large fisheries and Luther was intimate with the local Cistercian Provost. When the Provost, George Maskov, asked him how he should behave towards a brother monk who had sinned grievously, seeing that he himself was a still greater offender, Luther replied, saying, among other things, that he ought certainly to punish him, for, as a rule, it was necessary to exercise discipline towards those who are better than ourselves. “We are all children of Adam, therefore we do the works of Adam.” But “our authority is not ours, but God’s.” Perhaps God desired to help that brother on the road of sin, namely, through shame. “It is God Who does all this.” And in another letter he says to the Provost: “If many of your subjects are on the way to moral ruin, yet you must not for that reason disquiet them all. It is better quietly to save a few.... Let the cockel grow together with the wheat ... for it is better to bear with the many for the sake of the few than to ruin the few on account of the many.” In a mystical vein he says: “Pray for me, for my life is daily drawing nearer to hell (i.e. the lower world, ‘inferno appropinquavit,’ Ps. lxxxvii. 4), as I also become worse and more wretched day by day.”

  Bodily infirmities were then pressing hard upon him in consequence of his many labours and spiritual trials, while much of his time was swallowed up by his lectures which were still in progress.

  2. The Monk of Liberal Views and Independent Action

  With regard to his own life as a religious and his conception of his calling Luther was, at the time of the crisis, still far removed from the position which he took up later, though we find already in the Commentary on Romans views which eventually could not fail to place him in opposition to the religious state.

  What still bound him to the religious life was, above all, the ideal of humility, which his mystical ideas had developed. He also recognised fully the binding nature of his vows. According to him man cannot steep himself sufficiently in his essential nothingness before the Eternal God, and vows are an expression of such submission to the Supreme Being.

  “To love is to hate and condemn oneself, yea even to wish evil to oneself.” “Our good is hidden so deeply that it is concealed under its opposite; thus life is hidden under death, real egotism under hatred of self, honour under shame, salvation under destruction, a kingdom under exile, heaven under hell, wisdom under foolishness, righteousness under sin, strength under weakness; indeed all our affirmation of any good is concealed under its negation in order that faith in God, Who is the negation of all, may remain supreme ... thus ‘our life is hidden with Christ in God’ (Col. iii. 3), i.e. in the negation of all that can be felt, possessed and apprehended.... That is the good which we must desire for ourselves,” he says to his brother monks, “then only are we good when we recognise the good God and our evil self.”

  He says elsewhere regarding vows: “All things are, it is true, free to us, but by means of vows we can offer them all up out of love; when this has once taken place, then they are necessary, not by their nature but on account of the vow which has been taken voluntarily. Then we must be careful to keep the vows with the same love with which we took them upon us, otherwise they are not kept at all.” In many points he goes further than the Rule itself in the mystical demands he makes upon the members of the Order.

  In other respects Luther’s requirements not only fall far short of what is necessary, but even the ordinary monastic duties fare badly at his hands. If it is the interior word which is to guide the various actions, and if without the “spirit” they are nothing, indeed would be better left undone, then what place is left to the common observance of the monastic Rule and the numerous pious practices, prayers and acts of virtue to which a regular time and place are assigned?

  From the standpoint of his pseudo-mystical perfection he criticises with acerbity the recitation of the Office in Choir; also the “unreasonableness and superstition of pious founders of benefices,” who, as it were, “desired to purchase prayers” at certain fixed times. Founders of a monastery ought not to have prescribed the recitation of the Office in Choir on their behalf; by so doing they wished to secure their own salvation and well-being before God, instead of making their offerings purely for God’s sake. Such remarks plainly show that he was already far removed in spirit from a right
appreciation of his Order. He had also expressed himself against the mendicancy practised by the Augustinians, and yet the Order was a Mendicant Order and the collecting of alms one of its essential statutes.

  Nevertheless, again and again he speaks in lofty language of the value of the lowliness of the religious life. Now especially, he writes in the Commentary on Romans under the influence of his mystical “theologia crucis,” it is a good thing to be a religious, better than during the last two centuries. Why? Because now monks are no longer so highly esteemed as formerly, they are hated by the world and looked upon as fools, and are “persecuted by the bishops and clergy”; therefore the religious ought to rejoice in their cross and in their state of humiliation.

