In a more serious and tragic tone he points out, how many of his foes and opponents had been carried off suddenly by a Divine judgment. He even drafted a long list of such instances, supplied with hateful glosses of his own, which he alleged as a proof of the “visible action of God” in support of his cause.[1052] Johann Koss, the “preacher of blasphemy,” mentioned above, was given a place in this libellous catalogue after he had been seized with a stroke of apoplexy in the pulpit (Dec. 29, 1532). At the instance of Duke George he had been appointed assistant preacher under Hieronymus Dungersheim, that, by means of his elocutionary talent, he might defend the town of Leipzig against the inroads of the new teaching. What particularly incensed Luther was the use this preacher made of his Postils to refute him by his own words. The stroke came on him while he was vindicating the Catholic doctrine of good works. This circumstance, taken in conjunction with the “place, time and individual,” was for Luther an irrefutable proof of the intervention of “God’s anger.” “Christ,” he says, “struck down His enemy, the Leipzig shouter, in the very midst of his blasphemy.”[1053] The zealous preacher died about a month later. “None are more pitiable,” Luther says elsewhere of this incident, “than the presumptuous, such as are all the Papists.”[1054] It was impossible for him to inveigh with sufficient severity against the presumption which threatened him on all sides, despite the excessive kindliness and moderation with which he occasionally credits himself; for were not those who confronted him “the devil and his hirelings”? He was forced to combat the frightful presumption of these men who acted as though they were “steeped in holiness”; for in reality they are “dirty pig-snouts”; as Papists they are “at the very least, murderers, thieves and persecutors”; hence let all rise up against the “servers of idols.”[1055] “We must curse the Pope and his kingdom and revile and abuse it, and not close our jaws but preach against it without ceasing. There are some now who say we are capable of nothing else but of damning, scolding and slandering the Pope and his followers.” “Yes, and so it must be.”[1056] Elsewhere he hints which vilely vulgar terms of opprobrium were to be applied to the Pope, and, after instancing them, adds: “It is thus that we should learn to make use of these words.” The Catholic Princes were also aimed at in this instruction which occurs in one of his sermons. This discourse, pronounced on Jan. 12, 1531, at a time when the intervention of the hostile secular powers was feared, was printed ten years later under the title “Ein trostlich Unterricht wie man sich gegen den Tyrannen, so Christum und sein Wort verfolgen halten soll.”[1057]