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False Ideas of Christ's Character.

539

mation in respect to Luther's character and condition, and to make a few suggestions and leave them to their effect. But though the general vicar was well grounded in the truth, and the young monk almost equally fortified in error, there was one point of strong sympathy between them, and that was, the love of the Bible. But at this time, the Bible was to Luther a very dark book. It came to him, in his spiritual ignorance, almost buried under the rubbish of the papal glosses. The gospel itself was turned into law; Christ was but a second Moses, a stern legislator and judge, from whom the oppressed sinner fled in terror, because he had not a sufficient righteousness of his own, and knew nothing of the justifying righteousness of Christ. Such was the state in which Staupitz found Luther. Instead of proceeding from a consciousness of the necessity of redemption and gratuitous justification to the ascertainment of its reality and availableness, the benighted though learned young monk went back, in a contrary direction, to speculate upon the origin and nature of evil and upon the mysteries of Providence, over which lay a pall of still denser darkness. Thus he was sometimes subject to the keenest despair, and sometimes to the most distressing thoughts. "Why," said Staupitz to him, "do you vex yourself with these speculations and high thoughts? Look to the wounds of Christ and to the blood which he shed for you. From these will the counsels of God shine forth." That is, in the cross of Christ is the best solution of the mysteries of Providence. This undoubtedly took place at the first confession which Luther made to Staupitz as the general vicar. The scene, according to Luther, was equally surprising to both ties. Such a confession, going so deeply into the nature of sin as consisting not so much in single acts, as in a moral state, a confession of the doubts and daring speculations of a great mind abused in its religious training, and consequently in a perfectly chaotic state, Staupitz had never before heard. Luther knew no better what to make of the unexpected and strange directions given him by Staupitz. No name was more terrific to him than that of Christ, an avenger and a judge, to whom he did not dare to approach without first preparing the way by engaging in his behalf the more tender sympathies of the virgin mother to soften the severities of her Divine Son. In a sermon of his first published in 1847, Luther says, "Under the papacy I fled from Christ, and trembled at his name; * for I looked npon him as a judge only; and in this grievously erred. St. Bernard, otherwise a godly man, said: Behold, in all the gospel, how sharply Christ often rebuketh, upbraideth, and condemneth the Pharisees, and flieth at them, while the virgin Mary is ever gentle and kind, and never spoke or uttered one hard word.' From hence arose the opinion that

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Christ reproacheth and rebuketh, while Mary is all sweetness and love." The first confession only created mutual surprise, and Luther was still left in his sadness. This we learn from an occurrence that seems to have taken place soon after. At table, Staupitz seeing Luther still down-cast and clouded with gloom, said to him, "Why are you in such heaviness, brother Martin ?" "Alas!" replied Luther, “what then am I to do?" Staupitz rejoined, “I have never had knowledge nor experience of such temptations; but so far as I can perceive, they are more needful for you than your food and drink. You know not how salutary and necessary they are for you. God bringeth them not upon you without a purpose. Without them, nothing good would come of you. You will yet see that God hath great things to accomplish through you." Numerous passages in Luther's later writings were evidently suggested by his own experience as here described. One will here suffice as a specimen. "When the heart of man is in great anguish, either the Spirit of God must needs give him gracious assurance, or there must be a godly friend to comfort him and take from him his doubts by the word of God." But as we afterwards find Luther in his former state of mind, and devoting himself with more zeal than ever to the study of the scholastic writers, we must conclude that no great and permanent change was effected in his religious views during Staupitz's first visit.

He studies the Scholastic Theology.

The effect of Staupitz's influence was delayed by the fact that, according to the usages of the Order, which he could not think of setting aside, the monk who had finished his biblical studies, as they were improperly called, was to direct his chief attention next to the scholastic theology. Staupitz was not the man for energetic or violent reform; and Usingen, whose influence in the Erfurt convent was now great, and who was probably Luther's preceptor at this time, was a zealous scholastic. Luther himself says, "When I had taken the vow, they took the Bible from me again and gave me the sophistical books. But as often as I could, I would hide myself in the library, and give my mind to the Bible."

Luther, who never shrank from a book because it was hard or disagreeable, but, on the contrary, with a consciousness of his power, took pleasure in its full exercise, now studied with iron diligence the sentences of the fathers, as collected into digests by the schoolmen. Biel and D'Ailly, he is said to have learned by heart. With the writings of Occam, Aquinas, and Scotus, he made himself very familiar.

Here we find Luther in a new conflict-his own inclination and re

1848.]

Preparation for the Priesthood.

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ligious wants, together with the influence of Staupitz, leading him to the Bible; the influence of the convent and his occupation with the scholastic writers, on the other hand, strengthening the false impressions under which he had grown up. Both these contending elements were exerting their whole power upon Luther, and he was to be prepared for his great work by a complete knowledge of each.

Preparation for the Priesthood.

