Luther repeatedly represents the feeling of despair (under the name of “_humilitas_”) as not merely a means of recognising the imputation of God and therewith one’s salvation, but even as in itself the only means which can lead to salvation. He praises “humility” in mystical language as something man must struggle to attain and as the ideal of the devout. It occupies almost the same place in his mind as the “_sola fides_” at a later date. That “humility” is to him the actual factor which obtains the imputation of the merits of Christ and thus makes the soul righteous and wins for it eternal salvation, is apparent not only from the above, but also from the following utterances: “When we are convinced that we are unrighteous and without the fear of God, when, thus humbled, we acknowledge ourselves to be godless and foolish, then we deserve to be justified by Him.”[558] The fear of God works humility, but humility makes us fit for all [salvation]; we must merely resign ourselves to the admission that “there is nothing so righteous that it is not unrighteous, nothing so true that it is not a lie, nothing so pure that it is not filthy and profane before God.”[559] “Let us be sinners in humility and only desire to be justified by the mercy of God.” He alone who acknowledges his entire unrighteousness, who fears and beseeches, he alone, “as an abiding sinner,” opens for himself the door to salvation.[560] We must believe everything that is of Christ, he says, and only he does this who humbly bewails his own utter unrighteousness.[561] The mystic star of “humility” which has arisen to him he even describes as the “_vera fides_,” and makes the following inference: “As this is so, we must humble ourselves beyond bounds.” “When we have humbled ourselves wholly before God, then we have fulfilled righteousness, wholly and entirely (‘_totam perfectamque iustitiam_’); for what else does all Scripture teach but humility?”[562] Luther ascribes to “humility” all that he later ascribes to faith; “all Scripture,” which now teaches humility, will later teach that faith is the only power which saves. In that very Epistle to the Romans, which at a later date was to be the bulwark of his “_sola fides_,” he can as yet, in 1515 and 1516, find only “_sola humilitas_.” His frequent exhortations to self-annihilation and despair of one’s own efforts, exhortations taking the form of fulsome praise of one particular kind of humility, must be traced back to mystical influence and to his irritation against the “proud self-righteous.”