[2] Epistle CCVII.
[3] Epistle DLXXXVII.
[4] 1401-1464.
[5] Nicholas belonged to one of these circles. "The Brethren of the Common Life" are treated in my Studies in Mystical Religion, chap. xiv.
[6] Letter to the Elector Frederick, March 5, 1522.
[7] The story that Luther, climbing the Scala Santa in 1510, suddenly was impressed by the words, "The just shall live by faith," is based on a reminiscence of Luther's son Paul. Luther's own reference to the ascent of the Scala Santa makes no allusion to any such experience. He merely says that when he reached the top of the stairs, which he climbed in the hope of getting the soul of an ancestor out of Purgatory, he thought to himself, "Who knows whether this prayer will avail?" Luther began his lectures on Romans in 1515, and his dynamic experience probably belongs near this date.
[8] Preface to the Magnificat written in 1521.
[9] First given as Lectures in 1516-17, and published in 1519.
[10] A Commentary on St. Paul's Epistle to the Galatians.
[11] Dilthey says in Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, Bd. v. Heft 3, p. 358: "The Justification of which the medieval man had inward experience was the descending stream of objective forces upon the believer from the transcendental world, through the Incarnation, in the channels of the ecclesiastical institutions, priestly consecration, sacraments, confession, and works. It was something which took place in connection with a super-sensible regime. The Justification by faith of which Luther was inwardly aware was the personal experience of the believer standing in the continuous line of Christian fellowship, by whom assurance of the Grace of God is experienced in response to personal faith, an experience derived from the appropriation of the work of Christ."