Erfurt affords an example of how pious foundations of former ages had multiplied to an excessive and burdensome extent, a condition of things which was no longer any real advantage to the Church, and simply tended to arouse the jealousy of the laity and working man. There were more than three hundred vicariates (livings, or benefices), twenty-one parish churches or churches of the same standing, thirty chapels and six hospitals; the number of secular clergy was in proportion to the work entailed in serving the above, and there was an even greater number of monks and nuns. In every corner there were monastic establishments. Benedictines, the Scottish Brotherhood, the Canons Regular, Carthusians, Dominicans and Franciscans, Servites and Augustinians, all were represented. In addition to this were four or five convents of women. Erfurt perhaps possessed more ecclesiastical foundations and institutions than any other town in Germany, with the possible exception of Cologne and Nuremberg.[994] The rich possessions of the convents and churches at Erfurt were made the pretext for the religious innovations. The immunity they enjoyed from the burdens borne by the citizens was to be made an end of, the ecclesiastical property was to be handed over to the town, and the town itself was to be withdrawn from the temporal sway of the Archbishop of Mayence. When Luther, who was already under the ban, preached at Erfurt, on April 7, 1521, in the Church of the Augustinians (see above, p. 63), he represented the religious change, the way for which had already been paved, in the light of that evangelical freedom which his view of faith and works was to bring to the inhabitants of Erfurt.[995] “We must not build upon human laws or works, but have a real faith in Him Who destroys all sin.... Thus we don’t care a straw for man-made laws.” He derides the ecclesiastical laws, enacted by shepherds who destroyed the sheep and treated them “as butchers do on Easter Eve.” “Are all human laws to be ignored?” “I answer and say, that, where true Christian charity and faith prevails, everything that a man does is meritorious and each one may do as he pleases, provided always that he accounts his works as nothing; for they cannot save him.” “Christ’s work, which is not ours,” alone avails to save us. He extols the “_sola fides_” in persuasive and popular language, showing how it alone justifies and saves us. It was on this occasion that, unguardedly, he allowed himself to be carried away to say: “What matters it if we commit a fresh sin! so long as we do not despair but remember that Thou, O God, still livest.”[996]