In 1530, Luther, writing from the Castle of Coburg, gave him the following counsel; we must bear in mind that it comes from one who was himself then struggling with the most acute mental anxiety.[506] “Sometimes it is necessary to drink more freely, to play and to jest and even to commit some sin (‘_peccatum aliquod faciendum_’) out of hatred and contempt for the devil, so that he may get no chance of making a matter of conscience out of mere trifles; otherwise we shall be vanquished if we are too anxious about not committing sin.... Oh that I could paint sin in a fair light,[507] so as to mock at the devil and make him see that I acknowledge no sin and am not conscious of having committed any! I tell you, we must put all the Ten Commandments, with which the devil tempts and plagues us so greatly, out of sight and out of mind. If the devil upbraids us with our sins and declares us to be deserving of death and hell, then we must say: ‘I confess that I have merited death and hell,’ but what then? Are you for that reason to be damned eternally? By no means. ‘I know One Who suffered and made satisfaction for me, viz. Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Where He is, there I also shall be.’” Fell counsels such as these, to despise sin and to meet the temptation by sinning, Luther had certainly not learnt from the spiritual writers of the past. Such writers, more particularly those whom he professed to have read at his monastery, viz. Bernard, Bonaventure and Gerson, teach that sin must first be resisted, after which we may then seek prayerfully for the cause of the trouble; for this is not always due to the temptations of the devil, as Luther unquestioningly assumed in his own case and, consequently, also in that of Weller. If conscience was oppressed by sin, then, according to these spiritual writers, a remedy different from that suited to doubts against the faith must be applied, namely, penance, to be followed by acts of hope. If the trouble in Weller’s case was one of doubts concerning faith, anyone but Luther would have been careful to ascertain first of all whether these doubts referred to the specifically Lutheran doctrine or to the other truths of the Christian revelation. Luther, however, at the commencement of the letter, simply declares: “You must rest assured that this temptation comes from the devil, and that you are thus tortured because you believe in Christ”—i.e. in the Lutheran doctrine and in the Christ preached by that sect, as is clear from the reference immediately following to the “foes of the Evangel,” who live in security and good cheer.