We hear from Luther himself of the strange paroxysms of fear from which he suffered as a monk. On two occasions when he speaks of them his words do not seem to come under suspicion of forming part of the legend which he afterwards wove about his earlier history (see below, xxxvii.). These statements, already alluded to once, may be given more in detail here. In March, 1537, he told his friends: “When I was saying Mass [his first Mass] and had reached the Canon, such terror seized on me (_ita horrui_) that I should have fled had not the Prior held me back; for when I came to the words, ‘Thee, therefore, most merciful Father, we suppliantly pray and entreat,’ etc., I felt that I was speaking to God without any mediator. I longed to flee from the earth. For who can endure the Majesty of God without Christ the Mediator? In short, as a monk I experienced those terrors (_horrores_); I was made to experience them before I began to assail them.”[307] Incidentally it may be noted that “Christ the Mediator,” whom Luther declares he could not find in the Catholic ritual, is, as a matter of fact, invoked in the very words which follow those quoted by Luther: “Thee, therefore, most merciful Father, we suppliantly pray and entreat through Jesus Christ Thy Son our Lord to accept and bless these gifts,” etc. Evidently when Luther recorded his impressions he had forgotten these words and only remembered the groundless fear and inward commotion with which he had said his first Mass. Something similar occurred during a procession at Erfurt, when he had to walk by the side of Staupitz, his superior, who was carrying the Blessed Sacrament. Fear and terror so mastered Luther that he was hardly able to remain. Telling Staupitz of this later in Confession, the latter encouraged him with the words: “Christ does not affright, He comforts.” The incident must have taken place after 1515, the Eisleben priory having been founded only in that year.[308] If we go back to the very beginning of his life in the monastery we shall find that the religious scruples which assailed him at least for a while, possibly also deserve to be reckoned as morbid. We shall return below to the voice “from heaven” which drove him into the cloister.