Note 61 — Chapter II · SYMBOLIC AND MORAL FAITH.

Toward the end of his life Luther felt an increasing discouragement and disquietude on the subject of the reform inaugurated by him: “It is by severe laws and by superstition,” he wrote with bitterness, “that the world desires to be guided. If I could reconcile it with my conscience I would labour that the Pope with all his abominations might become once more our master.” Responsibility to one’s own conscience was indeed Luther’s fundamental idea—the idea which justifies the Reformation in the eyes of history, as formerly in the eyes of its own author.