That the use hitherto made of Luther’s statements concerning his convent life calls for correction has already been admitted by several Protestant students of reformation history. As early as 1874 Maurenbrecher protested strongly against the too great reliance placed on Luther’s own later statements, which, however, at that time, constituted almost the only authority for his early history. “How wrong it is to accept on faith and repeat anew Luther’s tradition is quite obvious. Whoever wishes to relate Luther’s early history must first of all be quite clear in his mind as to this characteristic of the material on which he has to work.… The history of Luther’s youth is still virgin soil awaiting the labours of the critic.”[612] The objections recently brought forward by Catholics have drawn from W. Friedensburg the admission that we have unreliable, and, “in part, misleading statements of Luther’s concerning himself.”[613] G. Kawerau also at least goes so far as to admit that the historian of Luther at the present day “is inevitably confronted by a number of new questions.”[614] The publication of Luther’s Commentary on Romans of 1515-16 finally proved how necessary it is to regard the theology of his early years as the chief authority for the history of his development. Hence, in the account of his youth given above in vol. i., we took this Commentary as our basis. A preliminary sketch of the picture he handed down in his later sayings is given us by Luther himself in the following: God had caused him to become a monk, he says, “not without good reasons, viz. that, taught by experience, he might be able to write against the Papacy,” after having himself most rigidly (“_rigidissime_”) abided by its rules.[615]—“This goes on until one grows quite weary”; “now my other preaching has come: ‘Christ says: Take this from me: You are not pious, I have done it all for you, your sins are forgiven you.’”[616] According to the “Popish teaching,” however, one cannot be sure “whether he is in a state of grace”; hence, when in the cloister, though I was such a “pious monk,” I always said sorrowfully to myself: “I know not whether God is well pleased or not. Thus I and all of us were swallowed up in unbelief.”[617] Hence churches and convents are nothing but “dens of murderers” because they “pervert and destroy doctrine and prayer.” “Indeed no monk or priestling can do otherwise, as I know, and have myself experienced”; “I never knew in the least how I stood with God”; “I was never able to pray aright.”[618] This holiness-by-works of Popery, in which I was steeped, was nothing but “idolatry and godless worship.”[619]