In the same sermon, it is true, Luther quotes, happily and at the same time forcibly, passages from Holy Scripture in praise of good rulers. In his popular style he points out what should be the qualities of a righteous sovereign who is solicitous for his people’s welfare. Such a ruler, he says, is courageous and determined in dealing with evil of every sort, and says to himself: “Even though this rich, powerful, strong man, be he Jack or peer, becomes my enemy, I don’t care. By virtue of my office and calling I have one on my side who is far stronger, more respected and more powerful than he, and though he [the enemy] should have all the devils, Princes and Kings on his side, all worse than himself, what is all that to me if He Who sits up there in Heaven is with me? All undertakings should be decided in this way, and one should say: Dear Lord, I leave it in Thy hands, though it should cost me my life. Then God answers: Be steadfast and I will also stand by you.” Luther nevertheless concludes: “But where will you find such rulers? Where are they?”[907] In his sermon of December 3, likewise, he had drawn a beautiful picture of the modesty and renunciation which the example of Christ teaches both Princes and people. Yet there again, at the conclusion, we find him saying: “There is no kingdom that is not addicted to plunder. The Princes are a gang of cut-purses.”[908] In the writing “On the secular power,” to which we must here revert, Luther says, that the Princes are, as a rule, “the biggest fools or the worst knaves on the surface of the earth”; a good Prince “had always been a rare bird from the beginning of the world.” Because the world is “of the devil,” therefore “its Princes too are of a like nature.” In spite of this Luther ends by saying, that as God’s “hangmen,” the Princes ought to be obeyed.[909] Later on he was to declare that the passages from the Bible, which he had here quoted in support of this obedience, were his best defence against the charge of diminishing the respect due to Princes, or of teaching rebellion. “The fact that, in that work, I based and confirmed the temporal supremacy and obedience on Scripture is of itself sufficient refutation of such slanders.”[910]