If he sought for distraction in cheerful conversation, this was merely to react against such gloomy thoughts. The more and more worldly life he began to lead may also be regarded as due in some measure to the effort on his part to escape these moods. We may also find in them the psychological explanation of the excesses he commits in his attacks upon the Church, his very violence serving to relieve his feelings and to reassure him. His customary defiance enables him to surmount all obstacles: the external anxieties caused by his adversaries and the interior temptations which he ascribes to the devil. “I have triumphed over him [the devil],” he exclaims confidently, “who has more power and cunning in his smallest claw than all the popes, kings and doctors.... My doctrine shall prevail and the Pope fall, in defiance of the gates of hell and all the powers of the air, the earth and the sea.”[430] We feel it our duty to complete this remarkable picture of passion, defiance and struggle by some few additional traits taken from Luther’s writings at that time. On the question of the vow of chastity and priestly celibacy a rude though perfectly justified answer was supplied him by many writers on the Catholic side, yet he ignored them all, and on the contrary proceeded on his way with even greater fury and passion. He proclaims a sacred command to marry, a command not one whit less binding than the Decalogue. Here, as in the case of other questions of morals and dogma, he is carried forward by passion, rather than by a calm recognition of the truth. He exclaims somewhat later: “Just as it is a matter of stern necessity and strict command when God says: ‘Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not commit adultery,’ so there is also stern necessity and strict command, nay a still greater necessity and yet more stringent command: ‘Thou shalt marry, Thou shalt have a wife, Thou shalt have a husband.’ For there stands God’s Word (Gen. i. 27), ‘God created man ... male and female he created them’! The consciences of the unmarried must be importuned, urged and tormented until they comply, and are made at length to say: ‘Well, if it must be so, then let it so be.’”[431] When it was pointed out to him, that in the New Testament celibacy embraced from love of God was presented as one of the evangelical counsels, he straightway denied both the existence and the authority of the evangelical counsels. And when his opponents replied that Christ frequently counselled acts of great virtue without making of them strict commands, but mere counsels of perfection, for instance with the words: “If one smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also,” Luther will have it that Christ, even here, gave the strict command to allow ourselves to be smitten also on the left cheek.