Then again we have the untruth he is never tired of reiterating, viz. that in the older Church people thought they could be saved only by means of works, and that, through want of faith in Christ, the “Church had become a whore.”[281] Yet ecclesiastical literature in Luther’s day no less than in ours, and likewise an abundance of documents bearing on the point teach quite the contrary and make faith in Christ the basis of all the good works enjoined.[282] All were aware, as Luther himself once had been, that outward works taken by themselves were worthless. And yet Luther, in one of the charges which he repeated again and again, though at the outset he cannot have believed it, says: “The question is, how we are to become pious. The Grey Friar says: Wear a grey hood, a rope and the tonsure. The Black Friar says: Put on a black frock. The Papist: Do this or that good work, hear Mass, pray, fast, give alms, etc., and each one whatever he fancies will help him to be saved. But the Christian says: Only by faith in Christ can you become pious, and righteous and secure salvation; only through Grace alone, without any work or merits of your own. Now look and see which is true righteousness.”[283] Let us listen for a moment to the indignant voice of a learned Catholic contemporary, viz. the Saxon Dominican, Bartholomew Kleindienst, himself for a while not unfavourable to the new errors, who, in 1560, replied to Luther’s misrepresentations: “Some of the leaders of sects are such impudent liars as, contrary to their own conscience, to persuade the poor people to believe, that we Catholics of the present day, or as they term us Papists, do not believe what the old Papists believed; we no longer think anything of Christ, but worship the Saints, not merely as the friends of God but as gods themselves; nay, we look upon the Pope as our God; we wish to gain heaven by means of our works, without God’s Grace; we do not believe in Holy Writ; have no proper Bible and should be unable to read it if we had; trust more in holy water than in the blood of Christ.... Numberless such-like horrible, blasphemous and hitherto unheard-of lies they invent and use against us. The initiate are well aware that this is the chief trick of the sects, whereby they render the Papacy an abomination to simple and otherwise well-disposed folk.”[284] * * * * *