He was made very welcome by his brothers at Erfurt, at once took up his work as “Sententiarius” and, for about a year and a half, held forth on that celebrated textbook of theology, the Book of Sentences. He was also employed in important business for the monastery and accompanied Dr. Nathin on a mission in connection with the question of the statutes of the Congregation and the above-mentioned dispute. Both went to Halle to Adolf of Anhalt, Provost of Magdeburg Cathedral, for the purpose of defending the “observance in the vicariate.” The monk made an excellent impression on the Provost of the Cathedral.[48] The esteem which Luther enjoyed while he was at Erfurt exposes the futility of those old fables, once widely circulated and generally believed, that whilst there he had entered into a liaison with a girl and had declared that he intended to go as far as he could until the times permitted of his marrying in due form.[49] Of Luther’s lectures at that time some traces are to be found in a book in the Ratsschul-Library at Zwickau, these being the oldest specimens of his handwriting which we possess. They were made public in 1893 in volume ix. of the “Kritische Gesamtausgabe” of Luther’s works now appearing, and consist of detailed marginal notes to the Sentences of the Lombard of which the book in question is a printed copy.[50] The notes consist chiefly of subtle dialectic explanations or corrections of Peter Lombard and are quite in the theological style of the day. The vanity and audacity of the language used is frequently surprising; for instance, when the young master takes upon himself to speak of the “buffoonery” of contemporary theologians and philosophers, or of an ostensibly “almost heretical opinion” which he discovers in Venerable Duns Scotus; still more is this the case when he expresses his dislike of the traditional scholastic speculation and logic, alluding to the “rancid rules of the logicians,” to “those grubs, the philosophers,” to the “dregs of philosophy” and to that “putrid philosopher Aristotle.” It is worthy of note in connection with his mental growth that, on the very cover of the book, he, most independently, declares war on the “Sophists,” though we do not mean to imply that such a war was not justifiable from many points of view. As a torch, however, for the illuminating of theological truth he is not unwilling to use philosophy. Very strong, nay emphatic, is his appeal to the Word of God on a trivial and purely speculative question relating to the inner life of the Trinity. He says: “Though many highly esteemed teachers assert this, yet the fact remains that on their side they have not Holy Scripture, but merely human reasons: but I say that on my side I have the Written Word that the soul is the image of God, and therefore I say with the Apostle ‘Though an angel from Heaven, i.e. a Doctor of the Church, preach to you otherwise, let him be anathema.’”