Luther speaks in praise of Tauler for the first time in 1516, though he had probably become acquainted with him earlier. At about that same time a little booklet, “Theologia Deutsch,” exercised a great influence upon him.
In a letter to Lang—who was also inclined to look with favour on Tauler, the master of German mystic theology—Luther betrays how greatly he was attracted by this writer. In his sonorous, expansive language, he speaks of him as a teacher whose enlightenment was such, that, though utterly unknown in the theological schools, he contains more real theology than all the scholastic theologians of all the universities put together. He also repeatedly assured his hearers that Tauler’s book of sermons had “led him to the spirit.”[198]
At that time Luther showed great preference for the exhortations of the German mystics on self-abasement, apathy and abnegation of self. “Theologia Deutsch,” that little work of an unknown Frankfort priest of the fourteenth century, which he came across in a MS., so fascinated him that, adding to it a preface and his own name, “Martinus Luder,” he published it in 1516 at Wittenberg. It was the first occasion of his making use of the press; this first edition was, however, incomplete, owing to the state of the MS.; the work was finally reissued complete and under the title which Luther himself had selected, viz. “A German Theologia,” in 1518. In the sub-title of the first edition he had called it a “noble spiritual booklet,” and in the preface had praised it, saying that it did not float like foam on the top of the water, but that it had been brought up from the bottom of the Jordan by a true Israelite.[199] In the first edition he had erroneously attributed the booklet to Tauler; in the second he says it is equal in merit to Tauler’s own writings. Yet, to tell the truth, it is far from reaching Tauler’s high standard of thought. Luther, however, assures us that, next to the Bible and St. Augustine, he can mention no book from which he has learned more of the nature of God, Christ, man and all other things, than from this work. When he forwarded a printed copy of the first edition to Spalatin (December 14, 1516), he wrote, that Tauler offered a solid theology which was quite similar to the old; that he was acquainted with no theology more wholesome and evangelical. Spalatin should saturate himself with Tauler’s sermons; “taste and see how sweet the Lord is, after you have first tasted and seen how bitter is everything that is ourselves.”[200]
In addition to the authors mentioned, the mysticism of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and of Gerard Groot, the founder of the Community of the Brethren of the Common Life, were known to him. That he was, or had been, fond of reading the writings of St. Bernard, we may guess from his many—often misunderstood—quotations from the same.
Luther was also well able, whilst under the influence of that inwardness which he loved so much in the mystics, to make his own their truly devotional and often moving language.
In a friendly letter he comforts, as follows, an Augustinian at Erfurt, Georg Leiffer, regarding his spiritual troubles: “The Cross of Christ is distributed throughout the whole world and each one gets a small piece of it. Do not throw yours away, but lay it, like a sacred relic, in a golden shrine, i.e. in a heart filled with gentle charity. For even the wrongs which we suffer from men, persecutions, passion and hatred, which are caused us either by the wicked or by those who mean well, are priceless relics, which have not indeed, like the wood of the cross, been hallowed by contact with our Lord’s body, but which have been blessed by His most loving heart, encompassed by His friendly, Divine Will, kissed and sanctified. The curse becomes a blessing, insult becomes righteousness, suffering becomes an aureole, and the cross a joy. Farewell, sweet father and brother, and pray for me.”
5. Excerpts from the Earliest Letters
The above letter of Luther’s is one of the few remaining which belong to that transition period in his life. His letters are naturally not devoid of traces of the theological change which was going forward within him, and they may therefore be considered among the precursors of his future doctrine.
His new theological standpoint is already apparent in the charitable and sympathetic letter of encouragement which, as Rural Vicar, he sent to one of his brother monks about that time. “Learn, my sweet brother,” he writes to George Spenlein, an Augustinian of the monastery of Memmingen, “learn Christ and Him Crucified, learn to sing to Him, and, despairing of your own self, say to Him: Thou, Lord Jesus, art my righteousness, but I am Thy sin; Thou hast accepted what I am and given me what Thou art; Thou hast thus become what Thou wast not, and what I was not I have received.... Never desire,” he exhorts him, “a purity so great as to make you cease thinking yourself, nay being, a sinner; for Christ dwells only in sinners; He came down from heaven where He dwells in the righteous in order to live also in sinners. If you ponder upon His love, then you will become conscious of His most sweet consolation. What were the use of His death had we to attain to peace of conscience by our own trouble and labour? Therefore only in Him will you find peace through a trustful despair of yourself and your works.”[201]
A similar mystical tone (we are not here concerned with the theology it implied) shows itself also here and there in Luther’s later correspondence. The life of public controversy in which he was soon to engage was certainly not conducive to the peaceful, mystical tone of thought and to the cultivation of the interior spirit; as might have been expected, the result of the struggle was to cast his feeling and his mode of thought in a very different mould. It was impossible for him to become the mystic some people have made him out to be owing to the distractions and excitement of his life of struggle.[202]