Hartmann Grisar

“ To leave man no free will for what is good and to make him altogether dependent on God’s predestination “seems, it is true, cruel and intolerable; countless of the greatest minds of previous ages have taken offence at this. And who, indeed, is there whom the idea does not offend? I myself have more than once been greatly scandalised at it and plunged into an abyss of despair so that I wished I had never been created. But then I learned how wholesome despair is and how close it lies to grace.” ”

“ He who with readiness embraces the cross in everything that he feels, thinks and understands will in time find the fruit of his suffering to be sweet peace. That is God’s peace, under which our thoughts and desires must be hidden in order that they may be nailed to the cross, i.e. to the cross of contradiction and oppression. Thus is peace truly established above all our thinking and desiring, and becomes the most precious jewel. ”

“ Of the excessive, almost suicidal, monastic practices to which, as a Catholic-minded monk, he surrendered himself, seeking God’s grace, until through Divine intervention he recognised that the path of works and strictness of life, in fact the Catholic road generally, was incapable of leading one to peace with God here below and to union with God in eternity? There is nothing here of that sudden leap from weary, self-righteous seeking after God—ostensibly a delusion cherished by all Catholics—to the joyous consciousness of a gracious God, based on the recognition of justification. ”

“ Luther teaches that the Apostle’s doctrine is: God did not in their lifetime exercise His mercy towards the damned; He is right and not to be blamed when He follows herein His own supreme will alone. “Why then does man murmur as though God were not acting according to the law?” His will is, for every man, the highest good. Why should we not desire, and that with the greatest fervour, the fulfilment of this will, since it is a will which can in no way be evil? “You say: Yes, but for me it is evil. No, it is evil for none. The only evil is that men cannot understand God’s will and do it” ”

“ No one is more greedy than they for riches, comfort, idleness, honour and pomp.” “They honour the relics of the Holy Cross and yet abhor and fly from what they dislike.” “We consider Christ our helper [236] and our support in time of trouble, but whoever does not suffer gladly, cheats Him of these titles; to such a one God even is no longer the Creator because he will not return to the nothingness from which God created all. Whoever will not suffer God in weakness, foolishness and punishment, for him God is not powerful, not wise, not merciful.” ”

“ Is it not a strange madness to praise and belaud philosophy, a doctrine which is merely the perverse wisdom of the flesh advocated by so-called wise men and theologians!”
“Those fools” who do not even know what grace is.... “Who can bear with their blasphemous ideas?” “They do not know what sin or remission of sin is.” “Our theologians see sins only in works, and do not teach us how to change our minds and how to implore grace with humble sighing.... They make proud men, men who after due performance of their works look on themselves as righteous, and seek not to fight against their passions. ”

“ They heard what they might have anticipated, as soon as the fiery preacher, whose appearance was doubtless greeted by his pupils and adherents with looks of joy, got to work on his thesis: To place our hope in anything but God, even in the merit of our good works, is to have false idols before God. Then the stream of words flowed apace against the “proud saints,” against the presumptuous assurance of salvation on the part of the servitors of works, against the fools who make the narrow way to heaven still narrower, against the A B C pupils, who know nothing outside their own works. ”

“ It is a tragic coincidence that mysticism, [231] the most delicate blossom of the theology of the Middle Ages and of true Catholicism, should have served to confirm him in so many errors. True mysticism has in all ages been a protest against all moral cowardice and inertia, against tepidity and self-complacent mediocrity; false mysticism, on the other hand, debases itself to Quietism and even to Antinomianism; the world has lived to see pseudo-mysticism deny evil the better to permit it. ”

“ To the sad doubts concerning his own salvation which Brother Martin laid before him, Staupitz replied by exhorting him as follows in the spirit of the Catholic Church: “Why torment yourself with such thoughts and broodings? Look at the wounds of Christ and His Blood shed for you. There you will see your predestination to heaven shining forth to your comfort.” [26] Quite rightly he impressed upon him, in the matter of confession and penance, that the principal thing was to arouse in himself the will to love God and righteousness, and that he must not pause before unhealthy imaginations of sin. ”

