A dark pessimism broods over Luther’s spirit almost constantly whenever he speaks of the years awaiting Germany; he sees the people, owing to his innovations, confronted with disastrous civil wars, split up into endless and perpetually increasing sects and thus brought face to face with hopeless moral degradation. His cry is, Let the Empire dissolve, “Let Germany perish.” “Let the world fall into ruins.”[264] He consoles himself with the reflection that Christ, when founding His Church, had foreseen and sanctioned the inevitable destruction of all hostile powers, of Judaism and even of the Roman Empire. It was in the nature of the Gospel to triumph by the destruction of all that withstood it. It was certainly a misfortune, Luther admits, that the wickedness of the Germans, every day growing worse, should be the cause of this ruin. “I am very hopeless about Germany now that she has harboured within her walls those real Turks and devils, viz. avarice, usury, tyranny, dissensions and this Lernean serpent of envy and malice which has entangled the nobles, the Court, every Rathaus, town and village, to say nothing of the contempt for the Divine Word and unprecedented ingratitude [towards the new Evangel].” This is how he wrote to Lauterbach.[265] Writing to Jonas, he declared: “No improvement need be looked for in Germany whether the realm be in the hands of the Turk or in our own, for the only aim of the nobility and Princes is how they can enslave Germany and suck the people dry and make everything their very own.”[266]