72 L U T H E K is no true repentance," he said, " but that which begins with the love of righteousness and of God. Love Him then who has first loved thee." Staupitz had been taught heart religion by the mystics, and he sent Luther to the sermons of Tauler and to the Tkeolor/ia Germanica. When Luther regained his mental health, he took courage to be ordained priest in May 1507, and next year, on j the recommendation of Staupitz, the elector of Saxony j appointed him professor in the university of Wittenberg, which had been founded in 1502. While in the monastery Luther" had assiduously pursued his studies, and his severe mortifications and penances had never interrupted his theological work. He read all the great scholastic theo logians, but Augustine was his master in theology, while Erfurt studies under Trutwetter doubtless made him pore over Occam (" mein lieber Meister," as he afterwards fondly called him) till he got his bulky folios by heart. He began by lecturing on Aristotle; and in 1509 he gave Biblical lectures, which from the very first were a power in the university. His class-room was thronged ; his fellow-professors were students. Staupitz forced him also to preach ; and his marvellous eloquence, felt to be from the heart, attracted great crowds of hearers. The year 1511 brought an apparent interruption, but in fact only a new development, of Luther s character and knowledge of the world. He went to Rome, probably in fulfilment of an old vow, and the journey was a marked event in his life. He went up in true pilgrim spirit, a medieval Christian, and he came back a Pro testant. The pious German was horrified with what he saw in Rome, and he afterwards made telling use of what ha had seen in various tracts, and notably in his address to the German nobles. He tells us that at Wittenberg he had pandered over the text, " The just shall live by faith," that while in Rome the words came back to him, and that on his return journey to Germany the evangelical meaning of the phrase rushed into his mind. On his return to the university he was promoted to the degree of doctor of divinity, in October 1512. The oath he had to take on the occasion "to devote his whole life to study, and faith fully to expound and defend the holy Scripture," was to him the seal of his mission. He began his work with lectures on the Psalms, and then proceeded to comment on the epistles of Paul to the Romans and Galatians, enforcing especially his peculiar views of the relations between law and gospel. His lectures and his sermons were attended by great audiences, and disciples gathered round him. As early as 1516 his special principles were publicly defended at academical disputations. Staupitz made him district-vicar of his order for Meissen and Thuringia. He made short preaching tours, and his in fluence was felt far beyond Wittenberg. When the plague came to that university town he remained at his post when others fled. Then came 1517, the year of the Reformation. The new pope, Leo X., had sent agents through Germany to sell indulgences, and had chosen John Tetzel, a Dominican monk, for Saxony. Luther, who had passed through deep soul-struggles ere he won pardon, knew that God s forgive ness could not bo purchased for money, and thundered against Tetzel and his indulgences from Wittenberg pulpit. He wrote anxiously to the princes and bishops to refuse The the pardon-seller a passage through their lands. When Witten- Tetzel got to Juterbogk near Wittenberg, Luther could tliesL Rtan( i it no longer. He wrote out ninety-five propositions or theses denouncing indulgences, and on the eve t of All Saints, October 31, nailed the paper to the door of the Castle church. In a short time all Germany was ablaze. These ninety-five theses are one continuous harangue against the doctrine and practice of pardon-selling, but they do not openly denounce indulgence in every form. They make plain these three things: (1) there maybe some good in indulgence if it be reckoned, one of the many ways in which God s forgiveness of sin can be proclaimed ; (2) the external signs of sorrow are not the real inward repentance, nor are they as important as that is, and no per mission to neglect the outward expression can permit the neglect of true repentance ; (3) every Christian who feels true sorrow for sin is there and then pardoned by God for Christ s sake without any indulgence ticket or other human contrivance. And in his sermons on indulgence Luther declared that repentance consisted in contrition, confession, and absolution, and that contrition was the most important, and in fact the occasion of the other two. If the sorrow be true and heartfelt, confession and pardon will follow. The inward and spiritual fact of sorrow for sin, he thought, was the great matter; the outward signs of sorrow were good also, but God, who alone can pardon, looks to the inward state. These theses, with the sermons explaining them, brought Germany face to face with the reality of blasphemy in the indulgences. Luther s public life had opened ; the Reformation had begun. Second Period (1517-1524). Pilgrims who had come Luther to Wittenberg to buy indulgences returned with the theses preach- of Luther in their hands, and with the impression of his U1 powerful evangelical teaching in their hearts. The national mind of Germany took up the matter with a moral earnest ness which made an impression, not only upon the princes, but even upon bishops and monks. At first it seemed as if all Germany was going to support Luther. The traffic in indulgences had been so shameless that all good people and all patriotic Germans had been scandalized. Bub Luther had struck a blow at more than indulgences, although he scarcely knew it at the time. In his theses and explanatory sermons he had declared that the inward spiritual facts of man s religious experience were of infinitely more value than their expression in stereotyped forms recognized by the church, and he had made it plain too that in such a solemn thing as forgiveness of sin man could go to God directly without human mediation. Pious Christians since the day of Pentecost had thought and felt the same, and all through the Middle Ages men and women had humbly gone to God for pardon trusting in Christ. They had found the pardon they sought, and their simple Christian experience had been sung in the hymns of the mediaeval church, had found expression in its prayers, had formed the heart of the evangelical preaching of the church, and had stirred the masses of people in the many revivals of the Middle Ages. But those pious people, hymn-writers, and preachers had not seen that this inward experience of theirs was really opposed to a great part of the ecclesiastical system of their day. The church had set such small store by that inward religious experience that the common speech of the times had changed the plain meanings of the words "spiritual," "sacred," "holy." A man was " spiritual " if he had been ordained to office in the church ; money was " spiritual " if it had been given to the church ; an estate, with its roads, woodlands, fields, was " spiritual " or " holy " if it belonged to a bishopric or abbey. And the church that had so degraded the meaning of " spiritual " had thrust itself and its external machinery in between God and the worshipper, and had proclaimed that no man could draw near to God save through its appointed ways of approach. Confession was to be made to God through the priest ; God spoke pardon only in the priest s absolution. When Luther attacked indulgences in the way he did he struck at this whole system. Compelled to sxamine the ancient history of the church, he soon discovered the whole tissue of fraud and imposture
by which the canon law had from the 9th century down-