“To comfort oneself against one’s conscience,” such is the task which Luther, in many of his writings, proposes to the believer. Indeed, in his eyes the chief thing of all is to “get the better of sin, death, hell and our own conscience”; in spite of the opposition of reason to Luther’s view of Christ’s satisfaction, we must learn, “through Him [Christ] to possess nothing but grace and forgiveness,” of course, in the sense taught at Wittenberg.[239] A former brother monk, Link, the apostate Augustinian of Nuremberg, Luther also encourages, like Spalatin the fallen priest, to kick against the prick of conscience: “These are devil’s thoughts and not from us, which make us despair,” they must be “left to the devil,” the latter always “keeps closest to those who are most pious”; to yield to such despairing thoughts “is as bad as giving in and leaving Satan supreme.”[240] When praising the “sole” help and consolation of the grace of Christ he does not omit to point out, directly or otherwise, how, “when in despair of himself,” and enduring frightful inward “sufferings” of conscience, he had hacked his way through them all and had reached a firm faith in Christ minus all works, and had thus become a “theologian of the Cross.”[241] Even at the commencement of the struggle, in order to encourage wavering followers, he allowed to each man’s conscience the right to defy any confessor who should forbid Luther’s writings to such of his parishioners who came to him: “Absolve me at my own risk,” they were to say to him, “I shall not give up the books, for then I should be sinning against my conscience.” He argues that, according to Rom. xiv. 1, the confessor might not “urge them against their conscience.” Was it then enough for a man to have formed himself a conscience, for the precept no longer to hold? His admonition was, however, intended merely as a counsel for “strong and courageous consciences.” If the confessor did not prove amenable, they were simply to “go without scruple to the Sacrament,” and if this, too, was refused them then they had only to send “Sacrament and Church” about their business.[242] Should the confessor require contrition for sins committed, this, according to another of his statements, was a clear attack on conscience which does not require contrition for absolution, but merely faith in Christ; such a priest ought to have the keys taken out of his hands and be given a pitchfork instead.[243]