understand, that he might well draw the conclusion from this, that God must have chosen him for something extraordinary, and he admonished him expressly now to prepare himself beforehand for any thing to which he might call him in future. Such an explanation must have filled the whole soul of Luther with a courage never felt before, and a decision entirely new, and must have made him conscious of powers which hitherto he had never suspected in himself. And, when Staupitz now gave him still further instruction, how to nourish his soul, to what objects he should particularly turn his attention and his active imagination in the hours of solitary meditation, and especially how he should direct his studies, a change was thus wrought in him which soon became externally visible.

It is not particularly known in what consisted the doubts and trials which cost Luther such severe conflicts; but from some expressions that fell from him in his earlier epistles, it may not improbably be conjectured to what they may generally have related. But they are discerned, with still greater probability, from some grand principles of his gradually purified system, which were the first that were cleared up by him, and to which his soul clung fast through his whole life, with an eagerness which evinced long previous labor and early and deep impres sions in respect to them. Without doubt that disquietude of spirit, occasioned by his longing for assurance of salvation, and which drove Luther into a cloister, was not allayed, after his entrance, so soon as he might perhaps have hoped. It pursued him even in the solitary stillness of his cell, and became still more burdensome under the external pressure of a rigid monastic discipline and by the use of all those severe means by which, according to his expectation, it ought to have been removed. He felt, too vividly to have been able to conceal from himself, that the most unmerciful penances, that the most punctilious external observance of all rules of his order, that the most faithful practice of what were then called good works, could not make him fundamentally better, and therefore not any more worthy of God's mercy; at least they could not so perfectly assure him of this mercy that he dared to rely on it with a quieting confidence. His soul foreboded, that there must be a different ground of our consolation from that of a consciousness of our own goodness or our own righteousness, although not a mere observance of the external rules of religion, should be understood by it; because men, who would not designedly be un

faithful, could never maintain this consciousness in the requisite degree. But until he found this other ground, until the turbid idea which his soul had of it, gradually became clear, he must have been incessantly harrassed with doubts, which threatened to exhaust all the powers of his soul. It was impossible for him, without a conflict, at once to break loose from all the prejudices of the old system, that he had imbibed from his youth up; and still more impossible, since he had sacrificed so much almost alone to them. But the continual struggle against these prejudices, the oppressive feeling of the strength of the objections which his soul raised against them, and the incessant conflict with himself on account of these very objections, (which he now regarded as satanic temptations, and now was inclined to adopt as irresistible truth), must have cast him into a state more tormenting than the severest penances, and which must have been rendered still more intolerable by the upbraidings of a cheated expectation. That he must long have felt all the bitterness of this condition, is especially clear, from the impetuous joy with which his soul, freed from the chains of these prejudices, pressed to meet the light that subsequently broke upon it-pressed to meet the conviction that the free grace of God and not our works, Christ's merit and not ours, are the ground of our salvation and our peace-from the grateful enthusiasm with which he grasped this grand truth, and acknowledged himself to be indebted to it, not only for the clearing up of all his ideas, not only for the solution of all his doubts, but for all the quiet of his present life and all the joys of the future-from the fire with which, in the last years of his life, when the doctrine had been long sunk in his soul, he still spoke and wrote of itand from the hearty and never-tiring zeal with which he so gladly pressed it upon the whole world, as the most profitable doctrine. It also appears from some express declarations of his. In a letter, of 1516, to George Spönlin, an Augustinian monk at Memmingen, is contained the whole doctrine of justification, as he afterwards more fully exhibited it in his later writings; and the strongest opposition is expressed to the opinion that assumes our own works as coöperating causes in our justification. But Luther owns to his friend, that he is not himself yet in a state entirely to rid himself of this opinion.*

* "A presumptuous attempt is eagerly prosecuted by many in our age, especially by those who strive with all their might to be just and

The history of his life does not inform us how much Staupitz * did in particular to bring him nearer to this conviction, which was followed by the conformation of all his other views, but it presents some circumstances by which the time when the change followed and the means by which it was promoted, may in a measure be defined. It was in the second year of his residence in the convent, that his body sunk under the powerful exercises of his soul, and was attacked by a disease which excited the fear of his speedy death. All the anguish of his soul distracted by so long a conflict, and all the terrors of his wounded conscience, awoke in redoubled strength, in view of the grave. On the borders of despair, he opened his heart to an old monk, who had come to see him, and who probably belonged to the few that could at least feel with him, although they were not capable of fully understanding him. Without entering into his doubts, the venerable old man exhorted him to hold with a firm faith to the article of the apostolic symbol, which he then repeated to him-"I believe a forgiveness of sins." These few words, uttered from pious simplicity exactly at the decisive crisis, fell like a beam of light on Luther's soul, and filled it with reanimating power. But little, however, was he then in good, and who, ignorant of God's righteousness which is most abundantly and gratuitously given us in Christ, seek in themselves to perform good works long enough to gain the confidence of standing before God, adorned, as it were, with their own virtues and merits, which is impossible. You have been with us in this opinion, nay error. I have also been in it. And even now also I am fighting against this error, and have not yet overcome it." Epp. L. I. ep. 9. It ought never to be forgotten, in the whole of Luther's subsequent history, that it was exactly in this way that he came to the belief, and was brought through just these doubts, to the grand principle of his system; for it is only by recollecting this, that we shall be able to explain the peculiarity of his mode of representing the subject, and the excessive strength of expressions he occasionally used. He seems to have supposed that all other men must find the truth in just the same way, and all view it on just the same side, as he had found and seen it. But this exposed his doctrine to many a misconstruction, since there are more ways in which men could arrive at it; and they could also view it in quite another position and another relation to connected truths, than what were apparent from the point of view in which Luther placed it, because he had first seen it from thence.

