Far more serious than such misrepresenting of individuals was the injustice he did to the whole ecclesiastical life of the Middle Ages, which he would fain have made out to have entirely fallen away from the true standard of Christian faith and practice. Seen through his new glasses, mediæval life was distorted beyond all recognition. Walter Köhler gives a warning which is to the point: “Protestant historians must beware of looking at the Middle Ages from Luther’s standpoint.”[274] In particular was mediæval Scholasticism selected by Luther and his friends as a butt for attack and misrepresentation. Bucer admits in a letter to Bullinger how far they had gone in this respect: “We have treated all the Schoolmen in such a way as to shock many good and worthy men, who see that we have not read their works but are merely anxious to slander them out of prudence.”[275] * * * * * However desirous we may be of crediting the later Luther with good faith in his distorted views of Catholic practices and doctrines, still he frequently goes so far in this respect as to make it extremely difficult to believe that his misrepresentations were based on mere error or actual conviction. One would have thought that he would at least have noticed the blatant contrast between his insinuations and the text of the Breviary and Missal--books with which he was thoroughly conversant--and even of the rule of his Order. As a monk and priest he was perfectly familiar with them; only at the cost of a violent wrench could he have passed from this so different theological world to think as he ultimately did of the doctrines of Catholicism. Döllinger was quite right when he wrote: “As a controversialist Luther combined undeniably dialectic and rhetorical talent with a degree of unscrupulousness such as is rarely met with in this domain. One of his most ordinary methods was to distort a doctrine or institution into a mere caricature of itself, and then, forgetful of the fact that what he was fighting was a simple creation of his fancy, to launch out into righteous abuse of it.... So soon as he touches a theological question, he confuses it, often of set purpose, and as for the reasons of his opponents, they are mutilated and distorted out of all recognition.”[276] The untruthfulness of his polemics is peculiarly apparent in his attack on free-will. It is impossible, even with the best of intentions, to put it all, or practically all, to the account “of the method of disputation” then in use. That method, the syllogistic one, called for a clear and accurate statement of the opponent’s standpoint. The controversy round “_De servo arbitrio_” (fully dealt with in vol. ii., pp. 223-294) has recently been studied by two scholars, one a Protestant, the other a Catholic, and both authors on the whole agree at least on one point, viz. that Luther ascribed to his opponent a denial of the necessity of Grace,