When it was a question of the working of miracles by the heaven-sent messenger, he was of too practical a turn of mind to appeal to anything but the ostensible tokens of the Divine favour worked around him and on his behalf in proof of the truth of the new Evangel. He carefully avoided attributing any miracles to his own powers, even when assisted by Divine grace, though, occasionally, he seems to imply that, were the need to arise, he might well work wonders by the power of God, were he only to ask it of Him. With the question of miracles and predictions as proofs of Luther’s Divine mission we shall deal later (p. 153 ff.). While on the one hand Luther’s views of miracles and prophecies witness to an error which was not without effect on his persuasion of his Divine mission, on the other his pseudo-mystic notion of his special calling led him superstitiously to see in chance events of history either the extraordinary confirmation of his mission or the celestial condemnation of Popery. We know that Luther not only shared the superstitions of his contemporaries, but also defended them with all the weight of his great name and literary talents.[322] When at Vienna, in January, 1520, something unusual was perceived in the sky, he at once referred it to “his tragedy,” as he had done even previously in similar cases. He also expressed the wish that he himself might be favoured with some such sign. The noisy spirits which had formerly disturbed people had, he believed, been reduced in number throughout the world solely owing to his Evangel. The omnipotence of the devil and the evil he worked on men was, so he thought, to be restrained only by the power of that Word which had again been made known to the world, thanks to his preaching.[323] It was his intention to publish an account of the demoniacal happenings which had taken place in his day and which confirmed his mission; he was only prevented from doing this by want of time.[324] To astrology, unlike Melanchthon, he ever showed himself averse. Another element which loomed large in his persuasion that he was a prophet was his so-called “temptations,” i.e. the mental troubles, which, so he thought, were caused by the devil and which, coinciding as they often did with other sufferings, were sometimes the cause of long fits of misery and dejection.[325]