Had the tale it tells been based on history he would surely have made capital out of it during this long spell of controversy with the monks and Papists. Thus, in his violent “_De votis monasticis_” of 1521, he as yet has nothing to say of his supposed so pious life, of his excessive penance, misguided holiness-by-works, and the despair he endured in the convent, though, in the Preface, he alludes to his own life as a monk. Nor, again, in his “_De servo arbitrio_” of 1525, does he as yet put forward the actual legend. It is true that here, when explaining his doctrine of Predestination, he refers to the fears from which as a monk he had suffered regarding his election, fear which arose from his doubts as to the fate decreed for him by God from all eternity. As it is also here that he for the first time airs his theory that his doctrine of absolute predestination and his dogma of justification were alone able to give peace,[772] this would seem to have been the place to give an account of his own life in the monastery and its attendant circumstances. But the legend was not as yet ready. We have merely a hint of what is to come: The Catholic doctrine that heaven may be won by works spells the end of all peace; “this is proved by the experience of all the holy-by-works, and this, to my cost, I also learnt by the experience of many years.”[773] About his heroic works of penance, his vigils, fastings, extraordinary piety, and the sudden and gratifying change, he has not a word to say. Heralds of the legend are certain statements met with in a sermon of 1528 where he describes himself as having been a “very pious monk,” who was, however, wanting in constancy and like a “shaking reed,” not being firmly rooted in Christ;[774] again at the end of his “Vom Abendmal Bekentnis” he declares his “greatest sins” were his having “been such a holy monk and having plagued God for more than fifteen years with so many masses.”[775] In the latter writing he at least admits that “many great saints had lived in the monasteries”;[776] he even thinks that “it would indeed be a fine thing if the monasteries and foundations were retained, to the end that young folk might there be taught God’s Word, the Scriptures and how to live a Christian life,” in short as educational establishments for both boys and girls. “But, to seek in them the road to salvation, that is the devil’s own doctrine and belief.”[777]