It is clear that he was within his rights when he scourged the anti-Christian blasphemy and seductive wiles of the Jews, however much he may have been in the wrong in allowing himself to be carried away by fanaticism so far as to demand their actual persecution. The same holds good of many of the instances of his ungenerous and violent behaviour towards “heretics” in his own fold. As against the many and oftentimes very palpable defects of their position, he knew how to stand up for truth and logic, though his way of doing so was not always happy, nor his strictures untouched by his own theological errors. Nor can it be denied that he was in the right when he assailed the real, and, alas, all too many abuses of the olden Church. The lively sense that, at least in this respect, he was in the right may quite possibly have fed the inward fire of his animosity to Catholics, all the more owing to his being in the wrong in those new doctrines which were his principal concern. To the assurance, and the offensive manner in which he insisted on a reform, his visit to Rome, a distorted recollection of which ever remained with him, no doubt contributed. His mind was ever reverting to the dismal picture--by no means an altogether imaginary one--of the immorality prevailing in even the highest ecclesiastical circles of Rome. Rome’s unworthy treatment of the system of indulgences, which had afforded the occasion of his action in 1517, continued to supply new fuel for his indignation; to it he was fond of tracing back his whole undertaking. What increased his anger was the thought that it was this same Rome, whose ignoble practices both in the matter of indulgences and in other fields was notorious, who had called him to judgment. It is painful to the Catholic to have to confess that many of Luther’s complaints were by no means unfounded. He will, however, call to mind the better churchmen of those days, who, though indignant at the sad corruption then prevalent, never dreamt of apostasy, knowing as they did, that even far worse scandals could never justify a revolt against the institution appointed by Christ for the salvation of souls.