128 STATESMEN AND SAGES ing his stay there. Here under Trebonius he made good progress in Latin. In 1501, when he had reached his eighteenth year, he entered the university of Erfurt, with the view of qualifying himself for the legal profession. He went through the usual studies in the classics and the schoolmen, and took his degree of doctor of philosophy, or master of arts, in 1 505, when he was twenty-one years of age. Previous to this, however, a profound change of feeling had begun in him. The death of a friend, and the terror of a thunder-storm, deeply impressed him. Chancing one day to examine the Vulgate in the university library, he saw with astonishment that there were more gospels and epistles than in the lectionaries. He was arrested by the contents of his newly found treasure. His heart vas deeply touched, and he resolved to devote himself to a spiritual life. He separ- ated himself from his friends and fellow-students, and withdrew into the Augus- tinian convent at Erfurt. Here he spent the next three years of his life years of peculiar interest and significance ; for it was during this time that he laid, in the study of the Bible and of Augustine, and with the assistance of his life-long friend Staupitz, the foundation of those doctrinal convictions which were afterward to rouse and strengthen him in his life-long struggle. He describes very vividly the spiritual crisis through which he passed, the burden of sin which so long lay upon him, " too heavy to be borne," and the relief that he at length found in the clear apprehension of the doctrine of the " forgiveness of sins," through the grace of Christ. In the year 1507 Luther was ordained a priest, and in the following year he removed to Wittenberg, destined to derive its chief celebrity from his name. He became a teacher in the new university founded there by the Elector Freder- ick of Saxony. At first he lectured on dialectics and physics, but his heart was already given to theology, and in 1509 he became a bachelor of theology, and commenced lecturing on the Holy Scriptures. His lectures made a great im- pression, and the novelty of his views already began to excite attention " This monk," said the rector of the university, " will puzzle our doctors and bring in a new doctrine." Besides lecturing, he began to preach, and his sermons reached a wider audience, and produced a still more powerful influence. They were printed and widely circulated in Germany, France, and England, so that his doc- trines were diffused throughout Europe. His words, as Melancthon says, were " born not on his lips, but in his soul," and they moved profoundly the souls of all who heard them. In 1511 he was sent on a mission to Rome, and he has de- scribed very vividly what he saw and heard there. His devout and unquestion- ing reverence : for he was yet in his own subsequent view " a most insane pa- pist "--appears in strange conflict with his awakened thoughtfulness and the moral indignation at the abuses of the papacy beginning to stir him. On Luther's return from Rome he was made a doctor of the Holy Scriptures, and his career as a reformer may be said to have commenced. The system of indulgences had reached a scandalous height. The idea that it was in the power of the Church to forgive sin had gradually grown into the notion that the Pope could issue pardons of his own free will, which, being dispensed to the faithful,
