“His enemies called the temper of the strong man demoniacal,” says a Protestant historian of the Peasant-War, “and, as a matter of fact,” he adds, “the Luther we meet with in the writings of the years 1517-1525 bears but little resemblance to the earnest, but cheerful and kindly husband and father whom Protestants are wont to picture as their reformer.”[606] This remark applies with special force to the year 1525 when he actually became a husband, though more stress should be laid upon the mental strain he was undergoing. Luther undoubtedly acted at that time, not only in the matter of the Peasant-War, but also in many other complex questions, under the influence of an overwrought temper. It was a period of combined internal and external conflict, which, so to speak, raised his troubled spirit above the normal conditions of existence. With the fanatics he had to struggle for the very existence of his evangel; the contradictions and dissensions within the new fold also caused him constant anxiety. His controversy with the learned Erasmus on the subject of Free-Will angered him beyond measure, for Erasmus, as Luther says, “held the knife to his throat”[607] by his book in defence of the freedom of the human will. Luther was also at war with the “wiseacres” who disapproved of his marriage, and had to vindicate his action also to himself. In feverish delirium he fancies he sees the jaws of death gaping for him, and feels that the devil in all his strength has been let loose to seize upon his person, as the one through whom alone, as he says, truth and salvation are to be proclaimed to the world. He marries, and then exclaims with fear: “Perhaps as soon as I am dead my teaching will be overthrown; then my example may be a source of encouragement to the weak.”[608] “I see the rabble as well as the nobles raging against me,” but this comfort remains to me, “however hostile they may be to me on account of my marriage or other matters, yet their hostility is only a sign that I am in the right”; “were the world not scandalised at me, then I should indeed fear that what we do was not from God.”[609] The idea of his own divine mission, raising him far above the reach of his enemies, finds expression to quite a marked degree in the letters he wrote to his friends at that time. In these he is certainly not speaking of mere fancies, but of views which he was earnestly desirous of inculcating.