As yet he had not expressed or entertained a thought against the ordinances which enslaved every Christian to the priesthood and its power. He certainly showed, in his new doctrine of salvation, the way which leads the soul, by simple faith in the message of mercy sent to all alike, to its God and Saviour. But he had no idea of disputing that everyone should confess to the priests, receive from them absolution, and submit to all the penances and ordinances ordained by the Church. And in that very doctrine of salvation he knew that he was at one with Augustine, the most eminent teacher of the Western Church, whilst the opposite views, however dominant in point of fact, had never yet received any formal sanction of the Church. Zealously, indeed, he soon exposed many practical abuses and errors in the religious life of the Church. But hitherto these were only such as had been long before complained of and combated by others, and which the Church had never expressly declared as essential parts of her own system. He gave vent freely to his opinions about the superstitious worship of saints, about absurd legends, about the heathen practice of invoking the saints for temporal welfare or success. But praying to the saints to intercede for us with God he still justified against the heresy originating with Huss, and with fervour he invoked the Virgin from the pulpit. He was anxious that the priests and bishops should do their duty much better and more conscientiously than was the case, and that instead of troubling themselves about worldly matters, they should care for the good of souls, and feed their flocks with God's word. He saw in the office of bishop, from the difficulties and temptations it involved, an office fraught with danger, and one therefore that he did not wish for his Staupitz. But the Divine origin and Divine right of the hierarchical offices of pope, bishop, and priest, and the infallibility of the Church, thus governed, he held inviolably sacred. The Hussites who broke from her were to him 'sinful heretics.' Nay, at that time he used the very argument by which afterwards the Romish Church thought to crush the principles and claims of the Reformation, namely, that if we deny that power of the Church and Papacy, any man may equally say that he is filled with the Holy Ghost; everyone will claim to be his own master, and there will be as many Churches as heads. As yet he was only seeking to combat those abuses which were outside the spirit and teaching of the Catholic Church, when the scandals of the traffic in indulgences called him to the field of battle. And it was only when in this battle the Pope and the hierarchy sought to rob him of his evangelical doctrine of salvation, and of the joy and comfort he derived from the knowledge of redemption by Christ, that, from his stand on the Bible, he laid his hands upon the strongholds of this Churchdom. PART III. THE BREACH WITH ROME, UP TO THE DIET OF WORMS. 1517-21. CHAPTER I.