The same line of thought also appears in a paradoxical form, as the basis of a disputation held at Wittenberg in 1516 under his presidency. Man sins, so we find it said, “when he does what is in him” (“quod est in se”), and those who are “righteous in their own eyes” by reason of their good works, i.e. all who do not simply “despair of themselves,” are condemned. This ruling thought also pervades another disputation of one of his pupils in 1517, where we read: “every good work must needs at once make nature proud and puffed up,” and “hope is not given us by our merits, but by suffering [painful interior struggles], which root out merit,”[281] i.e. which destroy every feeling of self-satisfaction grounded on merit. He tells one of his confidants in the same year that his great aim was “to grant nothing to human works, but to know only God’s grace.”[282]
In his first German work, printed in 1517, the Commentary on the Seven Penitential Psalms, he opposes “all proud living and work and righteousness” and bewails the “spiritual pride, the last and deepest of all vices,”[283] with which, according to him, those are filled who seek for “safety and false consolation” in their works instead of simply embracing the “word of grace.” He places works so much in the background in his teaching at that time, that he brings forward this objection against himself, whether, instead of always speaking of grace, he should not speak more of “human righteousness, wisdom and strength.” Instead of defending himself he declares “a good life does not consist in many works”; to feel oneself “a miserable, damned, forsaken sinner” is better, even when God sends trouble of soul, which is “a drop or foretaste of the pains of hell,” and which renders the human corpse quite ill and weak; such suffering makes a man like Christ who also bore the same.[284]
When in 1518 he published his Latin sermon on Penance, its chief thesis was that man’s part in his reconciliation with God counted for nought; we must despair in order to attain contrition, at least from the motive of fear of God; we must merely submit with faith to the action of grace. “Whoever trusts to his contrition when receiving absolution, builds on the sand of his works and is guilty of shameless presumption.”[285]
He writes in the same year that blinded adversaries accuse him of condemning good works, more especially that he dared to declare war against rosaries, the Little Office, and other prayers, and yet the sum of his sermon was only this: “that we must not place our confidence in our own work.”[286]
Thus the depreciation of works is the prevailing note, even in his first public utterances; this it also remains.
When he began his attack on religious vows, he supported his campaign by preference on the ostensible worthlessness of human works for obtaining merit in heaven; vows were to be rejected because the heart must not seek its stay in works,[287] and in his attacks on the celibacy of the clergy and religious, he again declared that he was attacking the “false saints” who intrench themselves behind the holiness of the works accomplished by them in a state superior to that of family life, but that faith makes all outward things free.[288] This prejudice against works is the principal feature in his polemics; for instance, he explains to King Henry VIII in a rejoinder directed against him that the enemy he was called upon to overcome was the pestilential doctrine of the necessity of appearing before God with works (“velle per opera coram Deo agere”), whereas works were good only in the eyes of man.[289] In season and out of season, he pours forth his rage against the works in the Papacy with such words as these: Away with masses, pilgrimages, Office in Choir, saint-worship, cowls, virginity, confraternities, rules, and such-like, away with “the lousy works”;[290] and so he preached to his very end in 1546.[291]
It is not, however, sufficient to take as Luther’s starting-point his opposition to good works, though this always remains the chief feature in his doctrine. Further fresh light may be thrown on the enigmatical process of his inner change if we consider various influences which contributed to lead him to his new doctrine and to develop the same.
A preliminary glance at the case shows us, first of all, that Luther in his youth was trained in the theological school of Occam, i.e. in a form of theology showing great signs of decadence. The nominalistic, and more particularly the false anthropological speculations of Occam, d’Ailly and Biel, which did not allow its full rights to grace, called forth his opposition, and he soon lost all confidence in the old theology; in his exaggeration he went to the theological extreme contrary to Occamism and declared war against the ability of nature to do good. This was a negative effect of Occamism. This view encouraged him in his opposition to the “self-righteousness” which he fancied he saw everywhere, even in the zeal of the Observantines for their rule, especially when he had already fallen away from the ideals of his profession, from monastic piety and the spirit of the priesthood. A boundless self-reliance began to possess him, and led him forward regardless of all. This was the “wisdom of his own mind” of which he accuses himself in 1516 in a letter to a friend in the Order, speaking of it as the “foundation and root” of much unrest; bitterly he exclaims: “Oh, how much pain has the evil eye [this self-conceit] already caused me, and how much does it continue to plague me.”[292] We may take these words more seriously than they were probably meant. His egotism and pride were flattered to such an extent by his imagination that he seemed to find everywhere confirmation of his own preconceived notions. Having read Tauler he at once considered him as the greatest of writers, because he was able to credit him with some of his own sentiments. Then again in Augustine, the Doctor of the Church, he found, as he imagined, a true reflection of his new doctrine. Devoid of the necessary intellectual and moral discipline, he allowed himself to be blinded by a fanatic attachment to his own opinion.
Carried away by his own judgment and regardless of the teaching of all the schools, yea, even of the Church herself, he passed into the camp of the enemy, perhaps without at first being aware of it; he came to deny entirely the merit of good works as though they were of no importance for our salvation as compared with the power of faith, an idea in which he fortified himself by his one-sided study of Holy Scripture and by his misinterpretation of the Epistles of St. Paul, that preacher of the power of faith and of the grace of Christ. He was always accustomed to consider the Bible as his special province, and, given his character, it was not difficult for him to identify himself with it, and to ascribe to himself the discovery of great Scriptural truths till then misunderstood or forgotten; for instance, the destruction of man’s powers by original sin and their renewal by faith and grace. The false doctrine of the outward imputation of the merits of Christ came next. The school of Occam here prepared the way for him by its views on sanctifying grace and “acceptation” (imputation). Luther found in Occam’s views on this subject no obstacle, but rather a support. This positive influence on him of Occam will be dealt with below (chap. iv. 3), together with other positive effects which decadent Scholasticism exercised upon him. Just as it suited his violent character to declare in no gentle words the renunciation of personal merit of every kind for the imputation of the merits of Christ, so the tendency of his own religious life, which had become alienated from the ideals of his Order, encouraged him to make the whole moral task consist in a simple, trustful appropriation of the saving merits of Christ, in confidence, comfort and safety, notwithstanding the dissentient inner voices.
Further, his study of false mysticism (see below, chap. v.) helped to clothe his new ideas in the deceptive dress of piety. To himself he seemed to be fulfilling perfectly the precepts of the mystics to seek everywhere the spirit and make small account of outward things: he imagined that Christ would be truly honoured, and the importance of Divine grace effectually made manifest, by despair of our own works, yea, even of ourself. The power which a mysticism gone astray exercised in those early stages upon a mind so full of imagination and feeling cannot be overestimated.