views which they certainly did not hold. Johann Mensing, one of his then pupils at the University of Wittenberg, speaks of this in words to which little attention has hitherto been paid: “I may say,” he writes, “and have often heard it myself, that when Luther had something especially good or new to say in a sermon he was wont to attribute to other theologians the opposite opinion, and in spite of their having written and taught just the same, and of his very likely taking it from them himself, to represent it as a precious thing he had just discovered and of which others were ignorant; all this in order to make a name for himself, like Herostratus, who set fire to the temple of Diana.”[180] We may also mention here a remark of Hieronymus Emser. After saying that Luther’s sermons were not those of a cleric, he adds: “I may say with truth that I have never in all my life heard such an audacious preacher.”[181] These, it is true, are testimonies from the camp of Luther’s opponents, but some passages from his early sermons will show the tone which frequently prevails in them. Already in the Christmas sermons of 1515 Luther does not scruple to place himself, as it were, on the same footing with the prophets, wise men and those learned in the Scriptures, whose persecution Christ foretold, more particularly among the last of the three groups. Even then his view was unorthodox. “There are some,” he says, “who by the study of Holy Scripture form themselves into teachers and who are taught neither by men nor directly by God alone.” These are the learned in the Scriptures. “They exercise themselves in the knowledge of the truth by meditation and research. Thus they become able to interpret the Bible and to write for the instruction of others.” But such men are persecuted, he continues, and, as the Lord prophesied of the prophets and wise men and scribes that they would not be received, but attacked, so is it also with me. They murmur against my teaching, as I am aware, and oppose it. They reproach me with being in error because “I preach always of Christ as the hen under whose wings all who wish to be righteous must gather.” Thus his ideas with regard to righteousness must have been looked upon as importunate or exaggerated, and, by some, in all probability, as erroneous. He immediately launches out into an apology: “What I have said is this: We are not saved by all our righteousness, but it is the wings of the hen which protect us against the birds of prey, i.e. against the devil ... but, as it was with the Jews, who persecuted righteousness, so it is to-day. My adversaries do not know what righteousness is, they call their own fancies grace. They become birds of prey and pounce upon the chicks who hope for salvation through the mercy of our hen.”[182]