Luther repeatedly said mass at Rome, taking care to do it with all the unction and dignity which the service seemed to him to require. But how grieved was the heart of the Saxon monk, at seeing the profane formality of the Roman priests in celebrating the sacrament of the altar. The priests, on their part, laughed at his simplicity. One day when he was officiating, he found that at the altar next to him seven masses had been read before he got through a single one. "Get on, get on," cried one of the priests to him; "make haste, and send Our Lady back her Son," making an impious allusion to the transubstantiation of the bread into the body and blood of Jesus Christ. On another occasion, Luther had only got as far as the Gospel, when the priest beside him had finished the whole mass. "On, on," said his companion; "make haste, make haste; are ye ever to have done?"[206] [206] Luth. Op. (W.) xix, von der Winkelmesse, Mathesius, 6. His astonishment was still greater when, in the dignitaries of the Church, he discovered the same thing that he had found in common priests. He had hoped better of them. It was fashionable at the papal court to attack Christianity, and, in order to pass for a complete gentleman, absolutely necessary to hold some erroneous or heretical opinion on the doctrines of the Church.[207] When Erasmus was at Rome, they had attempted to prove to him, by passages from Pliny, that there was no difference between the soul of man and that of the brutes;[208] and young courtiers of the pope maintained that the orthodox faith was merely the result of crafty inventions by some saints.[209] [207] "In quel tempo non pareva, fosse galantuomo, e buon cortegiano colui che de dogmi, della chiesa non aveva qualche opinion erronea ed heretica." (Carraciola, Vit. MS. Paul IV, quoted by Ranke.) [208] Burigny, Vie d'Erasme, i, 139. [209] "E medio Romanæ curiæ sectam juvenum ... qui asserebant, nostram fidem orthodoxam, potius quibusdam sanctorum astutiis subsistere." (Paul Canensius, Vita Pauli II.)