But in all this he found no real peace of mind: on the contrary, his soul was stirred to the consciousness of another way of salvation which had already begun to dawn upon him. Whilst climbing, on his knees and in prayer, the sacred stairs which were said to have led to the Judgment-hall of Pilate, and whither, to this day, worshippers are invited by the promise of Papal absolutions, he thought of the words of St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans (i. 17), 'The just shall live by faith. As for any spiritual enlightenment and consolation, he found none among the priests and monks of Rome. He was struck indeed with the external administration of business and the nice arrangement of legal matters at the Papal see. But he was shocked by all that he observed of the moral and religious life and doings at this centre of Christianity; the immorality of the clergy, and particularly of the highest dignitaries of the Church, who thought themselves highly virtuous if they abstained from the very grossest offences; the wanton levity with which the most sacred names and things were treated; the frivolous unbelief, openly expressed among themselves by the spiritual pastors and masters of the Church. He complains of the priests scrambling through mass as if they were juggling; while he was reading one mass, he found they had finished seven: one of them once urged him to be quick by saying 'Get on, get on, and make haste to send her Son home to our Lady.' He heard jokes even made about the priests when consecrating the elements at mass, repeating in Latin the words 'Bread thou art, and bread thou shalt remain: wine thou art, and wine thou shalt remain.' He often remarked in later years how they would apply in derision the term 'good Christian' to those who were stupid enough to believe in Christian truth, and to be scandalised by anything said to the contrary. No one, he declared, would believe what villanies and shameful doings were then in vogue, if they had not seen and heard them with their own eyes and ears. But the truth of his testimony is confirmed by those very men whose life and conduct so shocked and revolted him. He must have been indignant, moreover, at the contemptuous tone in which the 'stupid Germans' or 'German beasts' were spoken of, as persons entitled to no notice or respect at Rome.