In the widely read new edition of the book of Prophecies by Johann Lichtenberger, astrologer to the Emperor Frederick III. (1488), republished by Luther in 1527 with a new Preface, the latter’s ideas play a certain part. Luther did not regard these Prophecies as a “spiritual revelation”; they were merely astrological predictions, as he says in the Preface,[482] views which might often prove to be questionable and faulty; nevertheless, his “belief” is “that God does actually make use of heavenly signs, such as comets, eclipses of the sun and the moon, etc., to announce impending misfortune and to warn and affright the ungodly.”[483] “I myself do not scorn this Lichtenberger in everything he says, for he has come right in some things.”[484] Luther is principally concerned with the chastisements predicted by Lichtenberger, but not yet accomplished—as the “priestlings” rejoiced to think—but, still to overtake them owing to their hostility to the Lutheran teaching. “Because they refuse to amend their impious life and doctrine, but on the contrary persevere in it and grow worse, I also will prophesy that in a short time their joy shall be turned to shame, and will ask them kindly to remember me then.”[485] Later he speaks incidentally of Lichtenberger as a “fanatic, but still one who had foretold many things, for this the devil is well able to do.”[486] During his stay at the Wartburg he had occasion to reflect on the ancient prophecy concerning an Emperor Frederick, who should redeem the Holy Sepulchre. He was inclined to see in this Frederick, his Elector, whose right hand he himself was. The difficulty that the Elector was not Emperor did not appear to him insuperable, since at Frankfurt the votes of the other electors had been given to Frederick, so that he might have been “a real emperor had he so desired.” Still, he was loath to insist upon such an artifice; this solution of the difficulty might, he says, be termed mere child’s play. What is much clearer to him is, that the Holy Sepulchre of the prophecy is “the Holy Scripture wherein the truth of Christ lies buried, after having been put to death by the Papists.... As for the actual tomb in which the Lord lay and which is now in the hands of the Saracens, God cares no more about it than about the Swiss cows. But no one can deny that amongst you, under Duke Frederick, Elector of Saxony, the living truth of the Gospel has shone forth.”[487] CHAPTER XVII GLIMPSES OF A REFORMER’S MORALS 1. Luther’s Vocation. His Standard of Life