The characteristic position which Luther assumed in his early days with regard to penance and the motive of fear, must be more closely examined in order to complete the above account. The Monk frankly admits, not once but often, that inward contrition for sin was something foreign, almost unknown, to him. The statements he makes concerning his confessions weigh heavily in the scale when we come to consider the question of his spiritual life. In a passage of his Commentary on the Psalms where he would in the ordinary course have been obliged to speak of contrition he refrains from doing so on the plea that he has had no experience of it, and refers his hearers to the Confessions of St. Augustine.[766] He admits in his Commentary on Romans that he had struggled with himself (“_ita mecum pugnavi_”) because he could not believe that contrition and confession really cleansed him from sin, as he had always been conscious of sin, viz. concupiscence, still continuing within him.[767] In 1518 he writes: because the evil inclination to sin always remains in man “there are none, or at least very few, in the whole world who have perfect contrition, and I certainly admit this in my own case.”[768] According to the statements he made in later years concerning his fruitless attempts to awaken contrition within himself, and concerning his relations with his confessor, he must have taken the wrong road at an early period in his religious life; the more earnestly he sought to conceive contrition, he says, the greater was his trouble of mind and remorse of conscience. “I was unable to accept (‘_non poteram admittere_’) the absolutions and consolations of my confessors, for I thought to myself, who knows whether I can put faith in these words of comfort?”[769] This sentence occurs in the passage mentioned above, where he states how he had been tranquilised by the repeated exhortations of his preceptor to recall God’s command and cultivate the virtue of hope.[770] It is true he here ascribes the original cause of his trouble of mind to the teaching he had received “in the schools, which had such a bad effect on him that he could not endure to hear the word joy mentioned.” It is clear that he is here speaking with an ulterior purpose, namely, with a view to supporting his polemic against the Catholic Church (“_meo exemplo et periculo moniti discite!_”). But it is highly probable that his idea of concupiscence as sin tended to confuse his conception of contrition, and made confession and contrition painful to him. At a later date he opposed the Catholic doctrine of contrition on account of his aversion to the motive of fear of the judgments of God.