68 Readings in European History peaceful, and secure hearts and are altogether free and unconstrained. But when doubt comes they begin to ask what is best, and begin to distinguish between their acts in order to gain the other's favor, and go about with troubled and heavy hearts, perhaps well-nigh in despair or driven to downright desperation. So the Christian who lives in confidence toward God knows what things he should do, and does all gladly and freely, not with a view to accumulating merit and good works, but because it is his great joy to please God and to serve him without thought of reward, contented if he but do God's will. 1 On the contrary, he who is not at one with God, or is in doubt, will begin to be anxious how he may satisfy God and justify himself by his works. He runs of! on a pilgrimage to St. James of Compostella, to Rome, to Jerusalem, — here, there, anywhere ; prays to St. Bridget, or some other saint, fasts this day and that, confesses here and confesses there, asks this man and that, but finds no peace. Ulrich von Hutten attacks the clergy. VI. Ulrich von Hutten's Appeal to German Patriotism Ulrich von Hutten had returned from a sojourn in Italy filled with love and enthusiasm for his own German people and with dislike for the Italians, especially for the Roman curia. He probably knew little about the Leip- zig disputation, and had no interest, in any case, in what the monks and theologians, whom he had just been making sport of in the Letters of Obscure Men? might be saying about indulgences and purgatory. He busied 1 This idea of " The Freedom of the Christian Man " is the subject of one of Luther's most celebrated tracts, written a few months later than these passages. It is translated in Wace and Buchheim, Luther's Primary Works, pp. 104 sq. 2 See above, pp. 46 sqq.