“ When in 1518 he published his Latin sermon on Penance, its chief thesis was that man’s part in his reconciliation with God counted for nought; we must despair in order to attain contrition, at least from the motive of fear of God; we must merely submit with faith to the action of grace. “Whoever trusts to his contrition when receiving absolution, builds on the sand of his works and is guilty of shameless presumption.” ”

“ Tauler had summed up the doctrine already well known in earlier ages in the beautiful words: “When the most trivial work is performed in real and simple obedience, such a work of an obedient man is nobler and better and more pleasing to God and is more profitable and meritorious than all the great works which he may do here below of his own choice.” [716] Every artisan and peasant is able, according to Tauler, to serve God in perfect love in his humble calling; he need not neglect his work to tread the paths of sublime charity and lofty prayer. ”

“ He is about to build, but first He pulls down, to heal but first He deals wounds, to vivify but first He condemns to death. He crushes a man, humbles him by the knowledge of himself and his sins and makes him tremble, so that, under a sense of his misery, he cries out [with Holy Scripture] ‘there is no peace for my bones because of my sins, there is no health in my flesh because of Thy wrath. For the mountains melt away before the face of God, He sends out His arrows, He troubles us with His anger and with the breath of His wrath. The sinner sinks down into hell and shame covers his face. ”

“ The union of faith and knowledge, of which true Scholasticism was proud, never appealed to Luther.
The Occamists had also been before him in attacking Aristotle. The fact that many esteemed this philosopher too highly gave rise in their camp to bitter and exaggerated criticism, and to excessive abuse of the Stagirite. Against the blind Aristotelians d’Ailly had already written somewhat unkindly: “In philosophy, i.e. in the teaching of Aristotle, there are no, or but few, convincing proofs ... we must call the philosophy or teaching of Aristotle an opinion rather than a science.” ”

“ In the Commentary on Romans Luther refuses to recognise any love save that which springs from the most perfect motive. He stigmatises the love which arises from the joy in the benefits bestowed by a gracious God,—and which the orthodox mystics allowed,—as presumption, and as an enjoyment of the creature rather than of the Creator, and goes so far as to say that if a man were to remain in this love “he would be lost eternally.” ”

“ This in previous ages had been rightly understood to mean not merely an acceptance of the Word of God and the intimate persuasion of the remission of one’s sins, but a faith enlivened by grace with charity. In confirmation of this, other well-known passages of the New Testament were always quoted: “Wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?” “Do you see that by works a man is justified; and not by faith only?” “For even as the body without the spirit is dead: so also faith without works is dead.” ”

“ This doctrine of a wholesome fear of hell, of a saving, heroic abandonment to God, and of an exalted and pure love to be exercised by all as a “remedy” against damnation, invalidates Luther’s doctrine of absolute and undeserved predestination to hell; salvation is again made to depend upon both God and man, whose co-operation becomes necessary; it is only because “man will not will what God wills” that he is damned. ”

“ For even the wrongs which we suffer from men, persecutions, passion and hatred, which are caused us either by the wicked or by those who mean well, are priceless relics, which have not indeed, like the wood of the cross, been hallowed by contact with our Lord’s body, but which have been blessed by His most loving heart, encompassed by His friendly, Divine Will, kissed and sanctified. The curse becomes a blessing, insult becomes righteousness, suffering becomes an aureole, and the cross a joy. ”

“ Luther embraced the idea, which permeates Tauler’s works, of the painful annihilation of self-will and of all man’s sensual inclinations, not in order to mortify his own self-will and sensuality by obedience to the rules of his Order and humble submission to the practices of the Church, but the better to make his delusive disregard for the zealous performance of good works appear high and perfect to his own mind and in that of others. ”

“ In the discourse which Luther wrote, probably in the autumn or winter months of 1515, for Georg Mascov, provost of Leitzau (see above, p. 65) , and which was intended for a synodal meeting of the clergy, he says, in his most exaggerated fashion: “The whole world lies as it were under a deluge of false and filthy teaching.” The Word of God like a tiny flame is barely kept alive. Egoism, worldliness and vice are predominant. And the remedy? He will cry it aloud over the whole world: the only remedy is to preach “the word of truth” with much greater zeal. ”

