In a sermon of 1521, speaking of the “majority of the clergy,” he admits that most of them “work, pray and fast a great deal”; that they “sing, speak and preach of the law and lead men to many works”; that they fancy they will gain heaven by means of “pretty works,” though all in vain, so he thinks, owing to their lack of knowledge of the Evangel.[563] During the earlier period of his change of opinions he was quite convinced, that a pernicious self-righteousness (that of the “_iustitiarii_”) was rampant amongst both clergy and religious; not only in the houses of his own Congregation, but throughout the Church, a painstaking observance of the law and a scrupulous fulfilment of their duty by the clergy and monks constituted a danger to the true spirit of the Gospel, as he understood it. It was his polemics which then caused him to be obsessed with the idea, that the whole world had been seized upon by the self-righteous. It was his polemics again, which, later, made him regard the whole world as full of immoral clerics. The extravagance of Luther’s utterances in his fight against clerical celibacy might perhaps be regarded as due to the secluded life he had led at Wittenberg during the years he was a monk, which prevented him from knowing the true state of things. Experience gained by more extensive travel and intercourse with others might indeed have corrected his views. But, as a matter of fact, he was not altogether untravelled; besides visiting Rome and Southern Germany he had been to Heidelberg, Worms and Cologne. His stay at the latter city is particularly noteworthy, for there he was in the heart of the very region of which Wimpfeling had given so favourable an account. Can he, during the long journey on foot and in his conversations with his brother monks there, not have convinced himself, that the clergy residing in that city were by no means sunk in immorality and viciousness? His visit to Cologne coincided in all probability with the general Chapter which Staupitz had summoned there at the commencement of May, 1512. Luther only recalls incidentally having seen there the bodies of the Three Kings; having swallowed all the legends told him concerning them; and having drunk such wine as he had never drunk before.[564] _Two Concluding Pictures towards the History of Woman._ We may, in conclusion, give two pictures which cast a new and lurid light on what has gone before.