Luther would not have been human if incidents like these had not caused him pain. Occasionally he would give vent to his grief, but his manly courage, too, would soon assert itself, and he would expose the hollowness, insincerity, and futility of the lying tales that were spread about him. At a public meeting in Campo Flore he was cursed, sentenced to death, and burned in effigy. (21a, 174.) He has read offensive reports about himself, and puts them down with the calm declaration: There is not a man that writes against Luther without having to resort to horrible and manifest lies. (19, 583.) He is sure that he has not had an opponent who in an argument would stick to the point; they all had to evade the issue. (22, 658.) Shameful falsehoods are canvassed about him at the court of King Ferdinand (15, 2623); Luther comforts himself with the reflection that others have suffered the same vilification before 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.}