The whole mountain of abuse expressed here and in what follows rests on this last assumption, viz. that the Pope perverts “the truth of God’s Word”; thanks to this the Wittenberg Professor fancied he could overthrow a Church which had fifteen centuries behind it. His hate is just as deeply rooted in his soul as his delusion concerning his special call. According to the German Colloquies the Pope, like Mohammed, “began under the Emperor Phocas”: “The prophecy [of the Apocalypse] includes both, the Pope and the Turk.”[1005] Still, the Pope is the “best ruler” for the world, because he does know how to govern; “he is lord of our fields, meadows, money, houses and everything else, yea, of our very bodies”; for this “he repays the world in everlasting curses and maledictions; this is what the world wants and it duly returns thanks and kisses his feet.”[1006]--“He is rather the lawyers’ than the theologians’ god.”[1007] He is determined to turn me “straightway into a slave of sin” and to force me to “blaspheme,” but instead of “denying God” I shall withstand the Pope; “otherwise we would willingly have borne and endured the Papal rule.”[1008]--“No words are bad enough to describe the Pope. We may call him miserly, godless and idolatrous, but all this falls far short of the mark. It is impossible to grasp and put into words his great infamies;”[1009] in short, as Christ says, “he is the abomination of desolation standing in the Holy Place.”[1010] The Pope is indeed the “father of abominations and the poisoner of souls.” “After the devil the Pope is a real devil.”[1011] “After the devil there is no worse man than the Pope with his lies and his man-made ordinances”;[1012] in fact, he is a masked devil incarnate.[1013] No one can become Pope unless he be a finished and consummate knave and miscreant.[1014] The Pope is a “lion” in strength and a “dragon” in craft.[1015] He is “an out-and-out Jew who extols in Christ only what is material and temporal”;[1016] needless to say, he is “far worse than the Turk,”[1017] “a mere idolater and slave of Satan,”[1018] “a painted king but in reality a filthy pretence,”[1019] his kingdom is a “Carnival show,”[1020] and he himself “Rat-King of the monks and nuns.”[1021] Popery is full of murder;[1022] it serves Moloch,[1023] and is the kingdom of all who blaspheme God. “For the Pope is, not the shepherd, but the devil of the Churches; this comforts me as often as I think of it.”[1024]