Coming to his own person the speaker thinks he can honestly say the same of himself, though, like the rest, he too must confess to being still in need of the article of the forgiveness of sins. There were false teachers who could not appeal so confidently to the morality of their lives, “proud, puffed-up spirits who lay claim to a great and wonderful holiness, who want to reform the whole world and to do something singular in order that all may say that they alone are true Christians. This sort of thing lasts indeed for a while, during which they parade and strut, but, when the hour of death comes, that is the end of all such idle nonsense.”[349] He himself, with the faithful teachers and good Christians, is in a very different case: “If I must boast of how I have acted in my position towards everyone then I will say: I witness before you and all the world, and know that God too witnesses on my behalf together with all His angels, that I have not falsified God’s Word, His Baptism or the Sacrament but have preached and acted faithfully as much as was in me, and suffered all ill solely for God’s and His Word’s sake. Thus must all the Saints boast.”[350] He lays the greatest stress on the unanimous testimony which the preacher must receive from his fellow-men and from posterity. He must be able to say, “you shall be my witnesses,” he “must be able to call upon all men to bear him witness”; they must bear us witness on the Last Day that we have lived aright and shown by our deeds that we were Christians. If this is the case, if they can point to their practice of good works, then the preaching of good works can be insisted on with all the emphasis required.[351] It is natural, however, that towards the end Luther lays greater stress on his teaching than on his works. On his preaching of the value of good works he solemnly assures us: “We can testify before the whole world that we have preached much more grandly and forcefully on good works than even those who calumniate us.”[352] _Self-Reform and Hatred of the Foe_ In speaking of Luther, his staunch friends are wont to boast of his lifelong struggle against the fetters of the Papacy and of the overwhelming power of his assault on the olden Church; this, so they imply, redounded to his glory and showed his moral superiority.