Note 407 — Chapter IV

H. Böhmer, “Luther im Lichte der neueren Forschungen (1910), p. 53. “What made such a deep impression on him? [in the works of Augustine]. First, if we may believe the notes in his own hand in the copy he chiefly used (‘Werke,’ Weim. ed., vol. ix.), more particularly Augustine’s mystico-philosophical considerations on God, the world, the soul, the worthlessness of all earthly things, and felicity in God. These ideas, however, were hardly quite new to him. He had already met with them, for instance, in Bernard of Clairvaux and other mystics.” That they should have “impressed him so forcibly,” as Böhmer rightly remarks, was largely owing to the fact that his ear caught in them echoes of the ideas germinating in his own mind.