Cardinal Cajetan, the famous theologian, was, according to Luther, “an ambiguous, secretive, incomprehensible, mad theologian, and as well qualified to understand and judge his cause as an ass would be to play upon the harp.”[1048] Hoogstraaten, the Cologne Dominican, “does not know the difference between what is in agreement with and what contrary to Scripture; he is a mad, bloodthirsty murderer, a blind and hardened donkey, who ought to be put to scratch for dung-beetles in the manure-heaps of the Papists.” Of his attacks on Duke George of Saxony, the “Dresden Assassin,” we need only mention the parting shaft he flung into his opponent’s grave: “Let Pharao perish with all his tribe; even though he [the Duke] felt the prick of conscience yet he was never truly contrite.... Now he has been rooted out.... God sometimes consents to look on for a while, but afterwards He punishes the race even down to the children.”[1049] No one who in any way stood up for the Papal Decrees was safe from Luther’s ungovernable abuse, not even those statesmen who followed them from necessity rather than out of any respect for the Church. Luther is determined, so he says, “not to endure the excrement and filth of the Pope-Ass.... For goodness’ sake don’t come stirring up the donkey’s dung and papal filth in the churches, particularly in this town [Wittenberg].... The Pope defiles the whole world with his donkey’s dung, but why not let him eat it himself?... Let sleeping dogs lie, this I beg of you [and do not worry me with the Pope], otherwise I shall have to give you what for.... I must desist, otherwise I shall get too angry.”[1050] With the real defenders of the Papal Decrees, or the olden faith, he was, however, never afraid of becoming “too angry”; the only redeeming feature being, that, at times the overwhelming consciousness of his fancied superiority brings his caustic wit to his assistance and his anger dissolves into scorn. Minus this pungent ingredient, his polemics would be incomprehensible, nor would his success have been half so great. An example of his descriptions of such Catholics who wrote and spoke against him is to be found in his preface to a writing of Klingenbeyl’s. He there jokingly congratulates himself on having been the means of inducing his opponents to study the Bible in order to refute him: “Luther has driven these blockheads to Holy Scripture, just as though a man were to bring a lot of new animals to a menagerie. Here Dr. Cockles [Cochlæus] barks like a dog; there Brand of Berne [Johann Mensing] yelps like a fox; the Leipzig preacher of blasphemy [Johann Koss] howls like a wolf; Dr. Cunz Wimpina grunts like a snorting sow, and there is so much noise and clamour amongst the beasts that really I am quite sorry to have started the chase.... They are supposed to be conversant with Scripture, and yet are quite ignorant of how to handle it.”[1051]