Luther is thus emancipated from the ideas of the Middle Ages and of the old Syriac monks and of the Jewish Pharisees. In his deliverance he has new hopes and aspirations; he becomes cheerful, and devotes himself to his studies. Nothing can make a man more cheerful and joyful than the cordial reception of a gift which is infinite, a blessing which is too priceless to be bought. The pharisee, the monk, the ritualist, is gloomy, ascetic, severe, intolerant; for he is not quite sure of his salvation. A man who accepts heaven as a gift is full of divine enthusiasm, like Saint Augustine. Luther now comprehends Augustine, the great doctor of the Church, embraces his philosophy and sees how much it has been misunderstood. The rare attainments and interesting character of Luther are at last recognized; he is made a professor of divinity in the new university, which the Elector of Saxony has endowed, at Wittenberg. He becomes a favorite with the students; he enters into the life of the people. He preaches with wonderful power, for he is popular, earnest, original, fresh, electrical. He is a monk still, but the monk is merged in the learned doctor and eloquent preacher. He does not yet even dream of attacking monastic institutions, or the Pope; he is a good Catholic in his obedience to authorities; but he hates the Middle Ages, and all their ghostly, funereal, burdensome, and technical religious customs. He is human, almost convivial,—fond of music, of poetry, of society, of friends, and of the good cheer of the social circle. The people love Luther, for he has a broad humanity. They never did love monks, only feared their maledictions.
About this time the Pope was in great need of money: this was Leo X. He not only squandered his vast revenues in pleasures and pomps, like any secular monarch; he not only collected pictures and statues,—but he wanted to complete St. Peter's Church. It was the crowning glory of papal magnificence. Where was he to get money except from the contributions of Christendom? But kings and princes and bishops and abbots were getting tired of this everlasting drain of money to Rome, in the shape of annats and taxes; so Leo revived an old custom of the Dark Ages,—he would sell "plenary indulgences"; and he sent his agents to market them in every country.
The agent in Saxony was a very popular preacher, a shrewd Dominican prior by the name of Tetzel. Luther abhorred him, not so much because he was vulgar and noisy, but because his infamous business derogated from the majesty of God and religion. In wrathful indignation he preached against Tetzel and his practices,—the abominable traffic of indulgences. Only God can forgive sins. It seemed to him to be an insult to the human understanding that any man, even a pope, should grant an absolution for crime. These indulgences also provided the release of deceased friends from purgatory. And it was useless to preach against them so long as the principles on which they were based were not assailed. Everybody believed in penance; everybody believed that this, in some form, would insure salvation. It consisted in a temporal penalty or punishment inflicted on the sinner after confession to the priest, as a condition of his receiving absolution or an authoritative pardon of his sin by the Church as God's representative. And the indulgence was originally an official remission of this penalty, to be gained by offerings of money to the Church for its sacred uses. However ingenious this theory, the practice inevitably ran into corruption. The people who bought, the agents who sold, the popes who dispensed, these indulgences wrested them from their original intention.
Fortunately, in those times in Germany everybody felt he had a soul to save. Neither the popes nor the Church ever lost that idea. The clergy ruled by its force,—by stimulating fears of divine wrath, whereby the wretched sinner would be physically tormented forever, unless he escaped by a propitiation of the Deity,—the common form of which was penance, deeds of supererogation, donations to the Church, self-expiation, works of fear and penitence, which commended themselves to the piety of the age; and this piety Luther now believed to be unenlightened, not the kind enjoined by Christ or Paul.
So, to instruct his students and the people as to the true ground of justification, which he had worked out from the study of the Bible and Saint Augustine amid the agonies of a tormented conscience, Luther prepared his theses,—those celebrated ninety- five propositions, which he affixed to the gates of the church of Wittenberg, and which excited a great sensation throughout Northern Germany, reaching even the eyes of the Pope himself, who did not comprehend their tendency, but was struck with their power. "This Doctor Luther," said he, "is a man of fine genius." The students of the university, and the people generally, were kindled as if by Pentecostal fires. The new invention of printing scattered those theses everywhere, far and near; they reached the humble hamlet as well as the palaces of bishops and princes. They excited immediate and immense enthusiasm: there was freshness in them, originality, and great ideas. We cannot wonder at the enthusiasm which those religious ideas excited nearly four hundred years ago when we reflect that they were not cant words then, not worn-out platitudes, not dead dogmas, but full of life and exciting interest,—even as were the watchwords of Rousseau—"Liberty, Fraternity, Equality"—to Frenchmen, on the outbreak of their political revolution. And as those watchwords—abstractly true— roused the dormant energies of the French to a terrible conflict against feudalism and royalty, so those theses of Luther kindled Germany into a living flame. And why? Because they presented more cheerful and comforting grounds of justification than had been preached for one thousand years,—faith rather than penance; for works hinged on penance. The underlying principle of those propositions was GRACE,—divine grace to save the world,—the principle of Paul and Saint Augustine; therefore not new, but forgotten; a mighty comfort to miserable people, mocked and cheated and robbed by a venal and a gluttonous clergy. Even Taine admits that this doctrine of grace is the foundation stone of Protestantism as it spread over Europe in the sixteenth century. In those places where Protestantism is dead,—where rationalism or Pelagian speculations have taken its place,—this fact may be denied; but the history of Northern Europe blazes with it,—a fact which no historian of any honesty can deny.
