The peace which Luther had come in search of he found neither in the tranquillity of the cloister nor in monastic perfection. He wished to be assured of his salvation; it was the great want of his soul, and without it he could have no repose. But the fears which had agitated him when in the world, followed him into his cell. Nay, they were even increased; the least cry of his heart raising a loud echo under the silent vaults of the cloister. God had brought him thither that he might learn to know himself, and to despair of his own strength and virtue. His conscience, enlightened by the Divine word, told him what it was to be holy; but he was filled with alarm at not finding, either in his heart or his life, that image of holiness which he had contemplated with admiration in the word of God; a sad discovery made by every man who is in earnest! No righteousness within, no righteousness without, everywhere omission, sin, defilement.... The more ardent Luther's natural disposition was the more strongly he felt the secret and unceasing resistance which human nature opposes to goodness. This threw him into despair.
The monks and theologians of the day invited him to do works in order to satisfy the Divine justice. But what works, thought he, can proceed from such a heart as mine! How should I be able with works polluted in their very principle, to stand in presence of my holy Judge? "I felt myself," says he, "to be a great sinner before God, and deemed it impossible to appease him by my merits."
He was agitated, and, at the same time, gloomy, shunning the silly and coarse conversation of the monks, who, unable to comprehend the tempests of his soul, regarded him with astonishment,[161] and reproached him for his gloom and taciturnity. It is told by Cochlœus, that one day, when they were saying mass in the chapel, Luther had come with his sighs, and stood amid the friars in sadness and anguish. The priest had already prostrated himself, the incense had been placed on the altar, the Gloria had been chanted, and they were reading the Gospel, when the poor monk, no longer able to contain his agony, exclaimed, in a piercing tone, while throwing himself on his knees, "Not I! not I!"[162] Every one was in amazement, and the service was for a moment interrupted. Perhaps Luther thought he had heard himself reproached with something of which he knew he was innocent; perhaps he meant to express his unworthiness to be one of those to whom the death of Christ brought eternal life. Cochlœus says that they were reading the passage of Scripture which tells of the dumb man out of whom Christ expelled a demon. If this account is correct, Luther's cry might have a reference to this circumstance. He might mean to intimate that though dumb like the man, it was owing to another cause than the possession of a demon. In fact, Cochlœus informs us that the friars sometimes attributed the agonies of their brother to occult commerce with the devil,[163] and he himself is of the same opinion.
A tender conscience led Luther to regard the smallest fault as a great sin. No sooner had he discovered it than he strove to expiate it by the severest mortifications. This, however, had no other effect than to convince him of the utter inefficacy of all human remedies. "I tormented myself to death," says he, "in order to procure peace with God to my troubled heart and agitated conscience; but, surrounded with fearful darkness, I nowhere found it."
The acts of monastic holiness which lulled so many consciences, and to which he himself had recourse in his agony, soon appeared to Luther only the fallacious cures of an empirical and quack religion. "At the time when I was a monk, if I felt some temptation assail me, I am lost! said I to myself, and immediately resorted to a thousand methods, in order to suppress the cries of my heart. I confessed every day, but that did me no good. Thus oppressed with sadness, I was tormented by a multiplicity of thoughts. 'Look!' exclaimed I, 'there you are still envious, impatient, passionate! It is of no use then, for you, O wretch, to have entered this sacred order.'"
And yet Luther, imbued with the prejudices of his day, had from his youth up considered the acts, whose impotence he now experienced, as sure remedies for diseased souls. What was he to think of the strange discovery which he had just made in the solitude of the cloister? It is possible, then, to dwell in the sanctuary, and still carry within oneself a man of sin! He has received another garment, but not another heart. His hopes are disappointed. Where is he to stop? Can it be that all these rules and observances are only human inventions? Such a supposition appears to him at one time a suggestion of the devil, and at another time an irresistible truth. Struggling alternately with the holy voice which spoke to his heart, and with venerable institutions which had the sanction of ages, Luther's life was a continual combat. The young monk, like a shade, glided through the long passages of the cloister, making them echo with his sad groans. His body pined away and his strength left him; on different occasions he remained as if he were dead.[164]
Once, overwhelmed with sadness, he shut himself up in his cell, and for several days and nights allowed no one to approach him. Lucas Edemberger, one of his friends, feeling uneasy about the unhappy monk, and having some presentiment of the state in which he actually was, taking with him several boys, who were accustomed to chant in choirs, went and knocked at the door of his cell. No one opens or answers. Good Edemberger, still more alarmed, forces the door. Luther is stretched on the floor insensible, and showing no signs of life. His friend tries in vain to revive him, but he still remains motionless. The young boys begin to chant a soft anthem. Their pure voices act like a charm on the poor monk, who had always the greatest delight in music, and he gradually recovers sensation, consciousness, and life.[165] But if music could for some moments give him a slight degree of serenity, another and more powerful remedy was wanted to cure him effectually—that soft and penetrating sound of the gospel, which is the voice of God himself. He was well aware of this, and, accordingly, his sorrows and alarms led him to study the writings of the apostles and prophets with renewed zeal.[166]
CHAP. IV.
Pious Men in Cloisters—Staupitz—His Piety—His Visitation—Conversation—The Grace of Christ—Repentance—Power of Sin—Sweetness of Repentance—Election—Providence—The Bible—The Old Monk—The Remission of Sins—Consecration Dinner—The Fête Dieu—Call to Wittemberg.