He justifies as follows his radical opposition to the Catholic forms of Divine worship: “The only good we can do in God’s service is to praise and thank Him, in which in fact the only true worship of God consists.... If any other worship of God be proposed to you, know that it is error and deception.”[168] “It is a rank scandal that the Papists should encourage people to toil for God with works so as thereby to expiate their sins and secure grace.... If you wish to believe aright and really to lay hold on Christ, you must discard all works whereby you may think you labour for God; all such are nothing but scandals leading you away from Christ and from God; in God’s sight no work is of any value except Christ’s own; this you must leave to toil for you in God’s sight; you yourself must perform no other work for Him than to believe that Christ does His work for you.”[169] In the same passage he attempts to vindicate this species of Quietism with the help of some recollections from his own earlier career, viz. by the mystic principle which had at one time ruled him: “You must be blind and lame, deaf and dead, poor and leprous, or else you will be scandalised in Christ. This is what it means to know Christ aright and to accept Him; this is to believe as befits a true Christian.”[170] 2. “All other works, apart from faith, must be directed towards our neighbour.”[171] As we know, besides that faith, gratitude and love which are God’s due, Luther admits no good works but those of charity towards our neighbour. By our faith we give to God all that He asks of us. “After this, think only of doing for your neighbour what Christ has done for you, and let all your works and all your life go to the service of your neighbour.”[172]—God, he says elsewhere, asks only for our thank-offering; “look upon Me as a Gracious God and I am content”; “thereafter serve your neighbour, freely and for nothing.”[173] Good works in his eyes are only “good when they are profitable to others and not to yourself.” Indeed he goes so far as to assert: “If you find yourself performing a work for God, or for His Saints, or for yourself and not alone for your neighbour, know that the work is not good.”[174] The only explanation of such sentences, as already hinted, is to be found in his passionate polemics against the worship and the pious exercises of the Catholics. It is true that such practices were sullied at that time by certain blemishes, owing to the abuses rampant in the Church; yet the Catholic could confidently answer in self-defence in the words Luther proceeds to put on his lips: Such “works are spiritual and profitable to the soul of our neighbour, and God thereby is served and propitiated and His Grace obtained.”