1848.] Religious Experience of Luther. 519 stances to be tinged with the influence of the strict Independency prevailing in Great Britain, we think no reader can fail to admire the spirit of candor and independent research which pervades the work. The limited space to which notices of new works are necessarily confined in this Journal, allows us only to commend this new treatise, on what is destined to prove one of the greatest questions of our times, to the American public, with the assurance that though they may not agree with the learned and estimable author in all respects, they will find substantial results which we doubt not will be generally recognized as an addition to our literature in this particular departG. E. D.p ment. Northampton, Ms. ARTICLE IX. THE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE OF LUTHER IN THE CLOISTER OF ERFURT. By B. Sears, D. D., President of Newton Theol. Institution. THE origin of the Reformation, as a religious movement and as connected with the efforts of Luther, is to be traced to what he himself experienced in the convent at Erfurt. There he first made thorough trial of that outward and legal system of religion which had nearly banished the gospel of Christ from the church. There he groped his way through the mazes of papal error, and found the path that led to Christ as the simple object of his faith and love. He went through all the process of overcoming the elements of a ceremonial and of appropriating those of an evangelical religion by the force of his individual character, and by the power of the word and the Spirit of God. He found himself standing almost solitary on the ground of justification by faith alone, and private judgment in interpreting the Scriptures. From the time of his going to Wittenberg to the year 1517, he was chiefly employed in working out these two ideas, reconciling his experience with well established truths, and trying upon the minds of others, namely, of his pupils and some of the younger professors, the same experiment which he had unconsciously made upon himself. When he came to feel the full strength of his foundation, and, with the Bible and the sober use of reason as his weapons, prostrated the scholastic theology, and professor and student confessed their power, his conscience impelled him to seize upon the first and upon every public opportunity to propagate these principles that others might share with him so unspeakable a blessing. The study of Luther's religious experience has a two-fold interest, first, in itself as one of the most striking on record, and then as a key to the religious character of the Reformation. Until recently the subject has been wrapt in such obscurity and confusion that it has appeared more as a romance than a reality. To Karl Jürgens1 belongs the honor of having first collected and arranged all the known facts of the case in such a way, as to furnish a pretty clear history of what was before both imperfect and chaotic. Availing ourselves for the most part, of the results of his recent investigations, we shall venture to attempt an outline of Luther's religious history from the time that he entered the monastery to that of his removal to Wittenberg, when the stupendous moral change in him had become complete. The Bible. We learn from Mathesius, what we might, indeed, infer from his subsequent character, that Luther was a young man of buoyant and cheerful feelings; and, at the same time, that he began every day with prayer, and went daily to church service. Furthermore, "he neglected no university exercise, put questions to his teachers, often reviewed his studies with his fellow students, and whensoever there were no appointed exercises he was in the library." "Upon a time," continues the same writer, "when he was carefully viewing the books, one after another, to the end that he might know them that were good, he fell upon a Latin Bible, which he had never before seen in all his life. He marvelled greatly as he noted that more text, or more epistles and gospels were therein contained than were set forth and explained in the common postils and sermons preached in the churches. As he was looking over the Old Testament, he came upon the history of Samuel and of his mother Hannah. This did he quickly read through, with hearty delight and joy; and, because that this was all new to him, he began to wish from the bottom of his heart that our faithful God would one day bestow upon him such a book for his own." Luther, who often alludes to this incident, once says that it occurred "when he was a young man and a bachelor of arts." At another time he says, "when I was twenty years old, I had never seen a Bible." In another place, he intimates Luther von seiner Geburt bis zum Ablass-streite von Karl Jürgens. 3 vols. 8vo. 1846-1847. 1848.] Occasion of Luther's becoming a Monk. 521 that he saw the Bible only once while he was in the university, and that an interval of about two years intervened before he saw another copy in the cloister. "I was reading," he says, "a place in Samuel; but it was time to go to lecture. I would fain have read the whole book through, but there was not opportunity then. I asked for a Bible, however, as soon as I had entered the cloister." He became owner of a postil, which pleased him much, because it contained more of the gospels than were commonly read during the year. The study of the Scriptures, therefore, seems, in the case of Luther, to have commenced rather in the cloister than in the university. Luther becomes Monk. The whole course of Luther's training tended to impress upon his mind the sanctity of the monastic life. This, in his view, was the surest way of pleasing God, and of escaping the terrors of the world to come. Educated as he was to a legal view of religion, and conscious, at the same time, that he had not fulfilled the law, nothing remained to him but to continue as he was at the risk of his salvation, or to seek for a higher kind of piety, by which the law of God might be satisfied. His prevailing feeling was to continue in his former course of life; but any sudden terror would revive the alarms of his conscience, and suggest the thought of putting his anxious mind forever at rest by fleeing to a cloister as a refuge for his soul. In this way was his mind finally determined. In 1505, Alexius, a friend of Luther in the university, was assassinated. Soon