ore him, for instance, Wyclif, Hus, and others
(5, 308). Besides, he is able to understand that the real reason why
the papists regard him as such a perverse and untractable person is
because they are utterly perverse themselves. (4, 1499.)

But his sweetest comfort is in reflecting that it is his preaching which
has brought his manifold afflictions upon him. Poor Luther is always
wrong: the Sacramentarians and Anabaptists hate him worse than they hate
the Pope, and the Pope hates him worse than he hates other heretics,
because they all fight against the Gospel which Luther preaches. (22,
1015.) If I were to keep silent, he says, or preach as I used to do,
concerning indulgences, pilgrimages, adoration of the saints, purgatory,
the carnival of the Mass, I could easily keep the favor and friendship
of the great. (8, 569.) But for the sake of the true doctrine and those
who profess it,--whom his opponents wish to suppress, Luther is willing
to suffer hatred, persecution, calumnies, and everything else that his
enemies may devise against him. (5, 587.) What have I done, he exclaims,
to deserve the enmity of the Pope and his rabble, except that I have
preached Christ? (8, 569.) He is convinced from the papists' own
confession that he is being persecuted for no other reason than because
he is preaching the Gospel. (8, 399.}

Knowing the reason why he is hated, Luther glories in his tribulations.
Duke George, he says, calls me a desperate, low-bred, perjured knave: I
shall consider those ugly names my emeralds, rubies, and diamonds. (19,
457.) He would fear that there must be something wrong about his
teaching if the people whom he knows would not fight against him: if
these people do not condemn his doctrine, his doctrine cannot be
acceptable to God. (10, 351.) He prefers to have them rage against him.
Their violence shall not disturb him greatly, because he has championed
the Lord's cause, and that, in all sincerity, without malice toward any
person. (21a, 301.) . Let the papists exhaust themselves in slanders
against him: he knows he has the Scriptures on his side, and they have
the Scriptures against them. (5, 310.) They intend to grind Luther to
pieces, not a hair of him is to remain; he knows that they will not be
able to harm a hair on his head. (8, 119.)

Thus Luther thought and spoke of his detractors and defamers. Such was
his comfort and his courage in the face of base calumnies and undeserved
hatred. Those who k