Man is naturally disposed to believe that, built as he is, he must take his share in working out his salvation, if he be in sin, by preparing himself with God’s help to enter the state of grace and then by seeking to retain it by means of good works.
The Church before Luther had taught, as she still does, and that on the strength of Holy Writ, that such co-operation on man’s part, under God’s assistance, is quite essential. Though the attaining to and the perseverance in the Divine sonship is chiefly the work of God, yet it is also man’s, carried out with the aid of grace. She assured the faithful, that, according to the order graciously established by God and warranted by Scripture, all good works have their value for temporal and eternal reward. She sought indeed to kindle religious fervour by pointing to the promises held out, yet she had no wish to see man stop short at the thought of his reward, but rather expected him to rise to a more perfect love. Generosity, so she taught, was in no way impaired by the prospect of reward, on the contrary such hopes served as stepping-stones to facilitate the ascent.[1605]
Luther, owing to his implacable, personal aversion to any good works or human co-operation, laid violent hands on this so reasonable scheme of salvation.
Nature and Origin of the New Doctrine of Works.
Luther demanded that no importance should be set on co-operation by means of works in the business of Justification, because salvation was to be looked for from on high with simple faith and blind confidence. After reconciliation, too, man must not vainly fancy that he is capable of deserving anything by good works even by the greatest penances, sacrifices or deeds of love, but the doing of good must be allowed to follow simply as the effect of the Spirit of Christ now received, in those feelings towards God which Christ produces in us and in that love of our neighbour which is indispensable to human society.
Further light may be thrown on this standpoint of Luther’s by some traits from his inward history and writings.
Here we cannot fail to notice echoes of his transition period, of his conflict with his brother-monks and those pious folk who were intent on good works and the heaping up of merits; of his subsequent remissness in his vocation and in the performance of his duties as a monk; finally of his later prejudice, largely a result of his polemics, against so many of the Church’s public and private practices, of penance, of devotion and of the love of God. He closed his eyes to the fact, that he could have found no more effectual means of increasing amongst his followers the growing contempt for moral effort, neglect of good works and the gradual decline in religious feeling.
His estrangement from what he was pleased to call “holiness-by-works” always remained Luther’s principal, ruling idea, just as it had been the starting-point of his change of mind in his monastic days.[1606]
His chief discovery, viz. the doctrine of Justification, he was fond of parading as an attack upon works. It is only necessary to observe how persistently, how eagerly and instinctively he seizes the smallest pretext to launch in his sermons and writings a torrent of abuse on the Catholic works. It is as though some unseen hand were ever ready to open the sluice-gates, that, whether relevant or not to the matter on hand, his anger might pour forth against fasting, and the ancient works of penance, against “cowls and tonsures,” against the recitation of the Office in choir, rules, collections, pilgrimages and Jubilees, against taking the discipline, vows, veneration of the Saints and so many other religious practices.[1607] In his habitual slanders on works, found on his lips from the beginning[1608] to within a few weeks of his death, we can hardly fail to see the real link which binds together his whole activity. As against the Popish doctrine of works he is never weary of pointing out that his own doctrine of works is based on Christ; “it allows God to be our Lord God and gives Him the glory,” a thought that pleased him all the more because it concealed the error under a mantle of piety; this deceptive idea already casts its shadow over the very first letter in his correspondence which touches on the new doctrine.[1609]