In the above letter to Spenlein, Luther speaks of this monk’s relations to his brethren. Spenlein had previously been in the monastery at Wittenberg, where Luther had known him as a zealous monk, much troubled about the details of the Rule, and who even found it difficult to have to live with monks who were less exact in their observance. “When you were with us,” says the writer, “you were under the impression, or rather in the error in which I also was at one time held captive, and of which I have not even now completely rid myself (‘_nondum expugnavi_’), that it is necessary to perform good works until one is confident of being able to appear before God decked out, as it were, in deeds and merits, a thing which is utterly impossible.” Luther is desirous of hearing what Spenlein now thinks, “whether he has not at last grown sick of self-righteousness and learnt to breathe freely and trust in the righteousness of Christ.” “If, however, you believe firmly in the righteousness of Christ—and cursed be he who does not—then you will be able to bear with careless and erring brothers patiently and charitably; you will make their sins your own,” as Christ does with ours, “and in whatever good you do, in that you will allow them to participate ... be as one of them and bear with them. To think of flight and solitude, and to wish to be far away from those who we think are worse than ourselves, that is an unhappy righteousness.... On the contrary, if you are a lily and a rose of Christ, then remember that you must be among thorns, and beware of becoming yourself a thorn by impatience, rash judgment and secret pride.... If Christ had willed to live only amongst the good or to die only for His friends, for whom, pray, would He ever have died, or with whom would He have lived?” Spenlein was then no longer living in a monastery subject to the Rural Vicar. It is even probable that he had left Wittenberg and the new Vicar’s district on account of differences of opinion on the matter of Observance. He betook himself to the imperial city of Memmingen, presumably because a different spirit prevailed in the monastery there. This would seem to explain how Luther came to speak to this doubtless most worthy religious of “unhappy righteousness,” interpreting the state of the case in his own perverse fashion. Among the other letters despatched in 1516 that to Lang at Erfurt deserves special attention; in it Luther expresses himself in confidence, quite openly, on the disapproval of his work and of his theological standpoint which was showing itself at Wittenberg and at Erfurt.[203]