There is a great dearth of information with regard to the way in which Luther practised at that time the virtues of the religious life, and from his own statements we do not learn much. He complains, in 1516, to his friend Leiffer, the Erfurt Augustinian: “I am sure and know from my own experience, from yours too, and, in fact, from the general experience of all whom I have seen troubled, that it is merely the false wisdom of our own ideas which is the origin and root of our disquietude. For our eye is evil, and, to speak only of myself, into what painful misery has it brought me and still continues to bring me.”[718] Luther, whose capacity for work was enormous, flung himself into the employments which pressed upon him. He reserved little time for self-examination and for cultivating his spiritual life. In addition to his lectures, his studies, the direction of the younger monks, his sermons, whether at the monastery or in the parish church, and the heavy correspondence which devolved on him as Vicar, he also undertook various other voluntary labours. Frequently he had several sermons to preach on the same day, and with his correspondence he was scarcely able to cope. This was merely a prelude to what was to come. During the first years after his public apostasy he himself kept four printing presses at work, and besides this had a vast amount of other business to attend to. His powers of work were indeed amazing. In 1516 in a letter he tells his friend Lang of his engagements. “I really ought to have two secretaries or chancellors. I do hardly anything all day but write letters.... I am at the same time preacher to the monastery, have to preach in the refectory and am even expected to preach daily in the parish church. I am Regent of the Studium [i.e. of the younger monks] and Vicar, that is to say Prior eleven times over [i.e. of the eleven houses under his supervision]; I have to provide for the delivery of fish from the Leitzkau pond and to manage the litigation of the Herzberg fellows [the monks] at Torgau; I am lecturing on Paul, compiling an exposition of the Psalter and, as I said before, writing letters most of the time.” “It is seldom,” he adds, “that I have time for the recitation of the Divine Office or to celebrate [Mass], and then, too, I have my peculiar temptations from the flesh, the world and the devil.”[719]