This vein of true mysticism remained sealed to Luther. By attempting to create a theology of his own with the fantastic notions which he read into Tauler, he fell into the mistake against which Thomas of Aquin had already sounded a warning note in his “_Summa Theologica_.” Without a safe guiding star many minds are led astray by the attraction of the extraordinary, by the delusions of an excited fancy or the influence of disordered inclinations, and consider that to be the work of Divine grace which is merely deception, as experience shows.[427] As an expression of the spiritual turmoil going on in Luther, we may quote a passage from a sermon of January, 1517. Speaking of the gifts of the three kings he says: “the pure and choice myrrh is the abnegation with which we must be ready to return to absolute nothingness, to the state before creation; every longing for God is there relinquished (!), and likewise the desire for things outside of God; one thing only is desired: to be led according to His good pleasure back to the starting-point, i.e. to nothingness. Ah, yes, just as before God called us into existence we were nothing, desired nothing, and existed only in the mind of God, so we must return to that point, to know nothing, to desire nothing, to be nothing. That is a short way, the way of the cross, by which we may most speedily arrive at life.”[428] Whether a sermon was the right place for such, at best purely incomprehensible, an outburst, is doubtful. Luther, the idealist, was then disposed to pay but little attention to such practical considerations. In the eyes of many of his pupils and friends, however, mystical discourses of this sort may have lent him the appearance of a pious, spiritually minded man. With regard to the “way of the cross” and the “theology of the cross,” which he began to teach as soon as he had lost himself in the maze of mysticism, he explains himself more clearly in the Disputations which he organised at Wittenberg, and which will be dealt with below.[429] 2. Effect of Mysticism on Luther The study of mysticism was not altogether disadvantageous to Luther, for it proved of use to him in various ways.