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.[702] “Whoever wishes to enter the cloister,” he says,[703] “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.[704] 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.”[705] 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.”[706] 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.”[707]
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.”[708]
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.”[709]
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.”[710] “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.”[711] 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.”[712] 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,[713] 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 do 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.[714] The monk of liberal views was already on the point of becoming to his Order one of the “Babylonians” above referred to.