As a matter of fact the “state of perfection” only means, that, religious, by taking upon themselves, publicly and before the Church, the three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, bind themselves to strive after perfection along this path as one leading most surely to the goal; it doesn’t imply that they are already in possession of perfection, still less that they alone possess it. By undertaking to follow all their life a Rule approved by the Church, under the guidance of Superiors appointed by the Church, they form a “state” or corporation of which perfection is the aim, and, in this sense alone, are said to belong to the “state of perfection.” In addition, it was always believed that equal, in fact the highest, perfection might be attained to in any state of life. Though the difficulties to be encountered in the worldly state were regarded as greater, yet the conquest they involved was looked upon as the fruit of an even greater love of God, the victory as more splendid, and the degree of perfection attained as so much the more exalted. It is the love of God which, according to the constant teaching of the Church, constitutes the essence of perfection. The most perfect Christian is he who fulfils the law of charity most perfectly, and this--notwithstanding whatever Luther may say--according to what has ever been the teaching of the Church, the ordinary Christian may quite well do in his everyday calling, and in the married as much as in the religious state. Even should the religious follow the severest of Rules, yet if he does not make use of the more abundant means of perfection at his command but lives in tepidity, then the ordinary Christian approaches more closely than he to the ideal standard of life if only he fulfils his duties in the home with greater love of God. The Bavarian Franciscan, Caspar Schatzgeyer, Luther’s contemporary, is right when he says in his work “_Scrutinium divinæ scripturæ_”: “We do not set up a twofold standard of perfection, one for people in the world and another for the religious. For all Christians there is but one order, one mode of worshipping God, one evangelical perfection.... But we do say this, that in cloistral life the attainment of perfection is easier, though a Christian living in the world may excel all religious in perfection.”[402] For--such is the ground he gives in a German work--“it may well happen that in the ordinary Christian state a man runs so hotly and eagerly towards God as to outstrip all religious in all the essentials of Christian perfection, just as a sculptor may with a blunt chisel produce a masterpiece far superior to that carved by an unskilful apprentice even with the best and sharpest of tools.”[403] This may suffice to elucidate the question of the Catholic ideal of life in respect of Luther’s statements, a question much debated in recent controversies but not always set in as clear a light as it deserved.