In a letter to Staupitz, he reminds him of some of his doctrines by which himself had been first led to other views. Epp. 1. 50.

a condition even to survey the consequences which were involved in this, much less to develop them.* But now, these consequences must have been developed in him, one after another, in a short period, since Luther, according to the advice of Staupitz, from this time made the study of the Scriptures his chief business, and applied himself to it with a zeal which not the mere longing for purer knowledge, but the most languishing thirst for consolation, could alone produce. All that is called scholastic theology, must now have become insufferably disgusting. And as he now became more intimately acquainted with the writings of the earlier fathers, especially those of Augustine, which he preferred to all the rest, (not so much from a partiality of his order, [the Augustinian], but from the similarity he found between Augustine's views and his own), his hatred to the scholastic theology became still more vehement; and perhaps the more vehement still, because he believed that in no better way could he propitiate the shade of the holy bishop for the little respect he had himself formerly shown him. What influence the study of this father had on his doctrinal system, then in its forming state, we shall have frequent occasion to remark, in the prosecution of this history.

In this situation and in these occupations, three years of his monastic life had already passed away, when, in 1508, at the

* Löscher, in den Reform. Urkunden, I. 207, appears indeed, after Mathesius, to place Luther's sickness before his entering the convent. But Melancthon, in Relatione de vita Lutheri, VIII, 876, mentions also a sickness in the second year of his monastic life. At any rate, the incident with the old monk, which Luther himself afterwards often gratefully remembered, certainly occurred at this time.

†The anecdote of Luther's joy on account of the Bible, which he accidentally found, is learnt from Mathesius, p. 3. But he found the Bible, not, as is commonly believed, in the convent, but before, in the library of the university; for in the convent he procured one of his own, and Staupitz here first gave him the advice to apply himself to it more zealously. See Seckendorf, from Razenberger's Life of Luther, p. 21, and proofs of his diligence, in the same place, from another manuscript.

"He had both frequently read and admirably remembered all the works of Augustine." Melanc. 1. c.

"Not," says Luther, Epp. I. 20, "that I am led by the zeal of my profession, to approve of Augustine, who met with not the least favor from me before I hit upon his books."

recommendation of Staupitz, he was called, by Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony, to the theological chair in the newly erected university at Wittenberg.* Staupitz saw well, that his soul was too active to remain locked up within itself; and he therefore gladly seized the occasion here presented, to point out to him a situation where he might suitably give scope to his propensities on a larger stage. Here Luther now believed he had received a new call to spread the truth, and a new call to encounter the Aristotelian philosophy† and the scholastic mode of instruction, which he regarded as the most dangerous foes to the truth. He now applied himself, with redoubled zeal, to the languages, which were indispensable to his better preparation for the contest with opponents, towards whom he had sworn irreconcilable hatred, and the war with whom he had determined to make the chief business of his subsequent life. This resolution he prosecuted on all occasions, with an impetuosity which seemed itself a challenge to the combat, as well in his writings as in his lectures, in which he particularly explained the epistle of Paul to the Romans. And when the celebrity of these productions attracted a multitude of studious foreigners to the newly founded university, it was easy to foresee, that mere envy at his increasing fame, and at the sudden improvement of Wittenberg, which threatened soon to eclipse Leipsic and Erfurt, would bring upon him opponents in multitude.

The history of his life informs us indeed but little of the learned labors of the first years of his residence at that place; but he was even then often compelled to divide his time, though very unequally, between these labors and the care of his cloister. In 1510, he even had to make a journey to Rome, upon

* It was erected in 1502, especially at the instance of Staupitz and Martin Mellerstadt.

"There is nothing my mind so burns to do, if I had leisure, as to lay bare to many that play-actor who so imposes upon the church under a truly Grecian mask, and to expose his ignominy to all." Epp. I. 8. The same year, he wrote with still greater triumph. “Aristotle is sinking in our university, wellnigh to perpetual ruin.” ep. 27.

He had already lectured on the Psalter, and decided to publish his Notes upon it. His Exposition of Galatians, he began in 1516. § In a letter to John Langen, he sports about the multitude and the variety of his occupations. "I need about two scribes or secre