In his Commentary on the Psalms he frequently at one and the same time rails at the “self-righteous” and “holy by works” and at the opposition party in his Order, so that it is not easy to distinguish against whom his attacks are directed. Already at this period he shows a certain tendency to under-estimate the value of Christian good works and to insist one-sidedly on the power and efficacy of faith and on the application of the merits of Christ. Most emphatically, as opposed to trust in good works and merits, does he insist on the grace of Christ, the “_nuda et sola misericordia Dei et benignitas gratuita_” which must be our support and stay.[137] His exhortations against works and human efforts sound as though intended to dissuade from any such, whether inward or outward, as though the merits of Christ and the righteousness which God gives us might thereby suffer.[138] Man’s interior efforts towards repentance by means of the contemplation of the misery and the consequences of sin, do not appeal to him. He is well aware that repentance consists in sorrow for and hatred of sin,[139] but he says that he himself has no personal experience of this kind of compunction.[140] He complains that so many turn to exterior works, they “follow their own inventions and make rules of their own at their choice; their ceremonies and the works they have devised are everything to them”: but to act thus is to set up “a new standard of righteousness instead of cultivating the spiritual things which God prescribes, namely, the Word of God, Grace and Salvation. These persons are in so much the greater error because it is a fine spiritual by-path, they are obstinate and stiff-necked, full of hidden pride in spite of the wonderful humility of which they make a show.” At last, carried away by his anger with what is mostly a phantom of his own creation, he exclaims: “Yes, they are given up to spiritual idolatry, a sin against the Holy Ghost for which there is no forgiveness.”[141]