We conclude with another passage from the “_Operationes_” in which, following Tauler, he gives expression to that favourite idea of his, which like a star of ill-omen presided at the rise of his new theology. Psalm xi., according to him, is intended to demonstrate the “righteousness by faith” against “the supporters of holiness by works and the deceptive appearance of human righteousness.” This is a forced interpretation going far beyond his own former exposition of the Psalm in question. “To-day,” he says—with an eye on the so-called holy-by-works, or _iustitiarii_—“there are many such seducers, as Johann Tauler also frequently warns us.”[444] Of course, here again, what he has in mind are the well-known admonitions of Tauler, to trust in God more than in our own acts of virtue, though he takes them quite wrongly as implying the worthlessness of works for salvation. A Protestant authority here meets us at least half-way: “Tauler certainly did not hold in so accentuated a fashion as Luther the antithesis between grace and works, for he allows that ‘good works’ bring a man forward on the way of salvation.”[445] Luther, since beginning his over-zealous and excited perusal of Tauler’s writings, presents to the calm observer the appearance of a man caught up in a dangerous whirl of overstrain. Even in the first months this whirl of a mystic world brought up from the depth of his soul all the accumulated sediment of anti-theological feeling and disgust with the state of the Church. The enthusiasm with which Luther speaks of the “Theologia Deutsch” and Tauler, shows, as a Protestant theologian has it, “that the mysticism of the late Middle Ages had intoxicated him.” “It is clear that we have here a turning-point in Luther’s theology.”[446] Of mighty importance for the future was his unfortunate choice, perhaps due to his state of mind, just in that period of storm and stress, to deliver lectures at the University on the Epistle to the Romans. Through his Commentary on this Epistle he set a seal upon his new views directed against the Church’s doctrine concerning grace, works and justification. CHAPTER VI THE CHANGE OF 1515 IN THE LIGHT OF THE COMMENTARY ON ROMANS (1515-16) 1. The New Publications