At the commencement he bravely grapples with the opposition he has encountered. “‘There, there,’ they boast, ‘we see Luther’s spirit, and that he teaches the shedding of blood without mercy; it must be the devil who speaks through him!’” Thus everybody is ready to fall on him, such is the ingratitude displayed towards the “great, and bright light of the evangel.” “Who is able to gag a fool?” His accusers were “doubtless also rebels.” But “a rebel does not deserve a reasonable answer, for he will not accept it; the only way to answer such foul-mouthed rascals is with the fist, till their noses dribble. The peasants would not listen to him or let him speak, therefore their ears must be opened by musket bullets so that their heads fly into the air.... I will not listen to any talk of mercy, but will give heed to what God’s Word demands.” “Therefore my booklet is right and true though all the world should be scandalised at it.”[573] He attacks those who “advocate mercy so beautifully, now that the peasants have been defeated.” “It is easy to detect you, you ugly black devil”; every robber might as well come, and, after having been “sentenced by the judge to be beheaded, cry: ‘But Christ teaches that you are to be merciful.’” “This is just what the defenders of the peasants are doing” when they “sing their song of mercy”; they themselves are the “veriest bloodhounds, for they wish vice to go unpunished.”[574] “Here, as in many other places, where Luther has to defend his standpoint against attack,” Köstlin says of this writing, “he draws the reins tighter instead of easing them.” “Here he no longer sees fit to say even one word on behalf of the peasants, notwithstanding the real grievances which had caused the rising.”[575] At a time, when, after their victory, many of the lords, both Catholic and Lutheran, were raging with the utmost cruelty against all the vanquished, even against those who had been drawn into the rising through no fault of their own, at a time when the loudest exhortations to mercy would have been far more in place, he unthinkingly pours forth such passionate words as these: “If wrath prevails in the Empire then we must be resigned and endure the punishment, or humbly sue for pardon.” It is true that those “who are of God’s Kingdom [viz. true Christians] must show mercy towards all and pray for them,” but they must not “interfere with the secular power and its work, but rather assist and further it”; “this wrath of the secular power [this at the moment entirely engrosses his thoughts] is not the least part of the Divine mercy.” “What a fine sort of mercy would that be, to show pity to thieves and murderers and to allow myself to be murdered, dishonoured and robbed?” “What more naughty was ever heard of than a mad rabble and a peasant gorged with food and drink and grown powerful?”[576]