If we consider the temptations of which he speaks, we might be tempted to think that he, with his promising disposition and proneness to extremes, had been singled out in a quite special manner by the tempter. During the term of novitiate, writes Luther when more advanced in years, the evil spirit of darkness, so he has learned, does not usually assail so bitterly the monk who is striving after perfection. Satan generally tempts him but slightly, and, more especially as regards temptations of the flesh, the novice is left in comparative peace, “indeed, nothing appears to him more agreeable than chastity.”[40] But, after that time, so he tells us, he himself had to bewail not only fears and doubts, but also numberless temptations which “his age brought along with it.”[41] He felt himself at the same time troubled with doubts as to his vocation and by “violent movements of hatred, envy, quarrelsomeness and pride.”[42] “I was unable to rid myself of the weight; horrible and terrifying thoughts (‘_horrendæ et terrificæ cogitationes_’), stormed in upon me.”[43] Temptations to despair of his salvation and to blaspheme God tormented him more especially. He had often wondered, he says on one occasion to his father Hans, whether he was the only man whom the devil thus attacked and persecuted,[44] and later he comforted one who was in great anxiety with the words: “When beset with the greatest temptations I could scarcely retain my bodily powers, hardly keep my breath, and no one was able to comfort me. All those to whom I complained answered ‘I know nothing about it,’ so that I used to sigh ‘Is it I alone who am plagued with the spirit of sorrow!’”[45] He thinks that he learned the nature of these temptations from the Psalms, and that he had by experience made close acquaintance with the verse of the Bible: “Every night I will wash my bed: I will water my couch with my tears” (Ps. vi. 7). Satan with his temptations was the murderer of mankind; but, notwithstanding, one must not despair. Luther here speaks of visions granted him, and of angels who after ten years brought him consolation in his solitude; these statements we shall examine later.