His regular daily prayer he says elsewhere was the Our Father, the Creed and the other usual formulas.[922] “I have daily to do violence to myself in order to pray,” he remarked to his friends, “and I am satisfied to repeat when I go to bed the Ten Commandments, the Our Father and then a verse or two; thinking over them I fall asleep.”[923] “The Our Father is my prayer, I pray this and sometimes intermingle with it something from the Psalms, so as to put to shame the vain scoffers and false teachers.” It must not be overlooked, however, that on extraordinary occasions, when his hatred of the Papacy was more than usually strong or when troubles pressed, his prayer was apt to assume strange forms. His abomination for the Pope found vent, as he repeatedly tells us, in his maledictory Paternoster.[924] When in great fear and anxiety concerning Melanchthon, who lay sick at Weimar, he, to use his own quaint phraseology, “threw down his tools before our God,” to compel Him, as it were, to render assistance. Another such attempt to do violence to God is the purport of a prayer uttered in dejection during his stay in the fortress of Coburg, which Veit Dietrich, who overheard it, gives us in what he states were Luther’s own words: “I know that Thou art Our God and Father; hence I am certain Thou wilt put to shame all those who persecute Thy children. Shouldst Thou not do so, there will be as much danger for Thee as for us. This is Thy cause, and we only took it up because we knew Thou wouldst defend it,” etc.[925] This intimate friend of Luther’s also tells us, that, in those anxious days, Luther’s conversations concerning God and his hopes for the future bore an even deeper stamp than usual of sincerity and depth of feeling. Dietrich was one of Luther’s most passionately devoted pupils. “Ah, prayer can do much,” such are Luther’s words in one of the numerous passages of the Table-Talk, where he recommends its use. “By prayer many are saved, even now, just as we ourselves prayed Philip back to life.”[926] “It is impossible,” he says, “that God should not answer the prayer of faith; that He does not always do so is another matter. God does not give according to a prescribed measure, but heaped up and shaken down, as He says.... Hence James says (v. 16): ‘Pray one for another,’ etc. ‘The continual prayer of a just man availeth much.’ That is one of the best verses in his Epistle. Prayer is a powerful thing.”[927] Anyone who has followed Luther’s development and understands his character will know where to find the key to these remarkable, and at first sight puzzling, declarations of trust in God and zeal in prayer.