§ 22. LUTHER AND STAUPITZ. 121
and carry my cross day by day; and whosoever loves Me, keeps my commandments. . . . The evil spirit suggests to carnal Christians the doctrine that man is justified without works, and appeals to Paul. But Paul only excluded works of the law which proceed from fear and selfishness, while in all his epistles he commends as necessary to salvation such works as are done in obedience to God’s commandments, in faith and love. Christ fulfilled the law, the fools would abolish the law; Paul praises the law as holy and good, the fools scold and abuse it as evil because they walk according to the flesh and have not the mind of the Spirit.””
Staupitz withdrew from the conflict, resigned his position, 1520, left his order by papal dispensation, became abbot of the Benedictine Convent of St. Peter in Salzburg and died Dec. 28, 1524, in the bosom of the Catholic church which he never intended to leave.? He was evangelical, without being a Protestant. He cared little for Romanism, less for Lutheranism, all for practical Christianity. His relation to the Reformation resembles that of Erasmus with this difference, that he helped to prepare the way for it in the sphere of discipline and piety, Erasmus in the
1 Knaake, l. c., I., 180 sqq.; Keller, Reform., 346 sq. It must have been this book which Link sent to Luther in the year 1525, and which Luther returned with a very unfavorable judgment. Déllinger (/.c., I.,155) thinks that Luther looked upon the death of Staupitz asa sort of divine judgment, as he looked afterward upon the death of Zwingli.
2 Neverthless his books were put in the Index by the Council of Trent, 1563, and were~burnt as heretical with all his correspondence by order of his successor, Abbot Martin of St. Peter, in the court of the convent at Salzburg in 1584, See Fr. Hein. Reusch (Old Cath.), Der Index der verbotenen Biicher, Bd. I. (Bonn, 1883), p. 279: “Staupitius ist in den Index gekommen, weil Cochleus bei dem Jahre 1517 thn neben Luther als Gegner Tetzels erwihnt. Er ist in der 1. Classe geblieben bis auf diesen Tag, obschon man in Rom oder wenigstens in Trient, jedenfalls Benedict XIV. wohl hitte wissen kinnen, dass er als guter Katholik, als Abt von St. Peter zu Salzburg gestorben.’ This is only one of several hundred errors in this papal catalogue of heretical books.
5 Or, as Luther expressed it in his letter to Staupitz of Feb. 9, 1521, he wavered between Christ and the Pope: “ Ich fiirchte, thr méchtet zwischen Christo und dem Papste in der Mitte schweben, die ihr doch in heftigem Streit sehet.” He told him in the same letter that he was no more that preacher of grace and of the cross (ein solcher Gnaden-und Kreuzprediger) as formerly.
122 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 τὸ 1530.
sphere of scholarship and illumination. Both were men of mediation and transition ; they beheld from afar the land of promise, but did not enter it.
§ 23. The Victory of Justifying Faith. (Comp. 2 7.)
The secret of Luther’s power and influence lies in his heroic faith. It delivered him from the chaos and torment of ascetic self-mortification and self-condemnation, gave him rest and peace, and made him a lordly freeman in Christ, and yet an obedient servant of Christ. This faith breathes through all his writings, dominated his acts, sustained him in his conflicts and remained his shield and anchor till the hour of death. This faith was born in the convent at Erfurt, called into public action at Wittenberg, and made him a Reformer of the Church.
By the aid of Staupitz and the old monk, but especially by the continued study of Paul’s Epistles, he was gradually brought to the conviction that the sinner is justified by faith alone, without works of law. He experienced this truth in his heart long before he understood it in all its bearings. He found in it that peace of conscience which he had sought in vain by his monkish exercises. He pondered day and night over the meaning of “the righteousness of God” (Rom. 1: 17), and thought that it is the righteous punishment of sinners; but toward the close of his convent life he came to the conclusion that it is the righteousness which God freely gives in Christ to those who believe in him. Righteousness is not to be acquired by man through his own exertions and merits; it is complete and perfect in Christ, and all the sinner has to do is to accept it from Him as a free gift. Justification is that judicial act of God whereby he acquits the sinner of guilt and clothes him with the righteousness of Christ on the sole condition of personal faith which apprehends and appropriates Christ and shows its life and power by good works, as a good tree bringing forth good fruits. For faith in Luther’s system is far more than a mere assent of the