With regard to his doctrine of Justification, on Dec. 14, 1531, he gave his pupil Schlaginhaufen, who also failed to find comfort in it, some advice as to how he was to help himself. The devil was wont “to come to him” [Luther] with righteousness and to “insist on our being actively righteous,” and since none of us are, “no one can venture to stand up to him”; what one should do was, however, resolutely to fall back on passive righteousness and to say to Satan: Not by my own righteousness am I justified, but by the righteousness of the man Christ. “Do you know Him?” In this way we vanquish him by “the Word.” Another method, also a favourite one of his,[1305] so he instructs his anxious pupil, was to rid oneself of such ideas by “thinking of dancing, or of a pretty girl; that also is good, eating and drinking are likewise helpful; for one who is tempted, fasting is a hundred times worse than eating and drinking.”[1306]—“This is the great art,” he repeats at the beginning of the following year, looking back upon his own bitter experiences, “to pass from my sin to Christ’s righteousness to know that Christ’s righteousness is mine as surely as I know that this body is mine.... What astonishes me is that I cannot learn this doctrine, and yet all my pupils believe they have it at their finger-tips.”[1307] The doctrine of the Law in its relation to the Gospel, a point which he was never able to make quite clear to himself, constituted in his case an obstacle to peace of mind.[1308] In consequence of his own experience he warns others from the outset against giving way to any anxious thoughts about this: “Whoever, Law in hand, begins to dispute with the devil is already a beaten man and a prisoner.... Hence let no one dare to dispute with him about the Law, or about sin, but let him rather desist in good time.”[1309] “When Satan reproaches me and says: ‘The Law is also the Word of God,’ I reply: ‘God’s Word is only the promise of God whereby He says: Let me be Thy God. In addition to this, however, He also gives the Law, but for another purpose, not that we may be saved thereby.”[1310] But God, as Luther was well aware, will, as He threatens, judge people by their fulfilment of the Law and only grant salvation to those who keep it.