On the following day Luther preached in the Church of the Augustinians. He spoke of good works: “One erects churches, another makes a pilgrimage to St. James of Compostella or to St. Peter’s, a third fasts and prays, wears a cowl or goes barefoot ... such works are of no avail and must be done away with. Mark these words: All our works are worthless. I am your justification, says Christ our Lord, I have destroyed the sins with which you are loaded; therefore believe only that it is I alone who have done this and you will be justified.” Luther fired invectives against the intolerable yoke of the Papacy and against the clergy who “slaughtered the sheep instead of leading them to pasture.” Himself he represents as persecuted by the would-be righteous, the Pope and his Bull, on account of his teaching which was directed against the false self-righteousness arising from works.[147] On the occasion of this sermon Luther, as his followers asserted, performed his first miracle, quelling a disturbance excited by the devil during the sermon in the overcrowded church; the interruption ceased when Luther had exorcised the fiend.[148] At Erfurt the enthusiasm for his cause became so great that on the day after his departure riots broke out, the so-called “Pfaffensturm” or priest-riot, which will be considered below (xiv. 5), together with other circumstances attending the introduction of the new Evangel at Erfurt. Luther was at the time silent concerning the occurrence.[149] Not long after his arrival at the Wartburg, referring to similar scenes of violence, he says, in a letter to Melanchthon: “The priests and monks raged against me like madmen when I was free; but now that I am a captive they are afraid and have restrained their insane action. They cannot endure the common people who now have them under their heel. Behold the hand of the Mighty One of Jacob, Who is working for us while we are silent, suffer and pray.”[150] Nevertheless, when all was over, he protested against the acts of violence committed at Erfurt in a letter to Spalatin, which was found in that courtier’s library.[151] On the journey through Thuringia he met the Prior of the Rheinhardsbrunn monastery, whom he exhorted as follows: “Say an Our Father for our Lord Christ that His Father may be gracious to Him. If He upholds His cause, then mine also is assured.”[152] Such was the strange manner in which he expressed his real inward feelings. Those who expected him to recant at Worms did not know their man.