Similarly, “we could prove before the whole world that we have preached much more grandly and powerfully of good works than those very people who abuse us.”[1179] “Not one of the Fathers ever wrote anything remarkable or particularly good concerning matrimony.... In marriage they saw only evil luxury.... They fell into the ocean of sensuality and evil lusts.” “But [by my preaching] God with His Word and by His peculiar Grace has restored, before the Last Day, matrimony, secular authority and the preaching office to their rightful position, as He instituted and ordained them, in order that we might behold His own institutions in what hitherto had been but shams.”[1180] The Papists “know nothing about Holy Scripture, or what God is ... or what Baptism or the Sacrament.”[1181] But thanks to me “we now have the Gospel almost as pure and undefiled as the Apostles had it.”[1182] “Not for a thousand years has God bestowed such great gifts on any bishop as He has on me; for it is our duty to extol God’s gifts.”[1183] It is easy to understand what an impression such assurances and such appeals to the heavenly origin of his gifts must have made on enthusiastic pupils. Before allowing the speaker to continue we may perhaps set on record what one of his defenders alleges in Luther’s favour.[1184] “An energetic character to whom all pretence is hateful may surely speak quite freely and openly of his own merits and capabilities.” “Why should such a thing seem strange? Because now, among well-bred people, conventions demand that, even should we be conscious of good deeds and qualities in ourselves, we should nevertheless speak as though unaware of them.” Luther, however, was “certain that he had found the centre of all truth, and that he possessed it as his very own; he knew that by his ‘faith’ he had become something, viz. that which every man ought to become according to the will of God. This explains that self-reliance whereby he felt himself raised above those who either continued to withstand the truth, or else had not yet discovered it.” By such utterances he “only wished to explain why he feared nothing for his cause.” “Arrogance and self-conceit are sinful, but he who by God’s grace really is something must feel proud and self-reliant.” “The only question is whether it is a proof of pride that he was not altogether oblivious of this, and that he himself occasionally spoke of it.” “Christ and Paul knew what they were and openly proclaimed it. Just as Christ found Himself accused of arrogance, so Paul, too, felt that his boasting would be misunderstood.” Besides, “Luther, because the title prophet [which he had applied to himself] was open to misconstruction, writes elsewhere: ‘I do not say that I am a prophet.’”[1185]