Of the last decade of Luther’s life his pupil Mathesius relates, that, in the evening, “if not inclined for sleep, he had to take a draught to promote it, often making excuse for so doing: ‘You young fellows must not mind if our Elector and an old chap like me take a generous drink; we have to try and find our pillow and our bolster in the tankard.’”[1006] The same witness relates another utterance of about the same time: “He came home from a party and drank the health of a guest: ‘I must make merry to-day, for I have received bad tidings; for this there is no better cure than a fervent Paternoster and a brave heart. For the demon of melancholy is much put out when a man insists upon being merry.’”[1007] Here we have two reasons, want of sleep and depression resulting from bad news, which induced him to have a “good drink.” A third reason was furnished by his temptations to doubt and vacillate in faith. The “good drink” must not, however, be too deep as it “recently was at the Electoral couchee at Torgau, where, not satisfied with the usual measures, they pledged each other in half-gallon cans. That they called a good drink. _Sic inventa lege inventa est et fraus legis._”[1008] Luther’s advice to his pupil Hieronymus Weller, when the latter was tempted and troubled, as stated above (p. 175), was to follow his example and “to drink deeper and jest more freely,” and to answer the devil when he objected to such drinking, that “he would drink all the more because he forbade it”; he himself (Luther), for no other reason, was wont to drink more deeply and talk more freely than to scorn the devil by his “hard drinking.”[1009] “When troubled with gloomy thoughts,” he declared on another occasion, it was his habit “to have a good pull at the beer”; Melanchthon had a different sort of remedy, viz. consulting the stars; Luther, however, considered his practice the better one.[1010] These and such-like utterances circulated far and wide, often in a highly exaggerated form, and Luther had only himself to thank if many Catholics, on the strength of them, came to regard him as a regular drunkard. This impression was in no way diminished by the rough humour which accompanied his talk of eating and drinking. People then were perfectly acquainted with the fact that the Table-Talk was regarded, even by some enthusiastic Lutherans, as only a half revelation, the truth being that they did not make sufficient allowance for Luther’s vein of humour and exaggeration.