Another work which he finished within those quiet walls treated of the Sacrifice of the Mass. His thoughts early turned with aversion from this centre of Catholic worship; indeed, he seemed bent on robbing the Church of the very pearl of her worship. He appears to have said Mass for the last time on his way to Augsburg to meet Cardinal Cajetan. In the Wartburg he refused to have anything to do with the “Mass priest” living there. On August 1, 1521, he wrote to Melanchthon, that the renewal of Christ’s institution of the celebration of the Supper, proposed by his friends at Wittenberg, agreed entirely with the plans he had in view when he should return, and that from that time forward he would never again say a private Mass.[216] The work just mentioned, which appeared in 1522, is entitled, “On the Abuse of the Mass.” He dedicated it in the Preface “to the Augustinians of Wittenberg,” his dear brethren, because he had heard in his solitude, so he says, “that they had been the first to commence setting aside the abuse of Masses in their assembly [congregation].”[217] He is desirous of fortifying their “consciences” against the Mass, because he is anxious lest “all should not have the same constancy, and good conscience, in the undertaking of so great and notable a work.” In the same way as he in his struggle had attained to assurance of conscience, so they, too, must act “with a like conscience, faith and trust, and look on the opinion of the whole world as nothing but chaff and straw, knowing that we are sent to a death-struggle against the devil and all his might, yea, against the judgment of God, and, like Jacob (Gen. xxxii. 28), can only overcome by our strength of faith.” To despise the protests of the world was not so difficult, but to pay “no heed to the devil and the solemn judgment of God” was a harder task. It would seem that some of the Augustinians were not capable of this, and had become uneasy concerning the innovations. He is thereupon at pains to assure them that he is an expert in the matter; he declares that he has learnt from experience how “our conscience makes us out to be sinners in God’s sight and deserving of eternal reprobation, unless it is well preserved and protected at every point by the holy, strong and veracious Word of God.”[218] This “stronghold” he would fain open to them by demonstrating from the Word of God the horrors of the Sacrifice of the Mass. Hence he begins by overthrowing, with incredible determination, everything that might be advanced against him and in favour of the Mass in general by the “doctrine and discipline of the Church, the teaching of the Fathers, immemorial custom and usage,” commandments of men and theological faculties, Saints, Fathers, or, in fine, the “Pope and his Gomorrhas.” The utter unrestraint of his language here and there is only matched by the extravagance of his ideas and interpretation of the Bible.