Of his book against Erasmus Luther spoke long after as the only one, save the Catechism, which he would be sorry to see perish.[858] In reply to the question put by Caspar Aquila, a preacher, why so many who heard the Word did not believe, he refused to ascribe this to free-will, and as regards the temptations to despair, which the same enquirer complained were the result of his thoughts on predestination, Luther insisted, that God had not chosen to reveal His secret will (“_maiestas lucis illius occultata et non significata est_”), hence the need to turn away resolutely from such thoughts and to defy this “greatest of all temptations, truly a devilish one.” He refuses to withdraw even the proposition, that all things happen of necessity.[859] In his later years he is fond of speaking of the power of sin over man’s interior, and though he does not allude so decidedly or so frequently to man’s “absolute and entire dependence upon God’s Omnipotence,” yet he has by no means relinquished the idea. Thus the “difference between his earlier and later years” is one only of degree, i.e. he merely succeeded in keeping his theory more in the background.[860] The controversy with Erasmus did not cease with the appearance of Luther’s book, on the contrary. Apart from the question itself, the injustice done to the eminent scholar, and still more to the Church, by the arrant perversion of his opponent’s words to which Luther descended in order to stamp him and the Catholic doctrine of the past as altogether un-Christian, could not be allowed to pass unchallenged. It has been admitted, even by Protestants, as Luther’s constant policy in this work to make Erasmus say, that, in order to arrive at salvation it was sufficient to use free-will and that grace was unnecessary, and then to conclude that the Holy Ghost and Christ were shamefully set aside by Catholics. This Luther did (as Kattenbusch says) “by a certain, of course _bona fide_, perversion of his [Erasmus’s] words, or by a process of forced reasoning which can seldom, if indeed ever, be regarded as justified.”[861] 4. New Views on the Secular Authorities “Since the time of the Apostles no doctor or scribe, no theologian or jurist has confirmed, instructed and comforted the consciences of the secular Estates so well and lucidly as I have done.”[862] “Even had I, Dr. Martin, taught or done no other good, save to enlighten and instruct the secular government and authorities, yet for this cause alone they ought to be thankful to and well-disposed towards me, for they all of them, even my worst enemies, know that in Popery such understanding of the secular power was not merely discountenanced, but actually trampled under foot by the stinking, lousy priests, monks and mendicant friars.”[863]