Certain of Luther’s remarks on his practical experience call for consideration. Such is the following: “Everywhere in the Church great relapses after confession are now noticeable. People are confident that they are justified instead of first awaiting justification, and therefore the devil has an easy task with such false assurance of safety, and overthrows men. All this is due to making righteousness consist in works. But whoever thinks like a Christian can find this out for himself.”[518] He gives the following exhortation with great emphasis and almost as though he had made an astounding discovery: “Whoever goes to confession, let him not believe that he gets rid of his burden and can then live in peace.”[519] His new doctrine of sin, which he discloses in the same passage, lies at the bottom of this; the baptised and the absolved must on no account forthwith consider themselves free from sin, on the contrary “they must not fancy themselves sure of the righteousness they have obtained and allow their hands to drop listlessly as though they were not conscious of any sin, for they have yet to fight against it and exterminate it with sighs and tears, with sadness and effort.”[520] “Sin, therefore, still remains in the spiritual man for his exercise in the life of grace, for the humbling of his pride, for the driving back of his presumption; whoever does not exert himself zealously in the struggle against it, is in danger of being condemned even though he cease to sin any more (‘_sine dubio habet, unde damnetur_’). We must carry on a war with our desires, for they are culpable (‘_culpa_’), they are really sins and render us worthy of damnation; only the mercy of God does not impute them to us (‘_imputare_’) when we fight manfully against them, calling upon God’s grace.”[521] There are few passages in the Commentary where his false conception of the entire corruption of human nature by original sin and concupiscence comes out so plainly as in the words just quoted. We see here too how this conception leads him to the denial of all liberty for doing what is good, and to the idea of imputation. We can well understand that he needed St. Augustine to assist him to cover all this. And yet, as though to emphasise his own devious course, he quotes, among other passages, one in which Augustine confutes the view of any sin being present in man simply by reason of concupiscence.