Luther ever had the highest opinion of the Epistle to the Galatians and of his own Commentaries on it. At a later date he says jokingly: “_Epistola ad Galatas_ is my Epistle to which I have plighted my troth; my own Katey von Bora.”[806] Melanchthon praises Luther’s Commentary on Galatians in a more serious fashion and says, it was in truth “the coil of Theseus by the aid of which we are enabled to wander through the labyrinth of biblical learning.”[807] Besides the shorter Commentary on Galatians published in 1519 there is also a much longer one compiled from notes of Luther’s later lectures, made public in 1535 by his pupil Rörer, together with a Preface by Luther himself.[808] Protestants consider it as “the most important literary product of his academic career” and, in fact, as “the most important of his theological works.”[809] In what follows we shall rely, as we said before, on the sources which afford the most accurate picture of his views, i.e. on both the shorter and the longer redaction of his Commentary on Galatians, especially where the latter repeats in still more forcible language views already contained in the former. It is well to know that, in his expositions of the Epistle to the Galatians, Luther’s antagonism to the Catholic doctrine of Works, Justification and Original Sin is carried further than in any other of his exegetical writings, until, indeed, it verges on the paradoxical. Nowhere else does the author so unhesitatingly read his own ideas into Holy Scripture, or turn his back so completely on the most venerable traditions of the Church. For instance, he shows how God by His grace was obliged to renew, from the root upwards, the tree of human nature, which had fallen and become rotten to the core, in order that it might bear fruit which was not mere poison and sin and such as to render it worthy to be cast into hell fire. Everything is made to depend upon that terrible doctrine of Divine Predestination, which inexorably condemns a portion of mankind to hell. It never occurred to him that this doctrine of a Predestination to hell was in conflict with God’s goodness and mercy, at least, he never had the least hesitation in advocating it. The only preparation for salvation is the predestination to heaven of the man upon whom God chooses to have mercy, seeing that man, on his part, is utterly unable to do anything (“_unica dispositio ad gratiam est æterna Dei electio_”). Man is justified by the faith, which is wrought by God’s gracious Word and Spirit, but this faith is really confidence in God’s pardoning grace through Christ (“_Sufficit Christus per fidem, ut sis iustus_”). In the printed Commentary on Galatians we already have Luther’s new doctrine of the absolute assurance of salvation by faith alone.