  Whoever takes vows imposes upon himself “a new law” out of love for God; he voluntarily renounces his own freedom in order to obey his superiors, who stand in God’s place. The vows are for him indissoluble bonds, but bonds of love. “Whoever wishes to enter the cloister,” he says, “because he thinks he cannot otherwise be saved, ought not to enter. We must beware of exemplifying the proverb: ‘despair makes a monk’; despair never made a monk, but only a devil. We must enter from the motive of love, namely, because we perceive the weight of our sins and are desirous of offering our Lord something great out of love; for this reason we sacrifice to Him our freedom, assume the dress of a fool, and submit to the performance of lowly offices.”

  His complaints are very serious and certainly somewhat prejudiced, owing partly to his new theology, partly to his wrong perception of the facts.

  “Whoever keeps his vows with repugnance is behaving sacrilegiously.” Even he who is animated by the best of motives scarcely acts from perfect love, but when this is entirely absent, he says, “we sin even in our good works.” Many who fulfil their religious duties merely from routine and with indolence “are apostates though they do not appear to be such,” and in his excessive zeal he continues: “the religious in the Church to-day are held captive under a Mosaic bondage, and together with them the clergy and the laity because they cling to the doctrines of men (‘doctrinæ hominum’); we all believe that without these there is no salvation, but that with these salvation is assured without any further effort on our part.”

  On the same occasion he allows himself to be carried away from the subject of monasticism to the complaints regarding the too frequent Feasts and Fasts and the formalism pervading the whole life of the Church, to which we referred on page 227. Returning to the monks, he declares that he finds the interior man so greatly lacking in them that (without considering the many exceptions) they were the cause of the hostile attitude which the world assumed towards them. “Instead of rejoicing in shame, they are only monks in appearance; but I know that if they possessed love they would be the happiest of men, happier than the old hermits, because they are daily exposed to the cross and contempt. But to-day there is no class of men more presumptuous than they.”

  At the same time, however, he blames the religious who are too zealous for his liking, saying: “they are desirous of imitating the works of the Saints and are proud of their Founders and Fathers; but this is merely trumpery, because they wish to do the same great works themselves and yet neglect the spirit; they are like the Thomists and Scotists and the other sects, who defend the writings and words of their pet authors without cultivating the spirit, yea rather stifling it ... but they are hypocrites, as Saints they are not holy, as righteous they are anything but righteous, and, while ostensibly performing good works, they, in fact, do nothing.”

  And what sort of works do the religious perform? “In the same way that nowadays all workmen are as lazy as though they were asleep all day, so religious and priests sleep at their prayer from laziness, both spiritually and corporally; they do everything with the utmost indolence ... this fault is so widespread that there is hardly one who is free from it.” “Now,” he exclaims passionately, speaking of the monks and clergy, “almost all follow their vocation against their will and without any love for it.” “How many there are who would gladly let everything go, ceremonies, prayers, rules and all, if the Pope would only dispense from them, as indeed he could.” “We ought to perform these things willingly and gladly, not from fear of remorse of conscience, or of punishment, or from the hope of reward and honour. But supposing it were left free to each one to fast, pray, obey, go to church, etc., I believe that in one year everything would be at an end, all the churches empty and the altars forsaken.” He does not remember that shortly before he had been complaining that outward observances were taken too seriously so that they were looked upon as necessary means of salvation (“sine his non esse salutem”), that “the whole of religion was made to consist in their fulfilment to the neglect of the actual commandments of God, of faith and love,” and that the “lower classes observe them under the impression that their eternal salvation depends upon them.” These complaints, too, he had redoubled when speaking of the religious.

