Nor assuredly would he have gone so far had he himself ever vividly realised the profoundly religious and morally stimulating character of the veneration of images, and its sympathetic and consoling side as exemplified at many of the regular places of pilgrimage at that time. Owing to the circumstances of his early years he had never enjoyed the opportunity of tasting the refreshment and the blessings to be found in those sacred resorts visited by thousands of the devout, where those suffering from any ill of soul or body were wont to seek solace from the cares and trials of life. Indeed it was particularly against such images as were the object of special devotion and to which the people “flocked” with a “false confidence” that his anger was directed. His animosity to image-worship would also appear to have been psychologically bound up with two tendencies of his: first, with the desire to attack the hated Church of the Papists at those very spots where her influence with the people was most apparent; secondly, with his plan to bring everything down to a dead level, which led him on the specious pretext of serving the religion of the spirit to abolish, or to curtail, the most popular and cheering phenomena of outward worship. It is a reprehensible thing, he says, even in his sermons against Carlstadt, to have an image set up in the church, because the believer fancies “he is doing God a service thereby and pleasing Him, and has thus performed a good work and gained merit in God’s sight, which is sheer idolatry.” In their zeal for their damnable good works the princes, bishops and big ones of the earth had “caused many costly images of silver and gold to be set up in the churches and cathedrals.” These were not indeed to be pulled down by force since many at least made a good use of them; but it was to be made clear to the people that if “they were not doing any service to God, or pleasing Him thereby,” then they would soon “tumble down of their own accord.”[747]