Not long after this, in 1520, he lays claim in his “Von dem Bapstum” and “_De captivitate Babylonica_,” to having been instructed solely by the Holy Ghost and out of the Bible regarding the sense of Holy Scripture. In the “_De captivitate Babylonica_” he teaches: the faithful who surrender themselves to the Spirit of God and allow Him to work upon them through the “Word” (he calls them the Church), received from the same Spirit an infallible sense and an inspiration by which to judge of doctrine, a sense which is indeed not susceptible of proof yet which creates absolute certainty. The same thing held good here as in the case of the truth, of which Augustine had said, that the soul was so laid hold of and carried away by it as to be enabled by its means to judge of all things, though unable to prove the truth itself which nevertheless it was forced to acknowledge with an infallible certainty.[1136] Luther also appeals as a comparison to the evidence of certain fundamental truths of mathematics or philosophy. This would at first sight make it appear as though he excluded arbitrary freedom in the interpretation of the Bible, since the mind must necessarily bow to such logical and unquestionable truths as he instances; this is, however, not the case, and we may recall what a wide field he opened up for delusion in this matter of inspiration.[1137] When he teaches that the perception of the truth of religion penetrates into every Christian soul as the direct result of a certainty operated by God Himself we must, in order to understand him, keep in view the other points of his teaching, above all his opinion of man’s utter incapacity to do what is good, the depravity of man’s mental powers, his lack of free-will and absolute passivity under the hand of God. Above all he needed some such theory in order to justify his attack on the olden conception of the Church and to defend his own alleged certainty. The universal priesthood also serves him as a prop for his idea of the Church. This priesthood, with the right to judge of doctrine, such as he pictures in his “To the German Nobility” and “On the Freedom of a Christian Man,” was a logical outcome of the above doctrine of inspiration and of his own inclination to break away from the olden Church. It gave to all complete independence in spiritual and ecclesiastical matters.[1138]