On another occasion, after a no less forcible outburst against Rome, he demands the abolition of “false piety”: This so-called piety must no longer be permitted, as though it were merely a weakness; but in Rome they do not trouble about doing away with it, there is there nothing but the freedom of the flesh; “almost all are wanting in charity.” “I fear that in these days we are all on the road to utter destruction.”[595] We must listen, he says—alluding to the formalism which he thinks is apparent everywhere—to the “inward word,” which often speaks to us quite differently from the injunctions to which we are accustomed. “The wisdom of fools always looks more to the work than to the word; it thinks itself able to gauge the meaning and value of the word from the value or worthlessness of the deeds”; what we should do is the contrary; the precious, inestimable word must always resound in our hearts and direct all our outward actions.[596] The “spirit of the believer is subject to no one,” “the spirit is free as regards all things”; “all exterior things are free to those who are in the spirit.” “The bondage [of charity] is the highest liberty.”[597] Such words form a quite obvious preliminary to the “Evangelical freedom” which he was afterwards to vindicate. He thus gives a much wider application to the ideas he had met with in Tauler than was in the mind of that pious mystic. Tauler writes: “I tell you that you must not submit your inner man to anyone, but to God only. But your exterior man you must submit in a true and real humility to God and to all creatures.”[598] Luther says what on the surface seems quite similar: the Christian is free and master of all things and is subject to no one (by faith), and yet at the same time a willing servant of all and subject to all (by charity).[599] Yet, both in the Commentary on Romans and in the works which were soon to follow, “the willing servant” is more and more ousted by false ideas of independence, so that a danger arises of only the “free master of all things” remaining. In the Commentary on Romans all exterior submission to the Church is, in principle, menaced by a liberty which, appealing to the inward experience of the Word and a deeper conception of religion, seeks to overstep all barriers. The confused ideas for which he was beholden to his pseudo-mysticism were in great part the cause of this and of other errors. 9. The Mystic in the Commentary on Romans Since the appearance in print of Luther’s Commentary on Romans it has been possible to perceive more clearly the ominous power which false mysticism had gained over the young author.