In his tract of 1531 against Duke George he boasted, that people would in future say, that “his mouth was full of angry words, vituperation and curses on the Papists”; that “he intended to go down to his grave cursing and abusing the miscreants”;[1034] that as long as breath remained in him he would “pursue them to their grave with his thunders and lightnings”;[1035] again, he says he will take refuge in his maledictory prayer against the Papists in order to “kindle righteous hatred in his heart,” and even expounds and recommends this prayer in mockery to his opponent[1036]--in all this we detect an abnormal feature which characterises his life and temper. This abnormity is apparent not only in the intense seriousness with which he utters the most outrageous things, more befitting a madman than a reasonable being, but also at times in the very satires to which he has recourse. That the Papacy would have still more to suffer from him after he was dead, is a prophecy on which he is ever harping: “When I die,” he remarks, “I shall turn into a spirit that will so plague the bishops, parsons and godless monks, that one dead Luther will give them more trouble than a thousand living Luthers.”[1037] No theological simile is too strange for him in this morbid state of mind and feeling. As in the case of those obsessed by a fixed idea the delusion is ever obtruding itself under every possible shape, so, in a similar way, every thought, all his studies, his practice, learning, theology and exegesis, even when its bearing seems most remote, leads up to this central and all-dominating conviction: “I believe that the Pope is a devil incarnate in disguise, for he is Endchrist. For as Christ is true God and true man, so also is Antichrist a devil incarnate.”[1038] And yet, in the past, so he adds with a deep sigh, “we worshipped all his lies and idolatry.” He is very painstaking in his anatomy of the Pope-Antichrist. “The head of Antichrist,” he said, “is both the Pope and the Turk; a living creature must have both body and soul; the Pope is Antichrist’s soul or spirit, but the Turk is his flesh or body; for the latter lays waste, destroys and persecutes the Church of God materially, just as the Pope does so spiritually.” Considering, however, that he had unduly exonerated the Pope, he corrects himself and adds: And materially also; “materially, viz. by laying waste with fire and sword, hanging, murdering, etc.” The Church, however, so he prophesies, will nevertheless “hold the field and resist the Pope’s hypocrisy and idolatry.” He then goes on to make a fanciful application of Daniel’s prophecy concerning the kingdoms of the world to the Pope’s downfall. “The text compels us” to take the prophecy (Apoc. xiii. 7) as also referring to the “Papal abomination.” “The Pope shall be broken without hands and perish and die of himself.”[1039]