Luther repeatedly said mass at Rome, taking care to do it with all the unction and dignity which the service seemed to him to require. But how grieved was the heart of the Saxon monk, at seeing the profane formality of the Roman priests in celebrating the sacrament of the altar. The priests, on their part, laughed at his simplicity. One day when he was officiating, he found that at the altar next to him seven masses had been read before he got through a single one. "Get on, get on," cried one of the priests to him; "make haste, and send Our Lady back her Son," making an impious allusion to the transubstantiation of the bread into the body and blood of Jesus Christ. On another occasion, Luther had only got as far as the Gospel, when the priest beside him had finished the whole mass. "On, on," said his companion; "make haste, make haste; are ye ever to have done?"206
His astonishment was still greater when, in the dignitaries of the Church, he discovered the same thing that he had found in common priests. He had hoped better of them.
It was fashionable at the papal court to attack Christianity, and, in order to pass for a complete gentleman, absolutely necessary to hold some erroneous or heretical opinion on the doctrines of the Church.207 When Erasmus was at Rome, they had attempted to prove to him, by passages from Pliny, that there was no difference between the soul of man and that of the brutes;208 and young courtiers of the pope maintained that the orthodox faith was merely the result of crafty inventions by some saints.209
Luther's employment, as envoy of the Augustins of Germany, caused him to be invited to several meetings of distinguished ecclesiastics. One day, in particular, he happened to be at table with several prelates, who frankly exhibited themselves to him in their mountebank manners and profane conversation, and did not scruple to commit a thousand follies in his presence, no doubt believing him to be of the same spirit as themselves. Among other things they related, in presence of the monk, laughing and making a boast of it, how when they were saying mass, instead of the sacramental words, which should transform the bread and wine into the Saviour's flesh and blood, they parodied them, and said, "Panis es, et panis manebis; vinum es, et vinum manebis:" Bread thou art, and bread wilt remain; wine thou art, and wine wilt remain. Then, continued they, we raise the ostensorium, and all the people worship it. Luther could scarcely believe his ears. His spirit, which was lively and even gay in the society of his friends, was all gravity when sacred things were in question. He was scandalised at the profane pleasantries of Rome. "I was," said be, "a young monk, grave and pious, and these words distressed me greatly. If they speak thus in Rome at table, freely and publicly, thought I to myself, what will it be if their actions correspond to their words, and if all, pope, cardinals, courtiers, say mass in the same style? And I, who have devoutly heard so large a number read, how must I have been deceived!"210
Luther often mingled with the monks and the citizens of Rome. If some extolled the pope and his court, the great majority gave free utterance to their complaints and their sarcasms. What tales they told of the reigning pope, of Alexander VI, and of many others! One day his Roman friends told him how Cæsar Borgia, after having fled from Rome, was apprehended in Spain. When they were going to try him he pleaded guilty in prison, and requested a confessor. A monk having been sent, he slew him, and, wrapping himself up in his cloak, made his escape. "I heard that at Rome, and it is quite certain,"211 said Luther. One day passing through a public street which led to St. Peter's, he stopped in amazement before a statue, representing a pope under the form of a woman holding a sceptre, clad in the papal mantle, and carrying an infant in her arms. It is a girl of Mentz, said they to him, whom the cardinals chose for pope, and who had a child at this spot. Hence no pope ever passes through this street. "I am astonished," said Luther, "how the popes allow the statue to remain."212
Luther had expected to find the edifice of the church in strength and splendour, but its gates were forced, and its walls consumed with fire. He saw the desolations of the sanctuary, and started back in dismay. He had dreamed of nothing but holiness, and he discovered nothing but profanation.
He was not less struck with the disorders outside the churches. "The Roman police," says he, "is strict and severe. The judge or captain every night makes a round of the town on horseback, with three hundred attendants, and arrests every person he finds in the streets. If he meets any one armed he hangs him up, or throws him into the Tiber; and yet the city is full of disorder and murder, whereas, when the word of God is purely and rightly taught, peace and order are seen to reign, and there is no need of law and its severities."213 "It is almost incredible what sins and infamous actions are committed at Rome," says he, on another occasion; "one would require to see it and hear it in order to believe it. Hence, it is an ordinary saying, that if there is a hell, Rome is built upon it. It is an abyss from whence all sins proceed."214
This sight made a strong impression on Luther's mind at the time, and the impression was deepened at a later period. "The nearer we approach Rome the more bad Christians we find," said he several years after. "There is a common saying, that he who goes to Rome, the first time seeks a rogue, the second time finds him, and the third time brings him away with him in his own person; but now people are become so skilful, that they make all the three journeys in one." A genius, one of the most unhappily celebrated, but also one of the most profound of Italy, Machiavelli, who was living at Florence when Luther passed through it on his way to Rome, has made the same remark: "The strongest symptom," says he, "of the approaching ruin of Christianity, (he means Roman Catholicism,) is, that the nearer you come to the capital of Christendom the less you find of the Christian spirit. The scandalous examples and crimes of the court of Rome are the cause why Italy has lost every principle of piety and all religious sentiment. We Italians," continues the great historian, "are chiefly indebted to the Church and the priests for our having become a set of profane scoundrels."215 At a later period Luther was fully aware how much he had gained by his journey "I would not take a hundred thousand florins," said he, "not to have seen Rome."216
The journey was also of the greatest advantage to him in a literary view. Like Reuchlin, Luther availed himself of his residence in Italy to penetrate farther into the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures. He took lessons in Hebrew from a celebrated rabbi named Elias Levita; and thus, at Rome, partly acquired the knowledge of that Divine word under whose blows Rome was destined to fall.
But there was another respect in which the journey was of great importance to Luther. Not only was the veil torn away and the sardonic smile, and mountebank infidelity which lurked behind the Roman superstitions, revealed to the future Reformer, but, moreover, the living faith which God had implanted in him was powerfully strengthened.
We have seen how he at first entered devotedly into all the vain observances, to which, as a price, the Church has annexed the expiation of sins. One day, among others, wishing to gain an indulgence which the pope had promised to every one who should on his knees climb up what is called Pilate's Stair, the Saxon monk was humbly crawling up the steps, which he was told had been miraculously transported to Rome from Jerusalem. But while he was engaged in this meritorious act, he thought he heard a voice of thunder which cried at the bottom of his heart, as at Wittemberg and Bologna, "The just shall live by faith." These words, which had already on two different occasions struck him like the voice of an angel of God, resounded loudly and incessantly within him. He rises up in amazement from the steps along which he was dragging his body. Horrified at himself, and ashamed to see how far superstition has abased him, he flies