He also speaks untruthfully of the manner of prayer in the convent. That he himself, when once he had fallen away from his vocation, no longer prayed in a right spirit is very likely. He, however, says: “I and all the others had not the right conception” (of prayer); it was no true “raising of the heart to God because we fled from God (‘_fugiebamus Deum_’).… We only prayed ‘conditionally’ and ‘hypothetically,’ not ‘categorically.’” This he said in 1537, admitting, however, with regard to his own then family prayers, that they “were not so fervent, because he was always forced to protest,” i.e. to pour out his anger against the Papists; but, “in the congregation as a whole, it comes from the heart and also serves its purpose.”[795] His wilful misrepresentation of the truth becomes more pronounced, when, in the exploitation of the legend, he seeks to moderate the monks’ practices of penance and mortification—with the help of Terence and Aristotle. In his Commentary on Genesis he complains: “The religious life of the monk is so crooked that no exception (‘_epikia_’) is allowed, nor any moderation. Hence it is all wickedness and unrighteousness. No heed is paid to the object of the Law, or to charity.… And yet what Terence says is still true: ‘_summum ius esse summam iniuriam_.’ God does not wish the body to be put to death, but that it be preserved for each one’s calling and for the service of our neighbour.”[796] “Learn, therefore, that peace and charity must govern and direct all virtues and laws, as Aristotle points out in the 5th book of his Ethics.”[797] Now, as a matter of fact, the Rule of the Hermits of St. Augustine, with which he was thoroughly conversant, enjoined consideration for the health of the individual.[798] Brother Jordan of Saxony, whose book was regarded as a standard work in the Order, insists on care being taken of the body and only permits penitential exercises “in moderation, with the superiors’ approval and without scandal to the brethren.”[799] His falsehoods are coupled with the outbursts of fury against Catholicism into which he was so prone to fall when attempting to describe the religious life he had forsaken.