Upon these questions and proceedings Luther expressed his opinion early in August to Melancthon, who was keenly excited about them, but on many points was unsettled in his mind. The project of restoring at Wittenberg the celebration of the Lord's Supper, as originally instituted, with the cup, met with Luther's full approval; for the tyranny which the Christian congregations had hitherto endured in this respect had been acknowledged there, and there was a general wish to resist it. He declared further, with regard to private masses, that he was resolved never to say any more while he lived. But compulsion he would not dream of: if any who still suffered from this tyranny partook of the Communion without the cup, no man durst account it to him as a sin. As for the troubles of the monks and nuns, under their self-imposed vows, his sympathy for them was no less acute than that of his friends at Wittenberg, but the arguments by which they sought to help them to liberty he did not consider sound. He gave now this subject a more searching and deeper consideration, and shortly addressed a series of theses on celibacy to the bishops and deacons of the church at Wittenberg. He attacked vows in general, and assailed them at the very root. Inasmuch, moreover, as the vows of chastity, he said, and of other monastic observances were commonly made to God with the intent and purpose of working out one's own salvation by one's own works and righteousness, these were not vows in accordance with the will of God, but denials of the faith. And even though a man should have made a vow in a spirit of piety, he placed himself at all events, by his own will and act, under a restraint and yoke at variance with the gospel and the liberty which faith in Christ bestows. Luther went still farther, and declared that the chastity enjoined upon the monk was only possible if he possessed the special gift of continence spoken of by St. Paul. How dare a man make a vow to God, which God must first endue him with the power to keep? A man, therefore, in vowing chastity, makes a vow which it is not really possible for him to keep, whilst true chastity is made possible for him by God in the married life which he condemns. These vows, accordingly, are radically vicious and displeasing to God, and cease to be binding on a Christian who has been made free in faith, and has recognised the true will of God. Personally concerned as Luther was, as an Augustine monk himself, in these questions which he discussed, he treated the liberty, which inwardly he knew himself to possess, as quietly and coolly as possible. On receiving the news from Wittenberg, he wrote to Spalatin, 'Good Heaven! our Wittenbergers will allow even the monks to have wives, but they shall not force me to take one.' And he asks Melancthon jokingly, if he was going to revenge himself upon him for having helped him to get a wife; he would know well enough how to guard against that.