Luther himself was at times inclined to be ashamed of his ways of speaking, and repeatedly expresses regret, without, however, showing any signs of improvement. We read in Cordatus’s Diary that (in 1527, during his illness) “he asked pardon for the frivolous words he had often spoken with the object of banishing the melancholy of a weak flesh, not with any evil intent.”[882] At such moments he appears to have remembered how startling a contrast his speeches and jests presented to the exhortation of St. Paul to his disciples, and to all the preachers of the Gospel: “Make thyself a pattern to all men ... by a worthy mode of life; let thy conversation be pure and blameless” (Titus ii. 7 f.). “Be a model to the faithful in word, in act, in faith and charity, in chastity” (1 Tim. iv. 12). It would be wrong to believe that he ever formally declared foul speaking to be permissible. It has been said that, in any case in theory, he had no objection to it, and, that, in a letter, he even recommends it. The passage in question, found in an epistle addressed to Prince Joachim of Anhalt, who was much troubled with temptations to melancholy, runs thus: “It is true that to take pleasure in sin is the devil, but to take pleasure in the society of good, pious people in the fear of God, sobriety and honour is well pleasing to God, even with possibly a word or ‘Zötlein’ too much.”[883] The expression “Zötlein” (allied with the French “sottise”) did not, however, then bear the bad meaning suggested by the modern German word “Zote,” and means no more than a jest or merry story; that such a meaning was conveyed even by the word “Zote” itself can readily be proved. Especially was it Luther’s practice to load his polemics with a superabundance of filthy allusions to the baser functions of the body; at times, too, we meet therein expressions and imagery positively indecent. In his work “Vom Schem Hamphoras” against the Jews he revels in scenes recalling that enacted between Putiphar’s wife and Joseph, though here it is no mere temptation but actual mutual sin; the tract contains much else of the same character.[884] In the notorious tract entitled “Wider Hans Worst,” which he wrote against Duke Henry of Brunswick (1541), he begins by comparing him with a “common procuress walking the street to seize, capture and lead astray honest maidens”;[885] he gradually works himself up into such a state of excitement as to describe the Church of Rome as the “real devil’s whore”; nay, the “archdevil’s whore,” the “shameless prostitute” who dwells in a “whores’ church” and houses of ill-fame, and compared with whom, as we have already heard him say elsewhere, “common city whores, field whores, country whores and army whores”[886] may well be deemed saints. In this work such figures of speech occur on almost every page. Elsewhere he describes the motions of the “Roman whore” in the most repulsive imagery.[887]