Impatient at seeing the diet put off from day to day, Luther formed his resolution, and ended by convoking it even at Coburg. "We are already in full assembly," wrote he on the 28th April and the 9th May. "You might here see kings, dukes, and other grandees, deliberating on the affairs of their kingdom, and with indefatigable voice publishing their dogmas and decrees in the air. They dwell not in those caverns which you decorate with the name of palaces; the heavens are their canopy; the leafy trees form a floor of a thousand colours, and their walls are the ends of the earth. They have a horror of all the unmeaning luxury of silk and gold; they ask neither coursers nor armour, and have all the same clothing and the same colour. I have neither seen nor heard their emperor; but if I can understand them, they have determined this year to make a pitiless war upon----the most excellent fruits of the earth.--Ah! my dear friends," said he to his messmates,[391] to whom he was writing, "these are the sophists, the Papists, who are assembled before me in a heap, to make me hear their sermons and their cries."--These two letters, dated from the "_empire of ravens and crows_," finish in the following mournful strain, which shows us the Reformer descending into himself after this play of his imagination: "Enough of jesting!--jesting which is, however, sometimes necessary to dispel the gloomy thoughts that prey upon me."[392] [391] An seine Tischgesellen.--(L. Epp. iv. p. 7.) [392] Sed serio et necessario joco qui mihi irruentes cogitationes repelleret.--(L. Epp. iv. p. 14.) [Sidenote: TRAVAIL OF THE GOSPEL.] Luther soon returned to real life, and thrilled with joy at beholding the fruits that the Reformation was already bearing, and which were for him a more powerful "apology" than even the confession of Melancthon. "Is there in the whole world a single country to be compared to your highness's states," wrote he to the Elector, "and which possesses preachers of so pure a doctrine, or pastors so fitted to bring about the reign of peace? Where do we see, as in Saxony, boys and girls well instructed in the Holy Scriptures and in the Catechism, increasing in wisdom and in stature, praying, believing, talking of God and of Christ better than has been done hitherto by all the universities, convents, and chapters of Christendom?"[393] "My dear Duke John, says the Lord to you, I commend this paradise to thee, the most beautiful that exists in the world, that thou mayst be its gardener." And then he added: "Alas! the madness of the Papist princes changes this paradise of God into a dirty slough, and corrupting the youth, peoples every day with real devils their states, their tables, and their palaces." [393] Eswächst jetz daher die zart Jugend von Knäblin un Maidlin.--(Ibid. p. 21.)