In place of the pleasing variety of the old exercises of prayer—from the Office recited by the clergy with its daily commemoration of the Saints down to the multifarious devotions of the people, to say nothing of the great Sacrifice of the Altar, the very heart’s pulse of the Church—he recommends as a rule only the Our Father, the Creed and the Psalms—prayers indeed rich beyond all others and which will ever hold the first place among Christian devotions. But had they not been brought closer to the heart formerly in the inner and outer life of prayer dealt with in the writings of the Catholic masters of the spiritual life, and exemplified in the churches and monasteries, and even in private houses and the very streets? But behind all this rich display Luther saw lurking the demon of “singular works.” The monk absorbed in contemplation was, in Luther’s eyes, an unhappy wretch sitting “in filth” up to his neck. Thus he restricts himself to recommending the old short formulas of prayer. In accordance with his doctrine that faith alone avails, he desires that sin, and the intention of sinning, should be withstood by the use of the Our Father: “That you diligently learn to say the Our Father, the Creed and the Ten Commandments.”[340] “Grant, O God (thus must you pray), that Thy Name be hallowed by me, Thy Kingdom come to me, and Thy Will be done in me”; in this wise they would come to scorn “devil, death and hell.”[341] He indeed kept in touch with the people by means of the olden prayers, but, even into them, he knew how to introduce his own new views; the Kingdom of God, which to him is forgiveness of sins,[342] “must come to us by faith,” and the chief article of the whole Creed with which to defy “death, devil and hell” was the “_remissio peccatorum_.” These remarks must not, however, be understood as detracting from the value of his fine, practical, and often sympathetic expositions of the Our Father, whether in his special work on it in 1518 or in the Larger Catechism.[343] Of the numerous “man-made laws” which he banished at one stroke by denying the Church’s authority there is no need to speak here. Without a doubt the overturning of all these barriers erected against human lusts and wilfulness was scarcely conducive to the progress of the individual. Nor does the absence of any higher standard of life in his own case[344] serve to recommend his system of ethics. Seeing that, as has been already pointed out,[345] he himself is disposed to admit his failings, the apparent confidence with which, in order to exalt his reform of ethics, he appeals to the biblical verity, that the truth of a doctrine is proved by its moral fruits, is all the more surprising. * * * * *