And inseparably connected with this is what Melancthon said about the Law and the Gospel. Luther himself always declared in later days, that the whole understanding of the truth of Christian salvation, as revealed by God, depends on a right perception of the relation of one to the other, and this very relation he explained, shortly before the beginning of his contest with the Church, upon the authority of St. Paul's Epistles. The Law is to him the epitome of God's demands with regard to will and works, which still the sinner cannot fulfil. The Gospel is the blessed offer and announcement of that forgiving mercy of God which is to be accepted in simple faith. By the Law says Luther, the sinner is judged, condemned, killed; he himself had to toil and disquiet himself under it, as though he were in the hands of a gaoler and executioner. The Gospel first lifts up those who are crushed, and makes them alive by the faith which the good message awakens in their hearts. But God works in both; in the one, a work which to Him, the God of love, would properly be strange; in the other, His own work of love, for which, however, he has first prepared the sinner by the former. Whilst Luther was prosecuting his labours in this path, he became acquainted in 1516 with the sermons of the pious, deep-thinking theologian Tauler, who died in 1361; and at the same time an old theological tract, written not long after Tauler, fell into his hands, to which he gave the name of 'German Theology.' Now for the first time, and in the person of their noblest representatives, he was confronted with the Christian and theological views which were commonly designated as the practical German mysticism of the middle ages. Here, instead of the value which the mediaeval Church, so addicted to externals, ascribed to outward acts and ordinances, he found the most devout absorption in the sentiments of real Christian religion. Instead of the barren, formal expositions and logical operations of the scholastic intellect, he found a striving and wrestling of the whole inner man, with all the mind and will, after direct communion and union with God, who Himself seeks to draw into this union the soul devoted to Him, and makes it become like to himself. Such a depth of contemplation and such fervour of a Christian mind Luther had not found even in an Augustine. He rejoiced to see this treasure written in his native German, and it certainly was the noblest German he had ever read. He felt himself marvellously impressed by this theology; he knew of no sermons, so he wrote to a friend, which agreed more faithfully with the gospel than those of Tauler. He published that tract--then not quite complete--in 1516, and again afterwards in 1518. It was the first publication from his hand. His further sermons and writings show how deeply he was imbued with its contents. The influences he here received had a lasting effect on the formation of his inner life and his theology.