Martin Luther the German reformer (from 1856)

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Since I was a monk, I believed I must be lost if I felt any carnal desire, such as lust, anger, hatred, envy, and the like, toward a brother. I tried many things, confessing every day, but it did not help; for such desires kept returning.

No one can be enlightened unless he is first purified, purified and completed; nor can anyone be united with God unless he is first enlightened, so there are these three ways: purification, enlightenment, union.

This liberation was only possible through a deepening of the religious spirit in general and a more vivid understanding of the early history of Christianity. We must see this religious deepening and this freer historical understanding as the two most powerful driving forces behind the intellectual transformation before Luther's time. From the depths of religious sentiment and the moral consciousness it inspired, as well as from the earliest written documents from the time of the first Church, the Christian spirit drew its renewal, and the Church experienced its rebirth.