Luther had received from Christopher Scheurl of Nuremberg, a learned lawyer and humanist, a letter dated Jan. 2, 1517, in which this warm partisan and admirer of the Augustinians, who was also a personal friend of Staupitz after a few words in praise of his virtue and learning, of which Staupitz had told him, expressed the wish to enter into friendly correspondence with him.[710] The greater part of Scheurl’s letter is devoted to praising Staupitz, rather than Luther. Yet the young man was utterly dumbfounded even by the meagre praise the letter contained. His answer to it was in an extravagant vein, the writer seemingly striving to express his overwhelming sense of humility in the face of such all-too-great praise.[711] The letter of one so learned and yet so condescending, so Luther begins, while greatly rejoicing him had distressed him not a little. He rejoiced at his eulogies of Staupitz, in whom he simply extolled Christ. “But how could you sadden me more than by seeking my friendship and decking me out in such empty titles of honour? I cannot allow you to become my friend, for my friendship would bring you, not honour but rather harm, if so be that the proverb is true: ‘Friends hold all in common.’ If what is mine becomes yours then you will receive only sin, unwisdom and shame, for these alone can I call mine; but such things surely do not merit the titles you give them.” Scheurl, indeed, would say, so he goes on in the same pathetic style, that it was only Christ he admired in him; but Christ cannot dwell together with sin and folly; hence he must be mindful of his own honour and not fall so low (‘_degeneres_’) as to become the friend of Luther. Even the Father-Vicar Staupitz praises him (Luther) too much. He made him afraid and put him in peril by persisting in saying: “I bless Christ in you and cannot but believe Him present with you now.” Such a belief was, however, hard, and the more eulogies and friends, the greater the danger in which the soul stood (then follow three superfluous quotations from Scripture). The greater the favour bestowed by men the less does God bestow His. “For God wills to be either the only friend or else no friend at all. To make matters worse, if a man humbles himself and seeks to fly praise and favour, then praise and favour always come, to our peril and confusion. Oh, far more wholesome,” he cries, “are hatred and disgrace than all praise and love.” The danger of praise he elucidates by a comparison with the cunning of the harlot mentioned in Proverbs vii. He is writing all this to Scheurl, not by any means to express contempt for his good-will but out of real anxiety for his own soul. Scheurl was only doing what every pious Christian must do who does not despise others but only himself; and this, too, he himself would also do.