The ironical description which he gives in 1516 of those who pray with a good intention runs as follows:[724] “They form their good intention and make a virtue of necessity. But the devil laughs at them behind their backs and says: ‘put on your best clothes, Kitty, we are going to have company.’[725] They get up and go into the choir and say to themselves [under the impression that they are doing something praiseworthy]: ‘See, little owl, how fine you are, surely you are growing peacock’s feathers!’[726] But I know you are like the ass in the fable, otherwise I should have taken you for lions, you roar so; but though you have got into a lion’s skin, I know you by your ears! Soon, whilst they are praying, weariness comes over them, they count up the pages still to be gone through, and look at the number of verses to see if they are nearly at the end. Then they console themselves [for their tepidity] with their Scotus, who teaches that a virtual intention suffices and an actual intention is unnecessary. But the devil says to them: ‘excellent, quite right, be at peace and secure!’ Thus we become,” so the amusing description concludes, “a laughing-stock to our enemy.” He thinks he has found a way out of the dualism which formerly tormented him, and has become more independent. But what has he found to replace it? Merely fallacies, the inadequacy and inconsistency of which are hidden from him by his egotism and self-deception. “This good intention,” he says of the teaching of Scotus—which was perfectly correct, though liable to be misunderstood, as it certainly was by Luther—“is not so easy and under our own control, as Scotus would have it to our undoing; as though we possessed free will to make good intentions whenever we wish! That is a very dangerous and widespread fallacy, which leads us to carelessness and to snore in false security.” We must, on the contrary, he continues, prostrate in our cell, implore this intention of God’s mercy with all our might and wait for it, instead of presumptuously producing it from within ourselves; and in the same way after doing any good works we must not examine whether we have acted wickedly by deed or omission (“_neque quid mali fecimus aut omisimus_”), but with what interior fervour and gladness of heart we have performed the action.[727]