Very likely those who are not in sympathy with this great idea of Luther, Augustine, and Paul may ignore the fact,—even as Caleb Cushing once declared to me, that the Reformation sprang from the desire of Luther to marry Catherine Bora; and that learned and ingenious sophist overwhelmed me with his citations from infidel and ribald Catholic writers like Audin. Greater men than he deny that grace underlies the whole original movement of the reformers, and they talk of the Reformation as a mere revolt from Rome, as a war against papal corruption, as a protest against monkery and the dark ages, brought about by the spirit of a new age, the onward march of humanity, the necessary progress of society. I admit the secondary causes of the Reformation, which are very important,—the awakened spirit of inquiry in the sixteenth century, the revival of poetry and literature and art, the breaking up of feudalism, fortunate discoveries, the introduction of Greek literature, the Renaissance, the disgusts of Christendom, the voice of martyrs calling aloud from their funeral pyres; yea, the friendly hand of princes and scholars deploring the evils of a corrupted Church. But how much had Savonarola, or Erasmus, or John Huss, or the Lollards aroused the enthusiasm of Europe, great and noble as were their angry and indignant protests? The genius of the Reformation in its early stages was a RELIGIOUS movement, not a political or a moral one, although it became both political and moral. Its strength and fervor were in the new ideas of salvation,—the same that, gave power to the early preachers of Christianity,—not denunciations of imperialism and slavery, and ten thousand evils which disgraced the empire, but the proclamation of the ideas of Paul as to the grounds of hope when the soul should leave the body; the salvation of the Lord, declared to a world in bondage. Luther kindled the same religious life among the masses that the apostles did; the same that Wyclif did, and by the same means,—the declaration of salvation by belief in the incarnate Son of God, shedding his blood in infinite love. Why, see how this idea spread through Germany, Switzerland, and France, and took possession of the minds of the English and Scotch yeomanry, with all their stern and earnest ruggedness. See how it was elaborately expanded by Calvin, how it gave birth to a new and strong theology, how it entered into the very life of the people, especially among the Puritans,—into the souls of even Cromwell's soldiers. What made "The Pilgrim's Progress" the most popular book ever published in England? Because it reflected the theology of the age, the religion of the people, all based on Luther's theses,—the revival of those old doctrines which converted the Roman provinces from Paganism. I do not care if these statements are denied by Catholics, or rationalists, or progressive savants. What is it to me that the old views have become unfashionable, or are derided, or are dead, in the absorbing materialism of this Epicurean yet brilliant age? I know this, that I am true to history when I declare that the glorious Reformation in which we all profess to rejoice, and which is the greatest movement, and the best, of our modern time,—susceptible of indefinite application, interlinked with the literature and the progress of England and America,—took its first great spiritual start from the ideas of Luther as to justification. This was the voice of heaven's messenger proclaiming aloud, so that the heavens re-echoed to the glorious and triumphant annunciation, and the earth heard and rejoiced with exceeding joy, "Behold, I send tidings of salvation: it is grace, divine grace, which shall undermine the throne of popes and pagans, and reconcile a fallen world to God!"
Yes, it was a Christian philosopher, a theologian,—a doctor of divinity, working out in his cell and study, through terrible internal storm and anguish, and against the whole teaching of monks and bishops and popes and universities, from the time of Charlemagne, the same truth which Augustine learned in his wonderful experiences,—who started the Reformation in the right direction; who became the greatest benefactor of these modern times, because he based his work on everlasting and positive ideas, which had life in them, and hope, and the sanction of divine authority; thus virtually invoking the aid of God Almighty to bring about and restore the true glory of his Church on earth,—a glory forever to be identified with the death of his Son. I see no law of progress here, no natural and necessary development of nations; I see only the light and power of individual genius, brushing away the cobwebs and sophistries and frauds of the Middle Ages, and bringing out to the gaze of Europe the vital truth which, with supernatural aid, made in old times the day of Pentecost. And I think I hear the emancipated people of Saxony exclaim, from the Elector downwards, "If these ideas of Doctor Luther are true, and we feel them to be, then all our penances have been worse than wasted,—we have been Pagans. Away with our miserable efforts to scale the heavens! Let us accept what we cannot buy; let us make our palaces and our cottages alike vocal with the praises of Him whom we now accept as our Deliverer, our King, and our Eternal Lord."
Thus was born the first great idea of the Reformation, out of Luther's brain, out of his agonized soul, and sent forth to conquer, and produce changes most marvellous to behold.
It is not my object to discuss the truth or error of this fundamental doctrine. There are many who deny it, even among Protestants. I am not a controversialist, or a theologian: I am simply an historian. I wish to show what is historically true and clear; and I defy all the scholars and critics of the world to prove that this doctrine is not the basal pillar of the Reformation of Luther. I wish to make emphatic the statement that JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH was, as an historical fact, the great primal idea of Luther; not new, but new to him and to his age.
I have now to show how this idea led to others; how they became connected together; how they produced not only a spiritual movement, but political, moral, and intellectual forces, until all Europe was in a blaze.