Tauler and Luther {34} both deprecated good works and sought justification in faith only.

Important as this is, it is possible to see why the mystics failed to produce a real revolt from the church, and it is certain that they were far more than the Reformers fundamentally, even typically Catholic.

[Sidenote: Mysticism] It is true that mysticism is at heart always one, neither national nor confessional.

But Catholicism offered so favorable a field for this development that mysticism may be considered as the efflorescence of Catholic piety _par excellence_.

Hardly any other expression of godliness as an individual, vital thing, was possible in medieval Christendom.