When he began his attack on religious vows, he supported his campaign by preference on the ostensible worthlessness of human works for obtaining merit in heaven; vows were to be rejected because the heart must not seek its stay in works,[287] and in his attacks on the celibacy of the clergy and religious, he again declared that he was attacking the “false saints” who intrench themselves behind the holiness of the works accomplished by them in a state superior to that of family life, but that faith makes all outward things free.[288] This prejudice against works is the principal feature in his polemics; for instance, he explains to King Henry VIII in a rejoinder directed against him that the enemy he was called upon to overcome was the pestilential doctrine of the necessity of appearing before God with works (“_velle per opera coram Deo agere_”), whereas works were good only in the eyes of man.[289] In season and out of season, he pours forth his rage against the works in the Papacy with such words as these: Away with masses, pilgrimages, Office in Choir, saint-worship, cowls, virginity, confraternities, rules, and such-like, away with “the lousy works”;[290] and so he preached to his very end in 1546.[291] It is not, however, sufficient to take as Luther’s starting-point his opposition to good works, though this always remains the chief feature in his doctrine. Further fresh light may be thrown on the enigmatical process of his inner change if we consider various influences which contributed to lead him to his new doctrine and to develop the same.