  According to the testimony of the religious and theological literature of that day, the monastic Orders were better instructed in the meaning and importance of outward observances than Luther here assumes. Expounders of the Rules and ascetical writers speak an altogether different language. In the monasteries the distinction between the observances which were enjoined under pain of grievous sin and were, therefore, under no circumstances to be omitted, and such as were binding under the Rule but not under pain of sin, was well understood, and a third category was allowed, viz. such as were undertaken voluntarily, for instance, the construction of churches, or their adornment. It was also known, and that not only in religious houses — for the popular manuals of that day set it forth clearly — that for an action to be good the motive of perfect love, which Luther represented as indispensable, was not requisite, but that other religious motives, such as the fear of punishment of sin, were sufficient though it was, indeed, desirable to rise to a higher level. Above all, it was well known that the disinclination towards what is good, which springs from man’s sensual nature like the temptation to indolence which still held sway even in religious, are not sin but may be made the subject of a meritorious struggle.

  The formalism which it is true was widely prevalent in the religious life at that time was due not so much to a faulty conception of the religious state as to the inadequate fulfilment of its obligations and its ideals. This deterioration was not likely to be remedied by the application of the mistaken idea which Luther advocated, namely, that not the slightest trace of human weakness must be allowed to enter into the performance of good works, otherwise they became utterly worthless. His stipulation that everything must be done from the highest “spiritus internus,” could only be the result of his extravagant mysticism. The Rules of no Order, not even that of the Augustinians, went so far as this. Yet the Rule of Luther’s Augustinian Congregation did not seek a merely outward, Pharisaical carrying out of its regulations, but a life where the duties of the religious state were performed in accordance with the inward spirit of the Order.

  Luther’s master, the Augustinian Johann Paltz, emphasises this spirit very strongly in the instructions which he issued for the preservation of the true ideals of the Order.

  “Love,” he there says, “pays more heed to the inward than to the outward, but the spirit of the world mocks at what is inward and sets great value on what is outward.” He opposed the principles tending to formalism and the deterioration of the religious life and shows himself to be imbued with a true and deep appreciation of his profession. He entitles that portion of his treatise directed against deviations from the Rule: “Concerning the wild beasts who lay waste the religious life.” He writes with so much feeling and in so vivid a manner that the reader of to-day almost fancies that he must have foreseen the approaching storm and the destruction of his Congregation. He scourges those who allow themselves to be led away by the appearance of what is good (“sub specie boni”), who introduce new roads to perfection according to their own ideas and require men to d
o what lies beyond them; they thus endanger the carrying out of the ordinary good works and practices of the religious life which all were able to perform. This, he says, was a temptation of the enemy from the beginning, who seduced such innovators to rely upon their own ideas and to consider themselves alone as good, wise and enlightened. “If the Babylonians [this is the name he gives to the instigators of such disturbances] force their way into the Order and if they obtain the upper hand, that will be the end of discipline, or at least it will be undermined; but if the spirits of Jerusalem [the city of Peace] retain the mastery, then the religious life will flourish and its development will not be hindered by certain defects which are, as a matter of fact, unavoidable in this life.” These words are found in a book written by the clear-sighted and zealous Augustinian and published at Erfurt the year before Luther begged for admittance at the gate of the Augustinian monastery of that town. The monk of liberal views was already on the point of becoming to his Order one of the “Babylonians” above referred to.

  Luther wished to introduce into the religious life the confused ideas begotten of his mysticism, at the expense of the observances which all were bound to fulfil. In this connection it should not be forgotten that Tauler, the teacher whom Luther so much admired, had shown that religious obedience if exercised in the right spirit was capable, by the observance of the Rule in small matters, of leading to greater perfection than could be arrived at by the performance of great works or by contemplation when these were self-chosen. Luther must have been acquainted with the instructive story which Tauler relates and which was often told in conventual houses, of the Child Jesus and the nun. The Divine Child appears to her during her meditation, but, on being suddenly called away to perform some allotted task and obeying the summons, as a reward she finds on her return the Divine Child wearing a still more benign and friendly countenance, and her visitor is also at pains to point out to her that the humble task for which she had left Him, pleases Him better than the meditation in which she had been engaged when He first appeared to her.