“ Luther gives in a peculiar fashion his reasons for taking such a standpoint: “The Nature of God demands that He should first destroy and annihilate everything there is in us before He imparts His gifts. For it is written: ‘The Lord maketh poor and maketh rich, He bringeth down to hell and bringeth back again.’ By this most gracious plan He renders us fit for the reception of His gifts and His works. ”

“ Luther thinks he has here found in St. Paul the doctrine of predestination, not only to heaven, but also to hell, expressed, moreover, in the strongest terms. At the same time he warns his hearers against faint-heartedness, being well aware how dangerous his views might prove to souls.
“Let no one immerse himself in these thoughts who is not purified in spirit, lest he sink into an abyss of horror and despair; the eyes of the heart must first be purified by contemplating the wounds of Christ. ”

“ All the Prophets rise up against such men, for they always commence their holy message with the words: “Thus saith the Lord” and, “whosoever it be whom the Lord chooses as His mouthpiece, the demand is for faith, resignation, humble subjection of our own ideas; for it is only thus that we are justified, and not otherwise.” With incredible tenacity he is ever harping on the assertion that the “self-righteous” only deck themselves out with works of the law, but find no grace with God. ”

“ The untenable and insulting comparison between the mysterious and the revealed Supreme Being which Luther was later on to institute is here already foreshadowed.
He explains in detail how the will of man does not in the least belong to the person who wills, or the road to the runner. “All is God’s, who gives and creates the will.” We are all instruments of God, who works all in all. Our will is like the saw and the stick—examples which he repeatedly employs later in his harshest utterances concerning the slavery of the will. Sawing is the act of the hand which saws, but the saw is passive ”

“ Such outbursts of spite confirm our previous observations concerning the results of Luther’s journey to Rome. His indignation with what he had seen or heard during his visit to Rome of the moral conditions under Alexander VI and Julius II became gradually more apparent.
“At Rome,” he exclaims, “they no longer recognise any restrictions on their liberty, everything is set aside by means of dispensations. They have arrogated to themselves freedom of the flesh in every particular.” ”

“ Is it really impossible for a Catholic historian to depict Luther as he really was without offending Protestant feelings in any way? Without any exaggerated optimism, I believe it to be quite possible, because honesty and historical justice must always be able to find a place somewhere under the sun and wherever light can be thrown, even in the most delicate historical questions. ”

“ This, then, is Luther’s conclusion: the elect are not saved by the co-operation of their free will, but by the Divine decree; not by their merits, but by the unalterable edict from above by means of which they conquer all the difficulties in the way of salvation. He is silent here as to whether the elect may not succumb to sin temporarily, either by the misuse of liberty, or from lack of compelling grace. ”

“ Dimly the error breaks in upon his mind, that man can have no wish, no will of his own with respect to God; true religion (vera fides) is the complete renunciation of the will, the most absolute passivity; only thus is the empty vessel of the heart filled by God, the cause of all; the work of salvation is a “negotium absconditum,” entirely the work of God, and He commences it by the destruction of our self (“quod nos et nostra destruat”) ”

“ But as they, nevertheless, feel that they commit sin and that all they do is tainted with evil, the devil terrifies them to such an extent with fear of the judgments of God and scruples of conscience that they almost despair. He is acquainted with each one’s disposition and tempts him accordingly. As they are zealous in the pursuit of righteousness the devil is unable to turn them aside from it so readily. Therefore he sets himself to fill them with enthusiasm, so that they wish to free themselves too speedily from all trace of concupiscence. ”

“ Augustine in his book against Julian terms it ‘rather an enslaved than a free will.’ But after the obtaining of grace it becomes really free, at least as far as salvation is concerned. The will is, it is true, free by nature, but only for what comes within its province, not for what is above it, being bound in the chain of sin and therefore unable to choose what is good in God’s sight.” [507] Here Luther makes no distinction between natural and supernatural good, but excludes both from our choice; in fact there is no such thing as natural goodness, for what nature performs alone is only sin. ”