Matthias Sittardus, from the little town of Sittard in the Duchy of Jülich, a zealous and energetic worker at Aachen, wrote as follows of Luther’s exhortations quoted above: “The result is that men say, What does sin matter? Christ took it away on the cross; the evil that I do—for I must sin and cannot avoid it—He is ready to bear; He will answer for it and refrain from imputing it to me; I have only to believe and off it goes like a flash. Good works have actually become a reproach and are exposed to contempt and abuse.”[582]—Elsewhere he laments, that “there is much glorying in and boasting of faith,” but of “good works and actions little” is seen.[583] Alluding to man’s unfreedom for doing what is good, as advocated by Luther, Johann Mensing, a scholarly and busy popular writer, says: “They [the preachers] call God a sinner and maintain that God does all our sins in us. And when they have sinned most grievously they argue that such was God’s Will, and that they could do nothing but by God’s Will. They look upon the treachery of Judas, the adultery of David and Peter’s denial as being simply the work of God, just as much as the best of good deeds.”[584] The words quoted above: “Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe more boldly still,” are Luther’s own. The saying, which must not be taken apart from the context, was employed by Luther in a letter to Melanchthon, on August 1, 1521.[585] The writer, who was then at the Wartburg, was engaged in a “heated struggle”[586] on the question of the Church, and on religious vows, for the setting aside of which he was seeking a ground. At the Wartburg he was, on his own confession, a prey to “temptations and sins,”[587] though in this he only saw the proof that his Evangel would triumph over the devil. The letter is the product of a state of mind, restless, gloomy and exalted, and culminates in a prophetic utterance concerning God’s approaching visitation of Germany on account of its persecution of the Evangel. The passage which at present interests us, taken together with the context, runs thus: