What leads him to such admissions as, that, the Christians, “under the plea of freedom are now seven times worse than they were under the Pope’s tyranny,” is, in the first place, his bitter experience of the drying up of charity, which now ceases to care even for the parsonages and churches. Under the Papacy people had been eager to build churches and to make offerings to be distributed in alms among the poor, but, now that the true religion is taught, it is a wonder how everyone has grown so cold.—Yet the people were told and admonished that it was well pleasing to God and all the angels, but even so they would not respond.—Now a pastor could not even get a hole in his roof mended to enable him to lie dry, whereas in former days people could erect churches and monasteries regardless of cost.—“Now there is not a single town ready to support a preacher and there is nothing but robbery and pilfering amongst the people and no one hinders them. Whence comes this shameful plague? ‘From the doctrine,’ say the bawlers, ‘which you teach, viz. that we must not reckon on works or place our trust in them.’ This is, however, the work of the tiresome devil who falsely attributes such things to the pure and wholesome teaching,” etc.[157] He is so far from laying the blame on his teaching that he exclaims: What would our forefathers, who were noted for their charity, not have done “had they had the light of the Evangel which is now given to us”? Again and again he comes back to the contrast between his and older times: “Our parents and forefathers put us to shame for they gave so generously and charitably, nay even to excess, to the churches, parsonages and schools, foundations, hospitals,” etc.[158]—“Indeed had we not already the means, thanks to the charitable alms and foundations of our forefathers, the Gospel itself would long since have been wiped out by the burghers in the towns, and the nobles and peasants in the country, so that not one poor preacher would have enough to eat and drink; for we refuse to supply them, and, instead, rob and lay violent hands on what others have given and founded for the purpose.”[159]