cloister. His friends "instinctively felt he
was not qualified or fitted for the sublime vocation to which he
aspired, and they accordingly used all their powers to dissuade him from
the course he had chosen. All their efforts were fruitless, and from the
gayety and frolic of the banquet" which he had given his fellow-students
as a farewell party "he went to the monastery." He was so reckless that
he took this step even without the consent of his parents. "He knew
little about the ways of God, and was not well informed of the gravity
and responsibilities of the step he was taking." "He was not called by
God to conventual life; . . . he was driven by despair, rather than the
love of higher perfection, into a religious career." Catholics feel so
sure that they have a case against Luther that in all seriousness they
ask Protestants the question: Did he act honestly when he knelt before
the prior asking to be received into the order?

Luther has later in life given various reasons for entering the
monastery. His case was not simple, but complex. One reason, however,
which he has assigned is the severe bringing up which he had at his
home. Hausrath is satisfied with this one reason, and many Catholic
writers adopt his view. But this remark of Luther is evidently
misapplied if it is made to mean that Luther sought ease, comfort,
leniency in the cloister as a relief from the hard life which he had
been leading. Luther had grasped the fundamental idea in monkery quite
well: flight from the secular life as a means to become exceptionally
holy. He sought quiet for meditation and devotion, but no physical ease
and earthly comforts. He knew of the rigors of cloister-life. He
willingly bowed to "the gentle yoke of Christ"--thus ran the monkish
ritual--which the life of an eremite among eremites was to impose on
him. His hard life in the days of his boyhood and youth had been an
unconscious preparation for this life. He had been strictly trained to
fear God and keep His commandments. The holy life of the saints had been
held up to him as far back as he could remember as the marvel of
Christian perfection. Home and Church had cooperated in deepening the
impressions of the sanctity of the monkish life in him. When he saw the
emaciated Duke of Anhalt in monk's garb with his beggar's wallet on his
back tottering through the streets of Magdeburg, and everybody held his
breath at this magnificent spectacle of advanced Christianity, and then