, and is the
ultimate and only basis of authority in religion.

His conception of the sacraments in like manner, {13} because of his
crude supernaturalism and his inadequate intellectual and spiritual
penetration, drifted to a semi-medieval view. He intended to transform
these ceremonies and to have them fit "the pure Word of God." In his
primary _intention_ they were to be no longer objective works of grace,
but were to have a subjective value only, a faith-significance. They
were to be conceived as pictorial, symbolic ways of learning the one
important truth of salvation--God's grace and forgiveness; for God
deigns, he said, to speak to his immature creatures by signs and
pictures. But the imperial sway of the past powerfully moved him; his
own conservative disposition carried him along paths which an
enlightened reason would not have taken, and the heat of the
controversy often blinded him to some of the precious truths that had
seemed clear to him in the creative period of Faith. In the bitter
controversy with the "spiritual prophets" on the question of
sacraments, he wrote words which seem strangely out of harmony with his
earlier views and with his own experience: "External things in religion
must precede internal experiences which come through [_i.e._ are
mediated by] external things, for God has resolved to give nobody the
internal gifts except through the external things. He will give nobody
the Spirit and Faith without the use of external word and sign."[15]
Without meaning to surrender the precious jewel of a religion
spiritually grounded, he once more introduced "the awful mystery" of
the sacraments, and opened the door for the conception of the rite as
an _opus operatum_--a grace of God objectively real. He retained
infant baptism as _an efficacious act_, and, obsessed as he was by the
literal words, _Hoc est corpus_--"this is my body"--he went back into
the abandoned path of scholasticism,[16] and restored the mysterious
and miraculous real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.[17] It is
true, as Loofs has said, that {14} "Luther re-discovered Christianity
as religion," but it is also unfortunately true as well that he lacked
the insight, faith, and boldness of spirit to trust the people of his
age and of the future with "Christianity as religion," and instead gave
them a Christianity theologically constructed, deeply marred with
residual superstitions and mysteries, and heavily laden with the
inhe