As, in what follows, and in studying the psychology of his anti-Papal abuse, we shall have again occasion to encounter unpleasant passages, we may well make our own the words of Sir Thomas More in his “_Responsio ad convitia Lutheri_,” where he trounces Luther for his handling of Henry VIII.: “The gentle reader must forgive me if much that occurs offends his feelings. Nothing has been more painful to me than to be compelled to pour such things into decent ears. The only other alternative would, however, have been to leave the unclean book untouched.”[936] _The Jews._ In his earlier days Luther had been more friendly towards the Jews, and had even cherished the childish hope that many of them would embrace the new Evangel and help him in his warfare against the Papal Antichrist. When this failed to come about Luther became more and more angered with their blasphemy against Christ, their art of seducing the faithful and their cunning literary attacks on Christian doctrine. He was also greatly vexed because his Elector, in spite of having, in 1536, ordered all Jews to leave the country, nevertheless, in 1538, granted them a conditional permit to travel through it; he was still more exasperated with Ferdinand the German King who had curtailed the disabilities of the Jews. Luther’s opinion was that the only thing to do was to break their pride; he now relinquished all hope of convincing any large number of them of the truth of Christianity; even the biblical statements, according to which the Jews were to be converted before the end of the world, appeared to him to have been shorn of their value.[937] Hence Luther was, above all, desirous of proving to the faithful that the objections brought forward by the Jews against Christian doctrine and their interpretation of the Old Testament so as to exclude the Christian Messias were all wrong. This he did in three writings which followed each other at short intervals: “Von den Jüden und jren Lügen,” “Vom Schem Hamphoras,” both dating from 1542, and “Von den letzten Worten Davids” (1543). Owing to his indignation these writings are no mere works of instruction, but in parts are crammed with libel and scurrilous abuse.[938] In the first of these tracts, for instance, he voices as follows his opinion of the religious learning of the Hebrews: “This passage [the Ten Commandments] is far above the comprehension of the blind and hardened Jews, and to discourse to them on it would be as useless as preaching the Gospel to a pig. They cannot grasp the nature of God’s law, much less do they know how to keep it.” “Their boast of following the external Mosaic ordinances whilst disobeying the Ten Commandments, fits the Jews just as well as ornaments do an evil woman”; “yet clothes, adornments, garlands, jewels would serve far better to deck the sow that wallows in the mire than a strumpet.”[939]