He frequently repeats later that his professorship at the University had been bestowed upon him by a Divine dispensation and against his will; whereas others were honoured for their academic labours, he complains to Spalatin of being persecuted; “I teach against my will and yet I have to endure evil things.” “What I now do and have done, I was compelled to do.” “I have enough sins on my conscience without incurring the unpardonable one of being unfaithful to my office, of refraining from scourging evil and of neglecting the truth to the detriment of so many thousand souls.”[302]—At the time when the Disputation at Leipzig was preparing, he tells the same confidant that the matter must be left to God: “I do not desire that it should happen according to our designs, otherwise I would prefer to desist from it altogether.” Spalatin must not desire to see the matter judged and settled according to human wisdom, but should remember that we know nothing of “God’s plans.”[303] Everything had befallen him in accordance with God’s design. It was in accordance therewith, nay, “at the command of God,” that he had become a monk, so at least he says later. This, too, was his reason for giving up the office in choir and the recitation of the Breviary. “Our Lord God dragged me by force from the canonical hours, anno 1520.”[304] His marriage likewise was the direct result of God’s plan. “The Lord suddenly flung me into matrimony in a wonderful way while my thoughts were set in quite another direction.”[305] At an earlier date he had, so he said, defended the theses of his Resolutions only “because God compelled him to advance all these propositions.”[306] His first encounter with Dr. Eck took place, so he was persuaded, “at God’s behest.”[307] “God takes good care that I should not be idle.”[308] It is God Who “calls and compels him” to return to Wittenberg after his stay at the Wartburg.[309]—It is not surprising, then, that he also attributes to God’s doing the increase in the number of his friends and followers. The success of his efforts to bring about a great falling away from the Catholic Church he regarded as a clear Divine confirmation of his mission, so that “no higher proof or miracle was needed.”[310] Even the disturbance and tumult which resulted bore witness in his favour, since Christ says: “I am come to send a sword.” All around him prevailed “discord, revolt and uproar,”[311] because, forsooth, the Gospel was there at work; the calm, unquestioned sovereignty of Popery within its own boundaries was a sure sign of its being the devil’s own.[312] “Did I not meet with curses, I should not believe that my cause was from God.”[313]