We find in Luther, from the beginning of his career, together with his rather gloomy ultra-spiritualism, another characteristic embracing a number of heterogeneous qualities, and which we can only describe as grotesque. Side by side with his love of extremes, we find an ultra-conservative regard for the text of Holy Scripture as he understood it, no matter how allegorical his pet interpretation might be. Again, the pious mysticism of his language scarcely agrees with the practical disregard he manifested for his profession. To this must be added, on the one hand, his tendency to spring from one subject to another, and the restlessness which permeates his theological statements, and on the other, his ponderous Scholasticism. Again we have the digressions in which he declaims on public events, and, besides, his incorrect and uncharitable criticisms; here he displays his utter want of consideration, his ignorance of the world and finally a tempestuous passion for freedom in all things, which renders him altogether callous to the vindication of their rights by others and makes him sigh over the countless “fetters of men.”[791] All this, taken in connection with his unusual talent, shows that Luther, though a real genius and a man of originality, was inclined to be hysterical. How curiously paradoxical his character was is revealed in his exaggerated manner of speech and his incessant recourse to antithesis. With an unbounded confidence in himself and all too well aware of the seduction exercised by his splendid talents, he yet does not scruple to warn others with the utmost seriousness against their “inclinations to arrogance, avarice and ambition,” and to represent pride as the cardinal sin.[792] He is keen to notice defects in earlier theologians, but an unhappy trait of his own blinds him to the fact that the Church, as the invincible guardian of truth, must soon rise up against him. He has already discovered a new way of salvation which is to tranquilise all, and yet he will be counted, not among those who feel sure of their salvation, but among the pious who are anxious and troubled about their state of grace, “who are still in fear lest they fall into wickedness, and, therefore, through fear, become more and more deeply steeped in humility in doing which they render God gracious to them.”[793] The assurance of salvation by faith alone, the _sola fides_ of a later date, he still protests against so vigorously, that, when he fancies he espies it in his opponents in any shape or form, he attacks them as “a pestilential crew,” who speak of the signs of grace and thereby, as he imagines, lull men into security. The last words show that the process of development is not yet ended. What we have considered above was merely the first of the two stages which he traversed before finally arriving at the conception of his chief doctrine.[794] CHAPTER VIII THE COMMENTARY ON THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS. FIRST DISPUTATIONS AND FIRST TRIUMPHS