The further we see into Luther’s soul, thanks especially to his familiar utterances recorded in the Table-Talk, the more plainly does this overwhelming enmity stand revealed. In what he said privately to his friends we find his unvarnished thought and real feelings. Far from being in any sense artificial, the intense annoyance which rings throughout his abuse seems to rise spontaneously from the very bottom of his soul. That he should have pictured to himself the Papacy as a dragon may be termed a piece of folly, nevertheless it was thus that it ever hovered before his mind, by day and by night, whether in the cheery circle of his friends or in his solitary study, in the midst of ecclesiastical or ecclesiastico-political business, when engaged in quiet correspondence with admirers and even when he sought in prayer help and comfort in his troubles. In Lauterbach’s Diary we find Luther describing the Pope as the “Beast,”[988] the “Dragon of Hell” towards whom “one cannot be too hostile,”[989] as the “Dragon and Crocodile,” whose whole being “was, and still is, rascality through and through.”[990] “Even were the Pope St. Peter, he would still be godless.”[991] “Whoever wishes to glorify the Blood of Christ must needs rage against the Pope who blasphemes it.”[992] “The Pope has sold Christ’s Blood and the state of matrimony, hence the money-bag [of this Judas] is chock-full of the proceeds of robbery.... He has banned and branded me, and stuck me in the devil’s behind. Hence I am going to hang him on his own keys.”[993] This he said when a caricature was shown him representing the Pope strung up next to Judas, with the latter’s money-bag. “I am the Pope’s devil,” so he declared to his companions, “hence it is that he hates and persecutes me.”[994] And yet the chief crime of this execrated Papacy was its non-acceptance of Luther’s innovations. The legal measures taken against him agreeably with the olden law, whether of the State or of the Church, were no proof of “hatred,” however much they might lame his own pretensions. In other notes of his conversations we read: “Formerly we looked at the Pope’s face, now we look only at his posterior, in which there is no majesty.”[995] “The city of Rome now lies mangled and the devil has discharged over it his filth, i.e. the Pope.”[996] It is a true saying, that, “if there be a hell, Rome is built upon it.”[997] “Almost all the Romans are now sunk in Epicurism; they trouble themselves not at all about God or a good conscience. Alack for our times! I used to believe that the Epicurean doctrine was dead and buried, yet here it is still flourishing.”[998]