Luther grew up under pious but rigorous discipline. His father was characterized by severity, tempered with great honesty and clearness of judgment. Luther's mother was a woman of earnest piety, which, however, had also a tinge of harshness, Luther went to school at Magdeburg in 1497, in 1498 to Eisenach, and in 1501 he entered the University of Erfurt, Here he took the Bachelor's degree in 1503, and the degree of JIaster of Arts, which entitled him to teach in the university, in 1505. He was designed for the profession of tlie law ; but a prevailing discomfort and occasional anguish of mind, under a sense of sin and the dread of the wrath of God, heightened first by the sudden, violent death of a friend, and later by a stroke of lightning which fell near his feet, determined Luther quite otherwise. He vowed to St. Ann that he would become a monk. The evening before his entrance to the cloister of the Augustinians he spent in lively conversation and song with liis uni- versity friends, and the first announcement to them of his purpose was made at the close of the festal liours. "To-day j'ou see me; after this you will see me no more," said Luther, When night was passing into morning, July 17, 1.505, he presented himself for admis- sion at the convent — soon to become the birthplace of Lutheran Protestantism and of the evangelical doctrine of justification bj' faith without the works of the law.
II. Cloister Life (1505-1517).— He passed through his
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novitiate, and finally, in opposition to his father's wish- es, to whom it seemed that his son had chosen "a life little differing from death," took the vows, and was con- secrated to the priesthood May 2, 1507. Luther had entered the priesthood to find peace for his soul. He says, •' I chose for mj'self twentj'-one saints, read mass every day, calling on three of them each day, so as to complete the circuit every week; especially did I in- ^'oke the holy Virgin, as her womanly heart was more easily touched, that she might appease her Son. I ver- ily thought that by invoking three saints daily, and by letting my body waste away with fastings and watch- ings, I should satisfy the law, and shield my conscience against the goad; but it all availed me nothing: the further I went on in this way the more was I terrified, so that I should have given over in despair had not Christ graciously regarded me, and enlightened me with the light of the Gospel." From his deep depression of soul he was lifted by a brother in the cloister, who fixed his attention on the article in the Apostles' Creed, " I believe in the remission of sins." Staupitz, one of the noblest men of his time, dealt with Luther very faith- fully. " Staupitz," says Luther, " once comforted me on this wise : ' You would be a painted sinner, and have a painted Christ as a Saviour. You must make up your mind that you are a very sinner, and that Christ is a very Saviour.'" "I sought to make out the meaning of Paul in the terra ' the righteousness of God,' and at last I came to apprehend it thus : Through the Gospel is revealed the righteousness which availeth with God — a righteousness by which God in his mercy and com- passion justifieth us, as it is written, ' The just shall live by faith.' The expression, ' the righteousness of God,' which I so much hated before, became now dear and precious, my darling and most comforting word, and that passage of Paul was to me the true door of Para- dise."
Luther now zealously devoted himself to the earnest study of theology. " The writings of Biel and D'Ailly lie could repeat almost word for word ; Occam he read long and carefully, and rated his acumen higher than that of Thomas and Scotus. He read Gerson with diligence, but the entire writings of Augustine he had read more frequently' and fixed more thoroughly in . his memory than any others" (Melancthon, Vif. Lutli.'). "Next after the holy Scriptures," says Luther, "no teacher in the Church is to be compared with Augus- tine; take the entire body of the fathers together, there is not to be found in them half that we find in Augustine alone" (irer/c. xiv, 209). It was an uncon- scious presage when Luther, on entering the cloister, took the name of Augustine. Among the medieval writers, Bernard held the highest place in Luther's re- gard. " If ever there was a holy monk, Bernard was that monk. He is golden when he teaches and preach- es— then he surpasses all the doctors in the Church" (IFerAe, xii, 1696 ; xxii, 2050). Augustine and Bernard became increasingly precious to him as his continued studies of the holy Scriptures brought him to a pro- founder acquaintance with the truth. In 1508 his scholarship received acknowledgment by a call to the chair of philosophy in the newly-founded University of Wittenberg, the capital of t lie old electorate. The uni- versity was under the protection of the elector (Freder- ick)— not of an ecclesiastic — wliich was a hajipy circum- stance for its part in the future. Its ]iatron saints were Paul and Augustine. Luther went thither, and lectured on dialectics and physics according to Aristotle. In 1509 he became Baccalaureus ad Biblia; 151],Senten- tiarius (Sentences of Lombcn-d, tir^t two l)ooks), Forma- tus (<S'cn/CHC(',s', last two books); October 4, 1512, Licen- tiatus (to teach theology in general); and October 19. 1512, Doctor of Theology, a (jegrec which involved not a mere honor, but an office, in receiving "whiih Luther swore " to teach purely and sincerely according to the Scriptures." He now transferred his labors from ]ihilos- ophy to theology. His lavorite books, on which he de-