But how is a man to be so certain in his heart as to be able to come forward in this way? “You can then be certain of the matter if you are able to decide freely and surely and to say this is the pure and simple truth, for it I will live or die, and whoever teaches otherwise, whatsoever be his title and standing, is accursed.”[1141] It would be a waste of words to point out that this was to deal a death-blow at the olden conception of the Church. Startling, nay, utterly stupefying, is the sharp contrast all this presents to Luther’s later attitude already described above (pp. 241, 251, 262). There we have a rigid, coercive Church held fast in the ban of the Wittenberg doctrine, whereas here, in the days of the early development of Lutheranism, we find an exuberant wealth of individual freedom which scoffs even at the possibility of any ecclesiastical order. Only a dreamer and hot-head like Luther could have seen in such an individualism, where each one is teacher and priest, anything else than chaos. Luther’s expectations in those early days were strange indeed and quite incapable of realisation; not only were all delusions to be excluded but everything, as he says of the enduring of opposition, was to be done “decently and piously”! If he is really speaking in earnest, then he shows himself a hermit utterly ignorant of human nature. And yet even in the seclusion of the convent walls, the greatest enthusiast should have seen that this was not the way to form a congregation on earth of believers, or anything resembling a Church. We can, nevertheless, easily understand, to cite Möhler in confirmation of what has been said, “how the doctrine in question could, nay, had to, arise in Luther’s mind: Since the authority of the existing Church was against him he had perforce to seek for support in the authority of God working directly in him.… He saw no other way than to appeal to an intangible, inward authorisation.”[1142]—This he then proceeded to work out into a system for the other believers. “In the fashion of the true demagogue he flatters every Christian and invests him with such perfection as any unprejudiced mind must repudiate on the most cursory glance into his own heart.”[1143] The truth is, the doctrine put forward by Luther against the Church, i.e. that Holy Scripture is the sole judge, has no meaning except on the assumption of a certainty through direct divine illumination.