It is here that Luther tells the people that, “from the beginning a wise Prince has been a rare find, and a pious Prince something rarer still. Usually they are the biggest fools or the most arrant knaves on earth; hence one must always expect the worst from them and little good, particularly in Divine things which pertain to the salvation of souls. For they are God’s lictors and hangmen.”[970] “The usual thing is for Isaias iii. 4 to be verified: ‘I will give children to be their princes, and the effeminate shall rule over them.’”[971] We have to look on while “secular Princes rule in spiritual matters and spiritual Princes in secular things.” In what else does the devil’s work on earth consist but in making fun of the world and turning it into a pantomime. In conclusion he hints to the Princes plainly that the “mob and the common folk are beginning to see through it all.”[972] A Protestant writer, in extenuation of such dangerous language against the rulers, recently remarked: “It never entered Luther’s head that such words might bring the Princes into contempt and thus, indirectly, promote rebellion.... If we are to draw a just conclusion from his blindness to the obvious psychological consequences of his words, it can only be, that Luther was no politician.”[973] It may, indeed, be that he did not then sufficiently weigh the consequences. Nevertheless, in his scurrilous writings against individual Princes he was perfectly ready to brave every possible outcome of his vituperation. “What Luther wrote against the German Princes,” justly remarks Döllinger, “against Albert, Elector of Mayence, against the Duke of Brunswick and Duke George of Saxony, puts into the shade all the libels and screeds of the more recent European literature.”[974] One of the chief targets for his shafts was the Archbishop of Mayence.