Tauler frequently speaks of the night of the soul, of the darkness in which the natural man must place himself on the way from death to life and through the cross to light; by this he means the self-humiliation which is pleasing to God, by which man fills himself with the sense of his own nothingness, and so prepares for the incoming of God into his innermost being. He often insists that the Creator, by means of the suffering and cruel inward desolation which He sends His elect, brings about that state of night, cross and death, to prove and refine the soul in order to prepare it for an intimate union with Himself. Such passages Luther referred to the states of fear and fright from which he so frequently suffered, possibly also to his want of joy in his vocation, and the state of unrest which, as he complains to his brother monk, George Leiffer, owing to his surrendering himself too much to his own excessive cleverness, pressed heavily upon him.[409] When, during the warfare he had to wage on behalf of his new doctrine, his inward unrest increased, and at times almost mastered him, he took refuge still more eagerly in the tenets of the mystic, striving to calm himself with the idea that his pangs of conscience and his mental anguish were merely a preparation for the strong, joyous faith which must spring up in his soul and those of his followers as a pledge of justification. His very doubts and difficulties became to him, with the help of his misunderstood mysticism, a sign that he was chosen for the highest things, and that God would lead him and all to peace through the new doctrine. It is in connection with his teaching concerning the night of the soul that he most frequently quotes Tauler at the commencement of his public struggle, whereas, before that, he had been wont to bring him into the field only against the so-called self-righteous, or against Scholasticism.[410] It was known at that time that he had become a pupil of Tauler, whom he frequently quoted, but few of his adversaries seem to have recognised the above-mentioned psychological connection. Dungersheim of Leipzig on one occasion, in 1519, rightly holds up before him the teaching and example of Tauler, and tells him he might have learnt from him how useful it was to accept from others warnings and criticisms; he gloried in having learnt from Tauler many more spiritual doctrines than from any other man, but he really only understood one thing well, namely, how to kick against the pricks to his own hurt.[411] Luther’s first mention of Tauler is not contained in his letter to Lang of the late summer of 1516,[412] as was hitherto thought, but in the Commentary on Romans, which was already finished in the summer of 1516.