Luther set up the highest spiritual principle: pure inwardness. It may become so dangerous that we can sink to the lowest of lowest paganism (however, the highet and the lowest are like one another) where sensual debauchery is celebrated as divine worship; and so in Protestantism a point may be reached at which worldiness is honored and highly valued – as piety. And this – as I maintain – cannot happen in Catholicism.
But why can it not happen in Catholicism? Because Catholicism has the universal premise that we men are pretty well racals. And why can it happen in Protestantism? Because the Protestant principle is related to a particular premise: a man who sits in the anguish of death, in fear and trembling – and of those there are not many in any one generation.
