By the year 1517, Luther had become a power in Wittenberg both as a preacher and as a teacher. He had become the preacher in the town church, from whose pulpit he delivered many sermons every week, taking infinite pains to make himself understood by the “raw Saxons.” He became a great preacher, and, like all great preachers, he denounced prevalent sins, and bewailed the low standard of morals set before the people by the higher ecclesiastical authorities; he said that religion was not an easy thing; that it did not consist in the decent performance of external ceremonies; that the sense of sin, the experience of the grace of God, and the fear of God and the overcoming of that fear through the love of God, were all continuous experiences. His exegetical lectures seemed like a rediscovery of the Holy Scriptures. Grave burghers of Wittenberg matriculated as students in order to hear them. The fame of the lecturer spread, and students from all parts of Germany crowded to the small remote University, until the Elector became proud of his seat of learning and of the man who had made it prosper. Such a man could not keep silent when he saw what he believed to be a grave source of moral evil approaching the people whose souls God had given him in charge; and this is how Luther came to be a Reformer. Up to this time he had been an obedient monk, doing diligently the work given him, highly esteemed by his superiors, fulfilling the expectations of his Vicar-General, and recognised by all as a quiet and eminently pious man. He had a strong, simple character, with nothing of the quixotic about him. Of course he saw the degradation of much of the religious life of the times, and had attended at least one meeting where those present discussed plans of reformation. He had then (at Leitzkau in 1512) declared that every true reformation must begin with individual men, that it must reveal itself in a regenerate heart aflame with faith kindled by the preaching of a pure gospel. § 6. The Indulgence-seller. What drew Luther from his retirement was an Indulgence proclaimed by Pope Leo X., farmed by Albert of Brandenburg, the Archbishop of Mainz, and preached by John Tetzel, a Dominican monk, who had been commissioned by Albert to sell for him the _Papal Letters_, as the Indulgence tickets were called. It had been announced that the money raised by the sales would be used to build the Basilica of St. Peter to be a tomb worthy of the great Apostle, who rested, it was said, in a Roman grave. The Indulgence-seller had usually a magnificent reception when he entered a German town. Frederick Mecum (Myconius), who was an eye-witness, thus describes the entrance of Tetzel into the town of Annaberg in Ducal Saxony: