On and on he thundered, aiming particular fire at the single lie that lay at the rotten black heart of it all, that men and women could themselves “make satisfaction” for their own sins, that the free gift of God’s grace did not exist, and that Jesus had therefore suffered and died in vain. “This doctrine,” he wrote, “has filled hell and has troubled the kingdom of Christ more horribly than the Turk or the whole world could ever do. . . . Alas, where are the tongues and voices that can say enough about this?”15
