His energy there in the pulpit was as constant as his energy in the professor's chair. He glowed with zeal to unfold the one truth of salvation from its original source, the Scriptures, and to declare it and impress it on the hearts of his young pupils and his Wittenberg congregation, of educated and uneducated, of great and small. But he also wished to lay it before his students as a truth for life. With this object, he continued active with his pen, both in the Latin and the German languages. He was glad to turn to this from the questions of ecclesiastical controversy, which had formed the subject of his disputation, and of the writings referring to it. It was enough for him to show forth simply the merciful love of God and of the Saviour Christ, to point out the simple road of faith, and to destroy all trust in mere outward works, in one's own merit and virtue. Only to this extent, and because the authority pretended by the Church was opposed to this truth and this road to salvation, he was forced here also, and in face of his congregation, to wield the sword of his eloquence against that authority, and this he did with a zeal regardless of consequences. In all that he did, in his lectures as well as in his sermons, in his exposition of God's word in particular, as in his own polemics, he always threw his whole personality into the subject. We see him inwardly moved and often elated by the joyful message which he himself had learned, and had to announce to others, inspired by love to his fellow-Christians, whom he would wish to help save, and zealous even to anger for the cause of his Lord. At the same time, it cannot be denied that he was often carried away by the vehemence of his views, which saw at once in every opponent an uncompromising enemy to the truth; and that his naturally passionate temperament was often powerfully stirred, though even then his whole tone and demeanour was blended with outbursts of the noblest and the purest zeal.