“No, I should not like to endure this life for another forty years,” so he told his friends on June 11, 1539, “even were God to turn it into a Paradise for me. I would rather hire an executioner to chop off my head; the world is so bad that all are turning into devils, so that they could wish one nothing better than a happy death-bed, and then away!”[718] “The dear, holy Evangel of Christ, that great and precious treasure, we account as insignificant, as if it were a verse from Terence or Virgil.”[719] He found such disdain of his teaching even in his own household and family. This it was which caused him, in 1532, to preach a course of sermons to his family circle on Sundays. No head of a family, least of all here, could connive at any “contempt of the Word.” To the question of Dr. Jonas as to the wherefore of these private addresses, he replied: “I see and know that the Word of God is as much neglected in my house as in the Church.”[720] There was no more hope for the world; nothing remains “unspoiled and incorrupt” although, “now, God’s Word is revealed,” yet “it is despised, spurned, corrupted, mocked at and persecuted,” even by the adherents of his teaching.[721] Luther made Mathesius the recipient of some of his confidences, as the latter relates in his sermons; on account of the scandals among the preachers of the neighbourhood he was forced and urged by his own people to appeal to the Elector to erect a jail “into which such wild and turbulent folk might be clapped.” “Satan causes great scandals amongst the patrons and hearers of the new doctrine,” says Mathesius. The common people have become rough and self-confident and have begun to regard the ministers as worthless. “Verily,” he exclaims, “the soul of this pious old gentleman was sadly tormented day by day by the unrighteous deeds he was obliged to witness, like pious Lot in Sodom.”[722] With a deep sigh, as we read in Lauterbach’s Notes, Luther pointed to the calamities which were about to overtake the world; it was so perverse and incorrigible that discipline or admonition would be of no avail. Already there was the greatest consternation throughout the world on account of the revelation of the Word. “It is cracking and I hope it will soon burst,” and the Last Day arrive for which we are waiting. For all vices have now become habitual and people will not bear reproof. His only comfort was the progress made by studies at Wittenberg, and in some other places now thrown open to the Evangel.[723]