from all fear of Church, clergy, their threats of hell and blandishments of heaven. (Atkinson, p. 26)
Luther was not a wild-eyed fanatic, nor was he substituting some obscure concepts for the orthodox teachings of the Church. He had been a professor of biblical exegesis at the University of Wittenberg, and he sought truth in the scriptures and found differences between the scriptures and the teachings of the Church. For Luther, though, the scripture was the record of the apostolic witness to Christ, and as such it had to be seen as the decisive authority in the Church:
Since the apostles are the foundation of the church, their authority is basic. No other authority can be equal to theirs. Every other authority in the church is derived from following the teachings of the ap
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