Nor can one well argue that the requisite sanction for the new moral rules was the general sanction found in the Scriptural threats of Divine chastisements to overtake transgressors. The question is whether the Law laid down in the Bible or written in man’s heart is really identical with Luther’s. Those who were unable of themselves to prove that this was the case were ultimately (so Luther implies) to believe it on his authority and conform themselves to his “Evangelical consciousness”; thus, for instance, in the matter of religious vows, held by Luther to be utterly detestable, and by the Church to be both permissible and praiseworthy. In but few points does the purely subjective character of the new religion and morality advocated by Luther stand out so clearly as in this absence of any objective sanction or higher authority for his new ethics. Christianity hitherto had appealed to the divine, unchangeable dignity of the Church, which, by her infallible teaching, her discipline and power to punish, insured the observance of law and order in the religious domain. But, now, according to the new teaching, man—who so sadly needs a clear and definite lead for his moral life—besides the Decalogue, “clear” Bible text and Natural Law, is left with nothing but “recommendations” devoid of any binding force; views are dinned into his ears the carrying out of which is left solely to his feelings, or, as Luther says, to his “conscience.” Deprived of the quieting guidance of an authority which proclaims moral obligations and sees that they are carried out, conscience and personality tend in his system to assume quite a new rôle. 6. The part played by Conscience and Personality. Luther’s warfare with his old friend Caspar Schwenckfeld Protestants have confidently opined, that “Luther mastered anew the personal foundation of morality by reinstating conscience in its rights”; by insisting on feeling he came to restore to “personality the dignity” which in previous ages it had lost under the ban of a “legalism” devoid of “morality.” To counter such views it may be of use to give some account of the way in which Luther taught conscience to exercise her rights. The part he assigns to the voice within which judges of good and evil, scarcely bears out the contention that he really strengthened the “foundation of morality.” The vague idea of “personality” may for the while be identified with conscience, especially as in the present connection “person” stands for the medium of conscience.[231] _On Conscience and its Exercise in General_