after, about the first of July, as Luther was walking in a retired road, between Erfurt and Stotterheim, he was overtaken by a violent thunderstorm, and the lightning struck near his feet. He was nearly stunned, and exclaimed in his terror: "Help, beloved St. Anne, and I will straightway become a monk."1 Besides the above-mentioned occurrences, there was an epidemic raging in the university; many of the teachers and pupils had fled, and it was quite natural that Luther's mind should be in a very gloomy state. St. Anne was the reigning saint in Saxony at this time, having recently become an object of religious regard, to whose honor the Saxon town Annaburg was built, and who for a time was 'Such is the view in which the testimony of Luther, Melanchthon, Mathesius and other early witnesses is best united. The representation of less competent and later witnesses, that Alexius was killed by lightning is now abandoned by all the historians. the successful rival even of the virgin Mary. Hence the invocation of this saint by Luther. Referring to this event in a dedication of a work on Monastic Vows to his father, Luther says: "I did not become a monk cheerfully and willingly, much less, for the sake of obtaining a livelihood; but being miserable and encompassed with the terrors and anguish of death, I made a constrained and forced vow." He again says, "it was not done from the heart, nor willingly." These statements taken in connection with several others, where it is said that certain views of religion drove him to the monastery, make it plain that it required the force of excited fears to induce him to enter upon a life which he had always regarded as the most sacred, and as most surely leading to heaven. How much he then needed the instruction which Staupitz at a later period gave him! Before executing his purpose, he took two weeks for reflection. It has been said that during this interval, he regretted his rash vow. No doubt he had to pass through severe mental struggles, that in his calmer moments opposite considerations would present themselves to his mind, and none with more force than that of having gone counter to the known wishes of his father, by whose toils he had been sustained at the university. In his Commentary on Genesis 49: 13, he says, "When I had made a beginning in the study of the liberal arts and in philosophy, and comprehended and learned so much therein that I was made master, I might, after the example of others, have become teacher and instructor in turn, or have set forth my studies and made greater advancement therein. But I forsook my parents and kindred, and betook myself, contrary to their will, to the cloister and drew on the cowl. For I had suffered myself to be persuaded that by entering into a religious order, and taking upon me such hard and rigorous labor, I should do God a great service." Here may properly be introduced a few other sayings of Luther, in respect to the motives which led him to take this step. In a manuscript preserved at Gotha, he is represented as saying, "I went into the cloister and forsook the world because I despaired of myself." "I made a vow for the salvation of my soul. For no other cause did I betake myself to a life in the cloister, than that I might serve God and please him forevermore." "I thought God did not concern himself about me;" he says in one of his sermons, "if I get to heaven and be happy, it will depend mostly on myself; I knew no better than to think that by my own works I must rid myself of sin and death. For this cause I became a monk; I had a most bitter experience withal." "O! thought I, if I only go into a cloister and serve God 1848.] Opposition of Luther's Father. 523 in a cowl and with a shorn crown, he will reward me and bid me welcome."1 During the interval of two weeks, while he kept his design from his parents and from his fellow students, the Gotha manuscript says that he communicated it to Andrew Staffelstein, as the head of the university, and to a few pious females. Staffelstein advised him to join the Franciscan order, whose monastery had just been rebuilt in Erfurt, and went immediately with him to the cloister, lest a change should take place in Luther's mind. The teacher resorted also to flattery, no doubt with a good conscience, saying that of none of his pupils did he entertain higher hopes in respect to piety and goodness. When they were arrived at the cloister, the monks urged his connecting himself immediately with the order. Luther replied, that he must first make known his intention to his parents. But Staffelstein and the friars rejoined, that he must forsake father and mother and steal away to the cross of Christ. Whosoever putteth his hand to the plough and looketh back is not worthy of the kingdom of God. In this "monstrous unfriendliness," as Luther calls it, "savoring more of the wolf and the tyrant than of the Christian and the man," the monks were only carrying out the principle which Jerome had taught them and which was the more weighty, being sanctioned by his great name. As quoted by Luther, in his Commentary on Gen. 43: 30, the words of that ancient father run thus: " Though thy father should lie before thy door weeping and lamenting, and thy mother should show the body that bore thee and the breasts that nursed thee, see that thou trample them under foot, and go onward straightway to Christ." By such perversion of Scripture and reason did the monks deprive many a parent of the society of his children. That," says Luther again, "is the teaching of antichrist, and you may boldly tell him, he lies. Next to obedience to himself, before all things and above all things, God requireth obedience to parents. A son or a daughter runs away from his father, and goes into a cloister against his will. The pope with his party of Herodians approves the act, and thus compels the people to tear in pieces a command of God in order to worship God." "Hadst thou known," it is said in the above-mentioned dedicatory epistle of Luther to his father, “that I was then in thy power, wouldst thou not, from thine authority as a father, have plucked me out of my cowl? Had I known it, I would not have attempted such a thing against thy will and knowledge, though I must suffer a thousand deaths." It seems, therefore, that Luther's mind was in a conflict between a sense of duty to his parents, 1 Comm. on John 15: 16. |