On all hands it was agreed and insisted that he should be made a
doctor of divinity. The costs were heavy, for simony was the order of
the day and the pope exacted high prices for all church promotions;
but the Elector paid the charges.
On the 18th of October, 1512, the degree was conferred. It was no
empty title to Luther. It gave him liberties and rights which his
enemies could not gainsay, and it laid on him obligations and duties
which he never forgot. The obedience to the canons and the hierarchy
which it exacted he afterward found inimical to Christ and the Gospel,
and, as in duty bound, he threw it off, with other swaddling-bands of
Popery. But there was in it the pledge "to devote his whole life to
the study, exposition and defence of the Holy Scriptures." This he
accepted, and ever referred to as his sacred charter and commission.
Nor was it without significance that the great bell of Wittenberg was
rung when proclamation of this investiture was made. As the ringing of
the bell on the old State-house when the Declaration of Independence
was passed proclaimed the coming liberties of the American colonies,
so this sounding of the great bell of Wittenberg when Luther was made
doctor of divinity proclaimed and heralded to the nations of the earth
the coming deliverance of the enslaved Church. God's chosen servant
had received his commission, and the better day was soon to dawn.
* * * * *
Henceforth Luther's labors and studies went forward with a new impulse
and inspiration. Hebrew and Greek were thoroughly mastered. The
Fathers of the Church, ancient and modern, were carefully read. The
systems of the Schoolmen, the Book of Sentences, the Commentaries, the
Decretals--everything relating to his department as a doctor of
theology--were examined, and brought to the test of Holy Scripture.
In his sermons, lectures, and disquisitions the results of these
incessant studies came out with a depth of penetration, a clearness of
statement, a simplicity of utterance, a devoutness of spirit, and a
convincing power of eloquence which, with the eminent sanctity of his
life, won for him unbounded praise. The common feeling was that the
earth did not contain another such a doctor and had not seen his equal
for many ages. Envy and jealousy themselves, those green-eyed monsters
which gather about the paths of great qualities and successes, seemed
for the time to be paralyzed before a brilliancy which rested on such
humility, conscientiousness, fidelity, and merit.