This also constituted a part of Luther's occupation during his second year in the monastery. Biel, the last of the scholastics, his favorite author, was the writer most studied on this subject. In what follows, it will be made to appear that such employment, no less than the study of the scholastic writers in general, was adapted to carry him further and further from the Bible and the spiritualism of Staupitz and to involve him more deeply than ever in the labyrinth of papal error. We find here a striking analogy to the mazes of error through which the great Augustine passed, when half in despair, and half in docile submission, he was conducted step by step through the hollow and deceitful system of the Manicheans. The church service with which the priest was concerned, was a complicated system of symbolical acts, at the same time exercising the ingenuity, and furnishing ample materials for exciting the imagination of the students. The central point in the system was the service of mass. To this the passages of Scripture selected, their arrangement, the prayers and the hymns all referred. The antiphonies and the priestly ornaments both relate to the sacrificial offering in the mass. The rites themselves were sacred mysteries, and the officiating priest a sacred person. Luther never lost the impression which these imposing and solemn, though false forms of worship made upon him. considered as daily repeating the offering up of himself. impressive moment," says a recent biographer of Luther, "when the priest finally kneeled down, the mass-bell was rung, the whole congregation fell prostrate, and the consecrated bread was changed into the body of Christ and then raised on high as the host!" What an ample field is here opened for the imagination, fired by religious superstition, to range in! "The priest," says Luther, "on account of his saying mass, is elevated above the Virgin Mary, and the angels, who cannot do so."

Christ was

"What an

Biel had written an extended work on the mass-service, which was adopted as a text-book in the monasteries. He there teaches, that men must repair to the saints, through whose intercessions we are to VOL. V. No. 19.

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be saved; that the Father has given over one half of his kingdom to the Virgin, the queen of heaven; that of the two attributes of justice and mercy he has surrendered the latter to her, while he retains the former. The priest is intercessor between God and man. He offers the sacrifice of Christ in the supper, and can extend its efficacy to others. This neither the Virgin Mary nor the angels can do.

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In another part of the work, Biel has several nice disquisitions on such questions as, whether the bread must always be made of wheat; how much ought to be consecrated at a time; what would be the effect of a grammatical blunder on the part of the priest in repeating the words. Thus Luther was trained by daily study to a system of practical religion which subsequently, when he was more enlightened, became abhorrent to all the feelings of his heart. "Let any one," says, "read Biel on the Canonical Constitutions in respect to the mass, which is nevertheless the best book of the Papists on that matter, and see what execrable things are therein contained. That was once my book." Again; "Gabriel Biel wrote a book on the Canonical Constitutions which was looked upon as the best in these times; ... when I read it my heart did bleed," that is, was in anguish from the scruples which it caused in respect to the duties of the priesthood. The rules laid down were carried into an astonishing minuteness of detail, and the least deviation from them was represented as highly sinful. Luther was so conscious of his sinfulness that he often dispaired of ever being able to officiate worthily as a priest. We, in this age, cannot appreciate his feelings in this respect unless we place ourselves in imagination precisely in his circumstances and learn with him to feel a creeping horror at the ghostly superstitions of the times. His own language will best transport us to the gloomy cell and its spiritual terrors, and to the chapel with its over-aweing mysteries. "Those priests," he remarks, "who were right earnest in religion, were so terrified in pronouncing the words of Christ, delivered at the institution of the supper, that they trembled and quaked when they came to the clause, This is my body;" for they were to repeat every word without the least error. He who stammered, or omitted a word, was guilty of a great sin. He was, moreover, to pronounce the words without any wandering thoughts." Again, he says, "It was declared a mortal sin to leave out the word enim (for), or aeterni (eternal). . . If one had forgotten whether he had pronounced a certain word or not, he could not make the matter sure by repetition. . . Here was distress and anguish. . . . How sorely were we vexed with the mass, especially with the signs of the cross!" About fifty of these and some hundreds of other prescribed motions of the body

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Consecration as a Priest.

543 were to be punctiliously observed in the mass service. Special rules were given as to what was to be done if a little of the wine were spilled. Nothing can give us a better impression of the awe which the idea of Christ's real presence inspired than an incident which occurred but four years before Luther's death. In the year 1542, during the celebration of the Eucharist, some drops of the wine were accidentally spilled. Luther, Bugenhagen and the officiating minister sprang instantly and licked it up with their tongues! If such were the feelings with which the reformer noticed any little irregularity in this service in his old age, what must they have been when he was timidly preparing himself to become a Catholic priest?

In the mass itself, everything is Jewish and legal. Christ's original sacrifice is regarded as atoning only for original sin; all other sins were to be atoned for in the mass. Through the intercession of the saints, the sacrament effects an ablution from all actual sin, a defence against all dangers, against all the evils incident to the body or the mind, against the assaults of Satan, and a remission of the sins of the dead as well as of the living. How strangely is Christ here thrown into the back ground, and saints and priests raised to an impious eminence! How is the cross of Christ obscured, and an empty rite, a human invention covered with the halo of a divine glory!

Consecration as Priest in 1507.

The day appointed for his ordination as priest, the 2d of May 1507, at length arrived. Such a day was of too solemn interest, as it was observed at that time, to be allowed to pass without the presence of Luther's father, who had continued during nearly the whole period of two years to be alienated from the son in consequence of his entering the monastery. It is a mistake committed by several biographers of Luther, to represent the reconciliation, and even the visit of John Luther at the convent, as having taken place in 1505, a short time after Luther entered his novitiate. Martin was his father's favorite son. He had been sent to the university, and supported there by the father's hard earnings, in order that he might become a learned jurist and rise to distinction. His brilliant career as a student, and then as a teacher, and his entrance, under favorable circumstances, upon the study of the law, served only to give poignancy to a father's grief, when he saw that all his high hopes were to be disappointed. He was so chagrined that he refused to see his son. On the death of two other sons, who were carried off by the plague, and on the intelligence that Martin had also died of the same, his heart began to relent.