Hence, for himself and all who chose to follow him, he set up in the clearest and most decided terms the personal reading of the written Word of God, above all tradition and all the pronouncements of the teaching office of the Church; in this he went much further than he had done hitherto in the questions he had raised concerning justification, grace, indulgences, etc. It is easy to understand why it was so necessary for him to claim for himself a direct enlightenment by the Spirit of God in his reading of the Bible;[1132] in no other way could he vindicate his daring in thus setting himself in opposition to a Church with a history of 1500 years. At the same time he saw that this same gift of illumination would have to be allowed to others, hence he declared that all faithful and devout readers of the Bible enjoyed a certain kind of inspiration, all according to him being directly guided by the Spirit into the truth without any outward interference of Church doctrine, though the first fruits of revelation belonged to him alone.[1133] By thus exalting the personal element into a principle, he dealt a mortal blow at the idea of a Church to whom was committed the true interpretation of doctrine. Before pointing out, how, in spite of the boundless liberty proclaimed by Luther, he nevertheless was anxious to retain some sort of Church in the stead of the ancient one, we may here put on record certain statements of his on the illumination of the individual by God that have not as yet been quoted; albeit difficult to understand this is of the very essence of Lutheranism and quite indispensable to the new doctrine of an invisible Church.[1134] According to the “Resolutions” he published after the Leipzig Disputation, every man is born into the faith through the Evangel owing to the bestowal of certainty from on high without the intervention of the Church’s authority or of any doctrine outwardly binding upon him. Satan and all the heretics, so he declares, could not have forged a more dangerous opinion than that in vogue among Catholics concerning the relations between the Church’s authority and the Bible Word; needless to say Luther makes out that, in their opinion, the Pope was put above the Written Word and even above God Himself.[1135] The genuine Catholic doctrine, viz. that the Church is the guardian of the true sense of Holy Scripture and at the same time a witness to the faithful of the authenticity and inspiration of the Holy Books, is indeed poles asunder from the teaching foisted on her. Moreover, it is in these very Resolutions to the Leipzig Disputation that Luther disparages the Epistle of James, arguing that its style falls far short of the apostolic dignity and could in no way compare with that of Paul. Here the “freedom” which he exalts into a principle already begins to undermine his new foundation, viz. the Bible itself.