That the use hitherto made of Luther’s statements concerning his convent life calls for correction has already been admitted by several Protestant students of reformation history. As early as 1874 Maurenbrecher protested strongly against the too great reliance placed on Luther’s own later statements, which, however, at that time, constituted almost the only authority for his early history. “How wrong it is to accept on faith and repeat anew Luther’s tradition is quite obvious. Whoever wishes to relate Luther’s early history must first of all be quite clear in his mind as to this characteristic of the material on which he has to work.… The history of Luther’s youth is still virgin soil awaiting the labours of the critic.”[612] The objections recently brought forward by Catholics have drawn from W. Friedensburg the admission that we have unreliable, and, “in part, misleading statements of Luther’s concerning himself.”[613] G. Kawerau also at least goes so far as to admit that the historian of Luther at the present day “is inevitably confronted by a number of new questions.”[614] The publication of Luther’s Commentary on Romans of 1515-16 finally proved how necessary it is to regard the theology of his early years as the chief authority for the history of his development. Hence, in the account of his youth given above in vol. i., we took this Commentary as our basis.
A preliminary sketch of the picture he handed down in his later sayings is given us by Luther himself in the following:
God had caused him to become a monk, he says, “not without good reasons, viz. that, taught by experience, he might be able to write against the Papacy,” after having himself most rigidly (“rigidissime”) abided by its rules.[615]—“This goes on until one grows quite weary”; “now my other preaching has come: ‘Christ says: Take this from me: You are not pious, I have done it all for you, your sins are forgiven you.’”[616] According to the “Popish teaching,” however, one cannot be sure “whether he is in a state of grace”; hence, when in the cloister, though I was such a “pious monk,” I always said sorrowfully to myself: “I know not whether God is well pleased or not. Thus I and all of us were swallowed up in unbelief.”[617]
Hence churches and convents are nothing but “dens of murderers” because they “pervert and destroy doctrine and prayer.” “Indeed no monk or priestling can do otherwise, as I know, and have myself experienced”; “I never knew in the least how I stood with God”; “I was never able to pray aright.”[618] This holiness-by-works of Popery, in which I was steeped, was nothing but “idolatry and godless worship.”[619]
“Learn,” he says, thus unwittingly laying bare the aim of his fiction, “learn from my example.” “The more I scourged myself, the more was I troubled by remorse of conscience.”[620] “We did not then know what original sin was; unbelief we did not regard as sin.”[621] Their “unbelief,” however, consisted in that we Papists fancied “that we had to add our own works” (to the merits of Christ).[622] “Hence, for all my fervour, I lost the twenty years I spent in the cloister.”[623] But I did not want to “stick fast and die in sin and in this false doctrine”;[624] for such a pupil of the law must in the end say to himself “that it is impossible for him to keep the Law”; indeed he cannot but come to say: “would there were no God.”[625]
Roughly, this is the tone of the testimony he gives of himself. It is not our intention here simply to spurn it, but to examine whether there is any call to accept it unconditionally—simply because it comes from Luther’s lips—and whether it comprises a certain quota of truth.[626]
First, it must be noted that he represents himself as a sort of fanatical martyr of penance. He assures us: Even the heroic works of mortification I undertook brought me no peace in Popery: “Ergo,” etc. He here opens an entirely new page in his past. He tells his friends, for instance: “I nearly killed myself by fasting, for often, for three days on end, I did not take a bite or a sip. I was in the most bitter earnest and, indeed, I crucified our Lord Christ in very truth; I was not one of those who merely looked on, but I actually lent a hand in dragging Him along and nailing Him. May God forgive me! … for this is true: The more pious the monk the worse rogue he is.”[627]
“I myself,” he says in his Commentary on Genesis, “was such an one [628]
The menace of death is also alluded to in a sermon of 1537: “For more than twenty years I was a pious monk,” “I said Mass daily and so weakened my body by prayer and fasting that I could not have lived long had I continued in this way.”[629] Elsewhere he says that he had allowed himself only two more years of life, and that, not he alone, but all his brethren were ripe for death: “In Popery in times bygone we howled for everlasting life; for the sake of the kingdom of heaven we treated ourselves very harshly, nay, put our bodies to death, not indeed with sword or weapon, but, by fasting and maceration of the body we begged and besought day and night. I myself—had I not been set free by the consolation of Christ in the Evangel—could not have lived two years more, so greatly did I torment myself and flee God’s wrath. There was no lack of sighs, tears and lamentations, but it all availed us nothing.”[630]
“Why did I endure such hardships in the cloister? Why did I torment my body by fasting, vigils and cold? I strove to arrive at the certainty that thereby my sins were forgiven.”[631] The martyrdom he endured from the cold alone was agonising enough: “For twenty years I myself was a monk and tormented myself with praying, fasting, watching and shivering, the cold by itself making me heartily desirous of death.”[632]