Eight years had passed since he had left Erfurt to become a professor in the Wittemberg University, and four or five years since his return from his memorable visit to Rome. During these last years his teaching and preaching had been full of the Augustinian theology. Melanchthon states that during this period he had written commentaries on the ‘Romans,’ and that in them and in his lectures and sermons he had laboured to refute the prevalent error, that it is possible to merit the forgiveness of sins by good works, pointing men to the Lamb of God, and throwing great light upon such questions as ‘penitence,’ ‘remission of sins,’ ‘faith,’ the difference between the ‘Law’ and the ‘Gospel,’ and the like. He also mentions that Luther, catching the spirit which the writings of Erasmus had diffused, had taken to the study of Greek and Hebrew.[633]
We may therefore picture the Augustinian monk—deeply read in the works of St. Augustine, and, as Ranke expresses it,[634] ‘embracing even his severer views,’ having for years constantly taught them from his pulpit and professorial chair, clinging to them with a grasp which would never relax, looking at everything from this immovable Augustinian standpoint—now in 1516 with a copy of the ‘Novum Instrumentum’ before him on his table in his room in the cloisters of Wittemberg, reading it probably with eager expectation of finding his own views reflected in the writings of a man who was looked upon as the great restorer of Scriptural theology.
Luther detects the Anti-Augustinian tendencies of Erasmus.
He reads the Annotations on the Epistle to the Romans. He does not find Erasmus using the watchwords of the Augustinian theology. He does not find the words justicia legis understood in the Augustinian sense, as referring to the observance of the whole moral law, but, rather, explained as referring to the Jewish ceremonial.
He turns as a kind of touchstone to Chapter V., where the Apostle speaks of death as ‘having reigned from Adam to Moses over those who had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression.’ He finds Erasmus remarking that he does not think it needful here to resort to the doctrine of ‘original sin,’ however true in itself; he finds him hinting at the possibility ‘of hating Pelagius more than enough,’ and of resorting too freely to the doctrine of ‘original sin’ as a means of getting rid of theological difficulties, in the same way as astrologers had invented a system of epicycles to get them out of their astronomical ones.[635]
The Augustinian doctrine of ‘original sin’ compared to the epicycles of the astrologers! No wonder that Luther was moved as he traced in these Annotations symptoms of wide divergence from his own Augustinian views. In writing to Spalatin, he told him that he was ‘moved;’ and in asking him to question Erasmus further on the subject, he added that he felt no doubt that the difference in opinion between himself and Erasmus was a real one, because that, as regards the interpretation of Scripture, he saw clearly that Erasmus preferred Jerome to Augustine, just as much as he himself preferred Augustine to Jerome. Jerome, evidently on principle, he said, follows the historical sense, and he very much feared that the great authority of Erasmus might induce many to attempt to defend that literal, i.e. dead, understanding [of the Scriptures] of which the commentaries of Lyra and almost all after Augustine are full.[636]
Still Luther went on with the study of his ‘Novum Instrumentum,’ and we find him writing again from his ‘hermitage’ at Wittemberg, that every day as he reads he loses his liking for Erasmus. And again the reason crops out. Erasmus, with all his Greek and Hebrew, is lacking in Christian wisdom; ‘just as Jerome, with all his knowledge of five languages, was not a match for Augustine with his one.’... ‘The judgment of a man who attributes anything to the human will’ [which Jerome and Erasmus did] is ‘one thing, the judgment of him who recognises nothing but grace’ [which Augustine and Luther did] ‘is quite another thing.’... ‘Nevertheless [continues Luther] I carefully keep this opinion to myself, lest I should play into the hands of his enemies. May God give him understanding in his own good time!’[637]
Difference in principle between Erasmus and Luther.
This is not the place to discuss the rights of the question between Luther and Erasmus. It is well, however, that by the preservation of these letters the fact is established to us, which as yet was unknown to Erasmus, that this Augustinian monk, as the result of hard-fought mental struggle, had years before this irrevocably adopted and, if we may so speak, welded into his very being that Augustinian system of religious convictions, a considerable portion of which Erasmus made no scruple in rejecting; that at the root of their religious thought there was a divergence in principle which must widen as each proceeded on his separate path—unknown as yet, let me repeat it, to Erasmus, but already fully recognised, though wisely concealed, by Luther.
IV. THE ‘EPISTOLÆ OBSCURORUM VIRORUM’ (1516-17).