the mysteries better. To show that he meant it all in deadly earnest, he adduced texts from Scripture which might prove how “well-grounded” was his interpretation. He declares, that he only speaks of what he is quite sure, and that he refrains from a further, i.e. a prophetic, interpretation of the “Monk-Calf” because it was not sufficiently certain, although “God gives us to understand by these portents that some great misfortune and change is imminent.” His hope is that this change might be the coming of the Last Day, “since many signs have so far coincided.” Hence his strange delusion concerning the calf goes hand in hand with his habitual one concerning the approaching end of the world. It would be to misapprehend the whole character of the writing to assert, as has recently been done by an historian of Luther, that the author was merely joking, and that what he says of the Monk-Calf was simply a jest at the expense of the Pope and the monks. As a matter of fact, every line of the work protests against such a misrepresentation of the author and his prophetic mysticism, and no one can read the pamphlet without being struck by the entire seriousness which it breathes. The tragic earnestness of the whole is evident in the very first pages, where Luther allows a friend to give his own interpretation of a similar abortion (the Pope-Ass) born in Italy. Here the writer is no other than the learned Humanist Melanchthon, who, like Luther, with the help of a woodcut, describes and explains the portent. Pope-Ass and Monk-Calf made the round of Germany together, in successive editions. Melanchthon, scholar though he was, is not one whit less earnest in the significance he attaches to the “Pope-Ass found dead in 1496 in the Tiber at Rome.” After this double work, so little to the credit of German literature, had frequently been reprinted, Luther, in 1535, added two additional pages to Melanchthon’s text with a corroboration entitled: “Dr. Martin Luther’s Amen to the interpretation of the Pope-Ass.” He here accepts entirely Melanchthon’s exposition, which was more than the latter was willing to do for Luther’s interpretation of the Monk-Calf. Melanchthon’s opinion, for which perhaps more might be said, was that the misshapen calf stood for the corruption of the Lutheran teaching by sensuality and perverse doctrine, iconoclast violence and revolutionary peasant movements.[421] In his “Amen” to Melanchthon’s Pope-Ass, Luther writes: “The Sublime, Divine Wisdom Itself” “created this hideous, shocking and horrible image.” “Well may the whole world be affrighted and tremble.” “People are terrified if a spirit or devil appears, or makes a clatter in a corner, though this is but mere child’s play compared with such an abomination, wherein God manifests Himself openly and shows Himself so cruel. Great indeed is the wrath which must be impending over the Papacy.”[422]