Protestant theology, following in his footsteps, went further. Many of its representatives, as we shall see, honestly expressed their serious doubts as to whether the Bible teaching of sanctification by grace—that process which, according to the scriptural descriptions just quoted, takes place in the very innermost being of man—is really expressed correctly by the Lutheran doctrine of the imputation of a purely extraneous righteousness. But even to-day there are others who still support Luther’s views in a slightly modified form, and who will have it that the scholastic and later teaching of the Church is a doctrine of mere “magic,” as though she made of saving grace a magical power, of which the agency is baptism or absolution. It is true that the process of sanctification as apprehended by faith is to a large extent involved in impenetrable mystery, but in Christianity there is much else which is mysterious. It is perhaps this mysterious element which gives offence and accounts for Catholic doctrine being described by so opprobrious a word as “magic.” Some Protestants of the same school are also given to praising Luther—in terms which are also, though in another sense, mysterious and obscure—for having from the very outset arrived at the great idea of grace peculiar to the Reformed theology, viz. at the “exaltation of religion above morality.” He was the first to ask: “How do I stand with regard to my God?” and who made the discovery, of which his Commentary on Romans is a forcible proof, that it is “man’s relation to God through faith which creates the purer atmosphere in which alone it is possible for morality to thrive.” He arrived, so we are told, at an apprehension of grace as “a merciful consideration of the abiding sinner,” and a true “consolation of conscience”; he at the same time recognised grace as an “educative and moulding energy,” which, as such, imparts “strength for sanctification.”[647] * * * * * To return to the exegetical side of the Commentary on Romans, the confusion in which the ideas are presented lends to much of it a stamp of great imperfection. There is a general lack of cautious, intelligent comprehension of the material, which sometimes is concerned with the tenderest questions of faith, sometimes with vital points of morals. The impartial observer sees so many traces of passion, irritation, storm and stress that he begins to ask himself whether the work has any real theological value.