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74 entirely free from the vulgar superstitions of his time, although we also know that this circumstance does by no means entirely explain many of the things that come into consideration here. Just this influence that the vulgar superstitions exercised upon Luther, Klingner64 made the object of special study. He shows how these ideas, by no means, caused him to appear contemptible, but how in reality his firm belief in the reality of the Devil, through whom God inflicts his salutary punishments upon man, and how his idea of the mightiness of Satan were for Luther a stimulant for a continual fight against evil, as he found it within and without himself, and an incentive for the good, for the perfection of others and himself. Therefore they are integral parts of the religious side of his personality and closely interwoven with the work of his career. How insufficient this view of Klingner may be, for according to Scripture the idea of the Devil is neither only a vulgar superstition nor only a term used in pedagogical interests, we nevertheless welcome his writing.

13. Luther and the Scriptures

One can not well differentiate between Luther's residence on the Wartburg and his attitude towards the Scriptures. Not, indeed, because Luther here learned to look upon the Scriptures in a new relation, so that not until now they became for him the only source of religious knowledge. This proposition already crumbles into dust in view of the sources that were generally available prior to 1883, and to maintain it now is to become guilty of an historical falsification for the sake of one's construction. Undritz already wrote a splendid article on the development of the Scripture principle with Luther during the earlier years of the Reforma-