But this great doctrine of a salvation which emanates from God and not from man, was not only the power of God to save the soul of Luther, it also became the power of God to reform the Church; a powerful weapon which the apostles wielded, a weapon too long neglected, but at length brought forth in its primitive lustre from the arsenal of the mighty God. At the moment when Luther stood up in Rome, all moved and thrilling with the words which Paul had addressed fifteen centuries before to the inhabitants of this metropolis, truth, till then a fettered captive within the Church, rose up also, never again to fall. Here we must let Luther speak for himself. "Although I was a holy and irreproachable monk, my conscience was full of trouble and anguish. I could not bear the words, 'Justice of God.' I loved not the just and holy God who punishes sinners. I was filled with secret rage against him and hated him, because, not satisfied with terrifying us, his miserable creatures, already lost by original sin, with his law and the miseries of life, he still further increased our torment by the gospel.... But when, by the Spirit of God, I comprehended these words; when I learned how the sinner's justification proceeds from the pure mercy of the Lord by means of faith,[218] then I felt myself revive like a new man, and entered at open doors into the very paradise of God.[219] From that time, also, I beheld the precious sacred volume with new eyes. I went over all the Bible, and collected a great number of passages which taught me what the work of God was. And as I had previously, with all my heart, hated the words, 'Justice of God,' so from that time I began to esteem and love them, as words most sweet and most consoling. In truth, these words were to me the true gate of paradise." [218] "Qua vos Deus misericors justificat per fidem ..." (Luth. Op. (L.) in Præf.) By which a merciful God justifies you through faith. [219] "Hic me prorsus renatum esse sensi, et apertis portis in ipsum paradisum intrasse." (Ibid.) Here I felt that I was completely born again, and entered by open doors into paradise itself.