From Paul’s words he goes on to infer that “good works done outside of grace are sins, in the sense that they may be called dead works. For if, without the Blood of Christ, conscience is morally impure, it can only perform what corresponds with its nature, namely, what is impure....” Folio 117´: “It follows that a good, pure, quiet, happy conscience can only be the result of faith in the forgiveness of sins. But this is founded only on the Word of God, which assures us that Christ’s Blood was shed unto the remission of sins.” Folio 118: “It follows that those who contemplate the sufferings of Christ only from compassion, or from some other reason than in order to attain to faith, contemplate them to little purpose, and in a heathenish manner.... The more frequently we look upon the Blood of Christ the more firmly must we believe that it was shed for our own sins; for this is ‘to drink and eat spiritually,’ to grow strong through this faith in Christ and to become incorporated in Him.” CHAPTER VII SOME PARTICULARS WITH REGARD TO THE OUTWARD CIRCUMSTANCES AND INWARD LIFE OF LUTHER AT THE TIME OF THE CRISIS 1. Luther as Superior of eleven Augustinian Houses HIS election as Rural Vicar, which took place at the convocation of the Order at Gotha (on April 29, 1515), had raised Luther to a position of great importance in his Congregation. He had, within a short time, risen from being Sub-Prior and Regent of the Wittenberg House of Studies to be the chief dignitary in the Congregation after Staupitz, the Vicar-General. The office was conferred on him, as was customary, for a period of three years, i.e. till May, 1518. Of the eleven monasteries which formed the District the two most important and influential were Erfurt and Wittenberg. The others were Dresden, Herzberg, Gotha, Langensalza, Nordhausen, Sangershausen, Magdeburg and Neustadt on the Orla, to which Eisleben was added, when, in July, 1515, Staupitz and Luther presided at the opening of a new monastery there. As Staupitz was frequently absent from the District, the demands made on the activity of the new Superior were all the greater. At this time too his professorial Bible studies and his efforts to clear up the confusion and difficulties existing in his mind must have kept him fully occupied. In addition to this there was the dissension within the Order itself on the question of observance and of the constitution, a dispute which required for its settlement a man filled with zeal for the spiritual welfare of the monasteries, and one thoroughly devoted to the exalted traditional aims of the Congregation.