In the above letter to Spenlein, Luther speaks of this monk’s relations to his brethren. Spenlein had previously been in the monastery at Wittenberg, where Luther had known him as a zealous monk, much troubled about the details of the Rule, and who even found it difficult to have to live with monks who were less exact in their observance. “When you were with us,” says the writer, “you were under the impression, or rather in the error in which I also was at one time held captive, and of which I have not even now completely rid myself (‘nondum expugnavi’), that it is necessary to perform good works until one is confident of being able to appear before God decked out, as it were, in deeds and merits, a thing which is utterly impossible.” Luther is desirous of hearing what Spenlein now thinks, “whether he has not at last grown sick of self-righteousness and learnt to breathe freely and trust in the righteousness of Christ.” “If, however, you believe firmly in the righteousness of Christ—and cursed be he who does not—then you will be able to bear with careless and erring brothers patiently and charitably; you will make their sins your own,” as Christ does with ours, “and in whatever good you do, in that you will allow them to participate ... be as one of them and bear with them. To think of flight and solitude, and to wish to be far away from those who we think are worse than ourselves, that is an unhappy righteousness.... On the contrary, if you are a lily and a rose of Christ, then remember that you must be among thorns, and beware of becoming yourself a thorn by impatience, rash judgment and secret pride.... If Christ had willed to live only amongst the good or to die only for His friends, for whom, pray, would He ever have died, or with whom would He have lived?”
Spenlein was then no longer living in a monastery subject to the Rural Vicar. It is even probable that he had left Wittenberg and the new Vicar’s district on account of differences of opinion on the matter of Observance. He betook himself to the imperial city of Memmingen, presumably because a different spirit prevailed in the monastery there. This would seem to explain how Luther came to speak to this doubtless most worthy religious of “unhappy righteousness,” interpreting the state of the case in his own perverse fashion.
Among the other letters despatched in 1516 that to Lang at Erfurt deserves special attention; in it Luther expresses himself in confidence, quite openly, on the disapproval of his work and of his theological standpoint which was showing itself at Wittenberg and at Erfurt.[203]
His study of St. Augustine had put him in a position to recognise, on internal grounds, that a work, “On true and false penance,” generally attributed to this African Father, was not really his. He tells his friend that his opinion of the book had “given great offence to all”; though the insipid contents of the same were so far removed from the spirit of Augustine, yet it was esteemed because it had been quoted and employed by Gratian and Peter Lombard as one of Augustine’s works. That he had been aware of this and nevertheless had stood up for the truth, that was his crime, which had aroused the enmity particularly of Dr. Carlstadt; not, however, that he cared very much; both Lombard and Gratian had done much harm to consciences by means of this stupid book.
His opinion regarding the spuriousness of the work was in the end generally accepted, even, for instance, by Bellarmine; Trithemius, moreover, had been of the same opinion before Luther’s time; in his attacks on its contents, however, Luther, led astray by his false ideas of penance, exceeded all bounds, and thus vexed, beyond measure, his colleagues who at that time still held the opposite view.
According to this letter, he had also challenged all the critics of his new ideas in a disputation held by one of his pupils under his direction. “They barked and screeched at me on account of my lectures, but their mouths were to be stopped and the opinions of others heard.” It was a question of defending his erroneous doctrine, regarding the absolute helplessness of nature, which he had meantime formulated, and to which we shall return immediately. In consequence, he says, all the “Gabrielists” (i.e. followers of the scholastic Gabriel Biel) here, as well as in the Faculty at Erfurt, were nonplussed. But I know my Gabriel quite as well as his own wonderful, wonderstruck worshippers; “he writes well, but as soon as he touches on grace, charity, hope, and faith, then, like Scotus his leader, he treads in the footprints of Pelagius.” Luther was quite free to dissent from the view, even of so good a professor as Biel, in this question of grace and virtue, but, already at that time, he had denounced as Pelagian several doctrines of the Church. Among those who were angered was the theologian Nicholas von Amsdorf, who took his licentiate at the same time as Luther, and became later on his close friend. Amsdorf secretly sent one of Luther’s theses, of which he disapproved, to Erfurt, but afterwards allowed himself to be pacified.
The humanistic tendency which was at that time beginning to make its way had, as we see from the letters, little part in the rise of the Lutheran movement at Wittenberg.
The view that Luther’s new teaching was due to the direct influence of the mode of thought of such men as Hutten, Crotus and Mutian is incorrect. On the contrary, Luther, full as he was of his one-sided supra-naturalism, was bound to disapprove of the Humanist ideal and made no secret of his disapproval. In his letters in 1516 he also found fault with the satirical and frivolous attacks of the Humanists on the state of the Church and the theological learning of the day. He considered the “Epistolæ obscurorum virorum” impudent, and called the author a clown.[204] A similar work by the same group of Humanists against the “Theologasters,” entitled “Tenor supplicationis Pasquillianæ”—as he informs Spalatin, himself a Humanist—he had held up to the ridicule of his colleagues, as it richly deserved on account of the invective and slanders which it contained.[205]
He appealed to Spalatin to draw the attention of Erasmus to his misapprehension of righteousness as it appears in the Epistle to the Romans; he says that Erasmus overrates the virtues of heathen heroes, whereas even the most blameless of men, even Fabricius and Regulus, were miles away from righteousness; outside of faith in Christ there is, according to him, no righteousness whatever; Aristotle, whom everybody follows, likewise knew nothing of this righteousness; but Paul and Augustine teach it; what Paul calls self-righteousness is not merely, as Erasmus says, a righteousness founded on the observances of the Mosaic Law, but any righteousness whatever which springs out of works, or out of the observance of any law; Paul also teaches original sin in the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, a fact which Erasmus wrongly denies. With regard to Augustine, he could unfold to him (Erasmus) St. Paul’s meaning better than he thinks, but he should diligently read the writings against the Pelagians, above all the De Spiritu et littera. Augustine there takes a firm stand on the foundation of the earlier Fathers (Luther’s quotations from his authorities show how much the study had fascinated him). But after Augustine’s day, dead literalism became the general rule. Lyra’s Bible Commentary, for instance, is full of it; the right interpretation of Holy Scripture is also wanting in Faber Stapulensis, notwithstanding his many excellencies. Hence, he writes, we must fall back on Augustine, on Augustine rather than on Jerome to whom Erasmus gives the preference in Bible matters, for Jerome keeps too much to the historical side; he recommends Augustine not merely because he is an Augustinian monk, for formerly he himself did not think him worthy of consideration until he “fell in” (incidissem) with his books.[206]
Augustine’s “On the Spirit and the Letter,” a work dedicated to Marcellinus, and dating from the end of 412, with which Luther had become acquainted in 1515, had a lasting influence on him. In this book the great Doctor of the Church strikes at the very root of Pelagianism and shows the necessity, for the accomplishment of supernatural good works (“facere et perficere bonum”), of inward grace which he calls “spiritus” in contradistinction to outward grace which he terms “littera.” Luther, however, referred this necessity more and more to everything good, even to what is purely natural, hence his loud accusations soon after against the theology of the Church as savouring of Pelagianism.