Luther was received among the novices of the monastery with sacred hymns, prayers and other solemnities. After this he was given over to the care of the master of the novices, whose duty it was to initiate them into the practices of the monastic sanctity, to observe their actual conduct, and to watch over their souls. Above all things, the will of the novices were to be entirely broken. They were to learn that everything enjoined upon them was to be performed without the least resistance, and even to be the more willing to render obedience the more it was against their own disposition and taste. Inclination to pride was to be overcome by imposing upon them the meanest services. So at the very beginning of Luther’s monastic life he was compelled to perform the most degrading work in sweeping and scrubbing, and it afforded those envious of him peculiar pleasure when he, the hitherto proud young master, was ordered, with a sack upon his shoulders, to beg through the town in company with a more experienced brother. He did not shirk from these services; but even desired to perform self-mortifying duties, so that he might the more deserve God’s favors. Of these days Luther says: I chose for myself twenty-one saints, read mass every day, calling on three of them each day, so as to complete the circuit every week; especially did I invoke the Holy Virgin, as her womanly heart was more easily touched, that she might appease her Son. I verily thought that by invoking three saints daily, and by letting my body waste away with fastings and watchings, I should satisfy the law, and shield my conscience against the goad; but it all availed me nothing: the further I went on in this way the more I was terrified. From this we see that Luther subjected himself to every possible form of discipline and mortification. He was a model of monkish piety. He says, “If ever a monk got to heaven by monkery, I would have gotten there.” No one could surpass him in prayers by day and night, in fasting, in vigils, self-discipline and self-mortification, and yet—had he found what his soul was looking for? There is no mistake. He is as far from peace of conscience as ever. He read the Bible, but a veil was before his eyes. Christ was still to his mind a merciless judge. The righteousness of God, which, according to Paul, was revealed in the Gospel, he took to mean the righteousness which metes out just punishment.