"For convents to be useful they should be converted into schools, where children should be brought up to man's estate; instead of which they are houses where adult men become children, and remain so for ever." [53] Es ist nicht mehr denn eine einige Geistlichkeit, die da heilig ist, und heilig macht......L. Opp. xvii. 718. [Sidenote: LUTHER REJECTS MONACHISM.] We see that Luther would still have tolerated convents as places of education; but erelong his attacks against these establishments became more violent. The immorality and shameful practices that prevailed in the cloisters recurred forcibly to his thoughts. "I am resolved," wrote he to Spalatin on the 11th of November, "to deliver the young from the hellish fires of celibacy."[54] He now wrote a book against monastic vows, which he dedicated to his father:-- [54] Adolescentes liberare ex isto inferno cœlibatus. L. Opp. ii. 95. "Do you desire," said he in his dedication to the old man at Mansfeldt, "do you still desire to rescue me from a monastic life? You have the right, for you are still my father, and I am still your son. But that is no longer necessary: God has been beforehand with you, and has Himself delivered me by his power. What matters it whether I wear or lay aside the tonsure and the cowl? Is it the cowl--is it the tonsure--that makes the monk? _All things are yours_, says St. Paul, _and you are Christ's_. I do not belong to the cowl, but the cowl to me. I am a monk, and yet not a monk; I am a new creature, not of the pope, but of Jesus Christ. Christ, alone and without any go-between, is my bishop, my abbot, my prior, my lord, my father, and my master; and I know no other. What matters it to me if the pope should condemn me and put me to death? He cannot call me from the grave and kill me a second time......The great day is drawing near in which the kingdom of abominations shall be overthrown. Would to God that it were worth while for the pope to put us all to death! Our blood would cry out to heaven against him, and thus his condemnation would be hastened, and his end be near."[55] [55] Dass unser Blut möcht schreien, und dringen sein Gericht, dass sein bald ein Ende würde. L. Epp. ii. 105. The transformation had already been effected in Luther himself; he was no longer a monk. It was not outward circumstances, or earthly passions, or carnal precipitation that had wrought this change. There had been a struggle: at first Luther had taken the side of monachism; but truth also had gone down into the lists, and monachism had fallen before it. The victories that passion gains are ephemeral; those of truth are lasting and decisive. CHAPTER IV. Archbishop Albert--The Idol of Halle--Luther's Indignation--Alarm of the Court--Luther's Letter to the Archbishop--Albert's Reply--Joachim of Brandenburg. [Sidenote: ARCHBISHOP ALBERT.]