CHAP. III.
His Father's Anger—Pardon—Servile Employments—The Bag and the Cell—Courage—St. Augustine—D'Ailly—Occam—Gerson—The Bible—Hebrew and Greek—The Hours—Asceticism—Agony—Luther during Mass—Agony—Useless Observances—Luther in a Faint.
At length he was with God. His soul was in safety. This holiness, so earnestly longed for, he was now to find. At the sight of this young doctor, the monks were all admiration, and extolled him for his courage and contempt of the world.[148] Luther, meanwhile, did not forget his friends. He wrote to take leave of them and the world, and the next day despatched these letters, with the clothes he had hitherto worn, and his diploma of Master of Arts, which he returned to the university, that nothing might in future remind him of the world which he had abandoned.
His friends at Erfurt were thunderstruck. Must so distinguished a genius go and hide himself in this monastic life—more properly, a kind of death?[149] In deep sorrow they hastened to the convent, in the hope of inducing Luther to retrace the distressing step which he had taken; but all was useless. The gates were closed, and a month passed before any one was permitted to see or speak to the new monk.
Luther had hastened to acquaint his parents with the great change which had just occurred in his life. His father was thunderstruck. He trembled for his son,—so Luther himself informs us in his book on Monastic Vows, which he dedicated to his father. His weakness, his youth, the ardour of his passions, everything, in short, made him fear that after the first moment of enthusiasm, the indolence of the cloister would make the youth fall either into despair, or into grievous faults. He knew that this mode of life had proved fatal to many. Besides, the counsellor-miner of Mansfield had other views for his son. He was proposing a rich and honourable marriage for him—and, lo! all his ambitious projects are in one night overthrown by this imprudent action.
John wrote his son a very angry letter, in which, as Luther himself tells us, he thou'd him whereas he had you'd him ever since he had taken his degree of Master of Arts. He withdrew all his favour from him, and declared him disinherited of a father's affection. In vain did the friends of John Luther, and doubtless his wife also, endeavour to mollify him; in vain did they say to him, "If you are willing to make some sacrifice to God, let it be the best and dearest thing that you have—your son—your Isaac." The inexorable counsellor of Mansfeld would hear nothing.
Some time after, (the statement is given by Luther in a sermon which he preached at Wittemberg, 20th January 1544,) the plague broke out, and deprived John Luther of two of his sons. On the back of these bereavements, while the father's heart was torn with grief, some one came and told him, "The monk of Erfurt also is dead!" His friends took advantage of the circumstance to bring back the father's heart to the novice. "If it is a false alarm," said they, "at least sanctify your affliction by consenting sincerely to your son's being a monk." "Well, well!" replied John Luther, his heart broken, and still half rebellions; "and God grant him all success." At a later period, when Luther, who had been reconciled to his father, told him of the event which had led him to rush into monastic orders,—"God grant," replied the honest miner, "that what you took for a sign from heaven may not have been only a phantom of the devil!"[150]
At this time Luther was not in possession of that which was afterwards to make him the Reformer of the Church. His entrance into the convent proves this. It was an action done in the spirit of an age out of which he was soon to be instrumental in raising the Church. Though destined to become the teacher of the world, he was still its servile imitator. A new stone was placed on the edifice of superstition by the very hand which was soon to overturn it. Luther was seeking salvation in himself, in human practices and observances, not knowing that salvation is wholly of God. He was seeking his own righteousness and his own glory, and overlooking the righteousness and glory of the Lord. But what he as yet knew not he soon afterwards learned. That immense change which substituted God and His wisdom in his heart for the world and its traditions, and which prepared the mighty revolution of which he was the most illustrious instrument, took place in the cloister of Erfurt.
Martin Luther, on entering the convent, changed his name to that of Augustine.