“I was forced to accept the degree of Doctor and to swear to preach and teach my cherished Scriptures truly and faithfully. But then the Papacy barred my way and sought to prevent me from teaching.”[235] “While I was looking for a blessing from Rome, there came instead a storm of thunder and lightning; I was made the lamb that fouled the water for the wolf; Tetzel escaped scot-free, but I was to be devoured.”[236] His falsehoods about Tetzel are scarcely believable. The latter was, so he says, such a criminal that he had even been condemned to death.[237] The Indulgence-preachers had declared (what they never thought of doing) “that it was not necessary to have remorse and sorrow in order to obtain the indulgence.”[238] In his old age Luther stated that Tetzel had even given Indulgences for future sins. It is true, however, that when he spoke “he had already become a myth to himself” (A. Hausrath). “Not only are the dates wrong but even the events themselves.... It is the same with the statement that Tetzel had sold Indulgences for sins not yet committed.... In Luther’s charges against Tetzel in the controversy on the Theses we hear nothing of this; only in the work ‘Wider Hans Worst’ (1541), written in his old age, does he make such an assertion.”[239] In this tract Luther does indeed make Tetzel teach that “there was no need of remorse, sorrow or repentance for sin, provided one bought an indulgence, or an indulgence-letter.” He adds: “And he [Tetzel] also sold for future sins.” (See vol. i., p. 342.) This untruth, clearly confuted as it was by facts, passed from Luther’s lips to those of his disciples. Mathesius in his first sermon on Luther seems to be drawing on the passage in “Wider Hans Worst” when he says, Tetzel had preached that he was able to forgive the biggest past “as well as future sins.”[240] Luther’s friend, Frederick Myconius, helped to spread the same falsehood throughout Germany by embodying it in his “_Historia Reformationis_” (1542),[241] whilst in Switzerland, Henry Bullinger, who also promoted it, expressly refers to “Wider Hans Worst” as his authority.[242] In this way Luther’s misrepresentations infected his whole circle, nor can we be surprised if in this, as in so many similar instances, the falsehood has held the field even to our own day.[243]