Only at the end of 1518 was his new teaching practically complete. At that time a new and final element had been added, the doctrine of absolute individual certainty of salvation by “Fiducial Faith.” This was regarded by Luther and his followers as the corner-stone of evangelical Christianity now once again recovered. At the commencement of 1519, we find it expressed in the new Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians (a new and enlarged edition of the earlier lectures), and in the new Commentary on the Psalms, which was printed simultaneously. Hence Luther’s whole process of development up to that time may be divided into two stages by the doctrine of the assurance of salvation; in the first, up to 1517, this essential element was still wanting: the doctrine of the necessity of belief in personal justification and future salvation does not appear, and for this reason Luther himself, later on, speaks of this time as a period of unstable, and in part despairing, search.[125] The second stage covers the years 1517-18, and commences with the Resolutions and the Augsburg trial, where we find the Professor gradually acquiring that absolute certainty of salvation to which he finally attained through an illumination which he was wont to regard as God’s own work.[126] In the next section we deal merely with the first stage, which we shall seek to elucidate from the psychological, theological and ethical standpoint. 2. Luther’s Commentary on the Psalms (1513-15). Dispute with the Observantines and the “Self-righteous” Presages of the storm which Luther was about to raise were visible in his first course of lectures on the Psalms given at Wittenberg. With regard to several particularly important parts of his work on the Psalms, it would be desirable to determine to what precise time during the period 1513-15 they belong; but this is a matter of considerable difficulty. The polemics they contain against the so-called “Saints by works,” the “Self-righteous” and the Observantines, the last of which must here be considered first, seem to belong to the earlier part of the period. In particular his animus against the Observantines, traces of which are plentiful, seems to have been of early growth. It also deserves more attention than has hitherto been bestowed on it, on account of its psychological and theological influence on Luther.[127] Under the Observantines Luther in his Commentary on the Psalms refers, openly or covertly, to the members of the German Augustinian Congregation, i.e. to those who adhered to that party to which, since his return from Rome, he had been opposed.