“Such honour and glory have I by the grace of God—whether it be to the taste or not of the devil and his brood—that, since the days of the Apostles, no doctor, scribe, theologian or lawyer has confirmed, instructed and comforted the consciences of the secular Estates so well and lucidly as I have done by the peculiar grace of God. Of this I am confident. For neither St. Augustine nor St. Ambrose, who are the greatest authorities in this field, are here equal to me.... Such fame as this must be and remain known to God and to men even should they go raving mad over it.”[221] It is true that his theories contain many an element of good and, had he not been able to appeal to this, he could never have spoken so feelingly on the subject. The good which lies buried in his teaching had, however, always received its due in Catholicism. Luther, when contrasting the Church’s alleged aversion for secular life with his own exaltation of the dignity of the worldly calling, frequently speaks in language both powerful and fine of the worldly office which God has assigned to each one, not only to the prince but even to the humble workman and tiller of the field, and of the noble moral tasks which thus devolve on the Christian. Yet any aversion to the world as he conceives it had never been a principle within the Church, though individual writers may indeed have erred in this direction. The assertion that the olden Church, owing to her teaching concerning the state of perfection and the Counsels, had not made sufficient allowance for the dignity of the secular calling, has already been fully dealt with. It is true that Luther, to the admiration of his followers, confronted the old Orders founded by the Church with three new Orders, all Divinely instituted, viz. the home, the State and the Church.[222] But, so far from “notably improving” on the “scholastic ethics” of the past, he did not even contrive to couch his thoughts on these “Orders” in language as lucid as that used long before his day by the theologians and moralists of the Church in voicing the same idea; what he says of these “Orders” also falls short of the past on the score of wealth and variety.[223] Nevertheless the popular ways he had of depicting things as he fain would see them, proved alluring, and this gift of appealing to the people’s fancy and of charming them by the contrast of new and old, helped to build up the esteem in which he has been held ever since; his inclination, moreover, to promote the independence of the individual in the three “Orders,” and to deliver him from all hierarchical influence must from the outset have won him many friends. _Divorce of Religion and Morals_