At Leitzkau the Augustinians possessed rights over the large fisheries and Luther was intimate with the local Cistercian Provost. When the Provost, George Maskov, asked him how he should behave towards a brother monk who had sinned grievously, seeing that he himself was a still greater offender, Luther replied, saying, among other things, that he ought certainly to punish him, for, as a rule, it was necessary to exercise discipline towards those who are better than ourselves. “We are all children of Adam, therefore we do the works of Adam.” But “our authority is not ours, but God’s.” Perhaps God desired to help that brother on the road of sin, namely, through shame. “It is God Who does all this.”[694] And in another letter he says to the Provost:[695] “If many of your subjects are on the way to moral ruin, yet you must not for that reason disquiet them all. It is better quietly to save a few.... Let the cockel grow together with the wheat ... for it is better to bear with the many for the sake of the few than to ruin the few on account of the many.” In a mystical vein he says: “Pray for me, for my life is daily drawing nearer to hell (i.e. the lower world, ‘_inferno appropinquavit_,’ Ps. lxxxvii. 4), as I also become worse and more wretched day by day.”[696] Bodily infirmities were then pressing hard upon him in consequence of his many labours and spiritual trials, while much of his time was swallowed up by his lectures which were still in progress. 2. The Monk of Liberal Views and Independent Action With regard to his own life as a religious and his conception of his calling Luther was, at the time of the crisis, still far removed from the position which he took up later, though we find already in the Commentary on Romans views which eventually could not fail to place him in opposition to the religious state. What still bound him to the religious life was, above all, the ideal of humility, which his mystical ideas had developed. He also recognised fully the binding nature of his vows. According to him man cannot steep himself sufficiently in his essential nothingness before the Eternal God, and vows are an expression of such submission to the Supreme Being.