“I wished, however, first to announce my intention to my parents, too, and hear their ideas about the matter, since I was a lone son and heir of my parents.  The monks, however, taught me from St. Jerome that I should drop father and mother, and not take them into consideration, and run to the cross of Christ.  They quoted, too, the words of Christ, ’No one who lays hands to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.’  All of this was bound to impel and enjoin me to become a monk.  I will not speak here of many ropes and fetters with which they bound and tied my conscience.  For they said that I could never become blessed if I did not soon accept and use the grace offered by God.  Thereupon I, who would rather have been willing to die than be without the grace of God and eternal life, straightway promised and engaged to come into the cloister again in three days and begin the year of probation, as they called it, in the cloister; that is, I wanted to become a pious, devout, and God-fearing monk.

“In the year of Christ 1510, the 14th of July, at two o’clock in the afternoon, I entered the cloister, accompanied by my preceptor, some few of my school-comrades, and some very devout matrons, to whom I had in part made known the reason why I was entering the spiritual order.  And so I blessed my companions to the cloister, all of whom, amid tears, wished me God’s grace and blessing.  And thus I entered the cloister.  Dear God, Thou knowest that this is all true.  I did not seek idleness or provision for my stomach, nor the appearance of great holiness, but I wished to be pleasing unto Thee—­Thee I wished to serve.

“Thus I at that time groped about in very great darkness” (p. 38 ff.)*
     This account is published by the courtesy of the Lutheran
Publication Society of Philadelphia; it is taken from their publication _Doctor Luther,_ by Gustav Freitag.

Few Christians can read this old record without pity stirring in them.  The man of whom Myconius tells all this, Tetzel, has been recently represented to the American public as a theologian far superior to Luther, calm, considerate, kind, and of his actions the public has been advised that they were so utterly correct that the Roman Catholic Church of to-day does not hesitate one moment to do what Tetzel did.  So mote it be!  We admire the writer’s honesty, and blush for his brazen boldness.

15.  Luther’s Faith without Works.

Out of Luther’s opposition to the sale of indulgences there grew in the course of time one of the fundamental principles of Protestantism:  complete, universal, and free salvation of sinners by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.  In the controversies which started immediately after the publication of the Ninety-five Theses, Luther was led step by step to a greater clearness in his view of sin and grace, faith and works, human reason and the divine revelation.  Not yet realizing the full import of his act, Luther had in the Theses