Thus he requires that his unheard-of claims, albeit not attested by any display of miracles, should be accepted simply on his own assurance that his teaching was based on Holy Scripture. “There is no need for us to work wonders, for our teaching is already confirmed [by Holy Scripture] and is no new thing.”[443] Owing to the lack of any Divine attestation, Luther often preferred to describe his mission as an ordinary one. In this case he derives his vocation to teach from his degree of Doctor of Theology and from the authority given him by the authorities to preach. “I, Dr. Martin,” he says, for instance, speaking of his doctorate, “was called and compelled thereto; for I was forced to become a Doctor [of Holy Scripture] against my will and simply out of obedience.”[444] Elsewhere, however, he declares that the doctorate was by no means sufficient to enable one to bid defiance to the devil, or to equip a man in conscience for the task of preaching.[445] He was still further confirmed in this belief when he realised that he owed his doctorate to that very Church which he represented as the Kingdom of Antichrist and a mere Babylon. He himself stigmatised his degree as the “mark of the Beast,” and rejoiced that the excommunication had cancelled this papistical title. Neither could the want of a call be supplied by the authorisation of the Wittenberg Council, upon which at times Luther was wont to lay stress. He himself hesitated to allow that magistrates or Princes could give a call, particularly where the teaching of any of those thus appointed by the magistrates ran counter to his own. Even though their teaching agreed entirely with the views of the secular authorities, their mission was in his eyes quite invalid. He even had frequent cause to complain, that the Evangel was greatly hampered by the interference of the secular authorities and by their sending out as preachers those who had no real call, and were utterly unfitted for the office. After what has gone before, we can readily understand how Luther came to pass over in silence the question of his mission and to appeal directly to his preaching of the truth as the sign of his vocation; he does not seem to have perceived that the main point was to establish a criterion for the recognition of the truth, short of which anyone would be at liberty to set up his pet error as the “truth.” “The first,” though not the only condition, was, he declared, “that the preacher should have an office, be convinced that he was called and sent, and that what he did was done for the sake of his office”; seeing, however, that even the Papists fulfilled these conditions, Luther usually required in addition that the preachers “be certain they have God’s Word on their side.”[446]