He was agitated, and, at the same time, gloomy, shunning the silly and coarse conversation of the monks, who, unable to comprehend the tempests of his soul, regarded him with astonishment,[161] and reproached him for his gloom and taciturnity. It is told by Cochlœus, that one day, when they were saying mass in the chapel, Luther had come with his sighs, and stood amid the friars in sadness and anguish. The priest had already prostrated himself, the incense had been placed on the altar, the _Gloria_ had been chanted, and they were reading the Gospel, when the poor monk, no longer able to contain his agony, exclaimed, in a piercing tone, while throwing himself on his knees, "Not I! not I!"[162] Every one was in amazement, and the service was for a moment interrupted. Perhaps Luther thought he had heard himself reproached with something of which he knew he was innocent; perhaps he meant to express his unworthiness to be one of those to whom the death of Christ brought eternal life. Cochlœus says that they were reading the passage of Scripture which tells of the dumb man out of whom Christ expelled a demon. If this account is correct, Luther's cry might have a reference to this circumstance. He might mean to intimate that though dumb like the man, it was owing to another cause than the possession of a demon. In fact, Cochlœus informs us that the friars sometimes attributed the agonies of their brother to occult commerce with the devil,[163] and he himself is of the same opinion. [161] "Visus est fratribus non nihil singularitatis habere." (Cochlœus, i.) The friars thought him not a little eccentric. [162] "Cum, ... repente ceciderit vociferans: 'Non sum! non sum!'" (Ibid.) When he suddenly fell down, crying out, "Not I! not I." [163] "Ex occulto aliquo cum dæmone commercio." (Cochlœus, i.) From some hidden intercourse with a demon. A tender conscience led Luther to regard the smallest fault as a great sin. No sooner had he discovered it than he strove to expiate it by the severest mortifications. This, however, had no other effect than to convince him of the utter inefficacy of all human remedies. "I tormented myself to death," says he, "in order to procure peace with God to my troubled heart and agitated conscience; but, surrounded with fearful darkness, I nowhere found it." The acts of monastic holiness which lulled so many consciences, and to which he himself had recourse in his agony, soon appeared to Luther only the fallacious cures of an empirical and quack religion. "At the time when I was a monk, if I felt some temptation assail me, I am lost! said I to myself, and immediately resorted to a thousand methods, in order to suppress the cries of my heart. I confessed every day, but that did me no good. Thus oppressed with sadness, I was tormented by a multiplicity of thoughts. 'Look!' exclaimed I, 'there you are still envious, impatient, passionate! It is of no use then, for you, O wretch, to have entered this sacred order.'"