Even when voicing his real grievances Luther was seldom either prudent or moderate. He never seems to have quite taken to heart the scriptural injunction: “Let every man be slow to speak, slow to anger, for the anger of man worketh not the justice of God.” He expounds in his Postils the Epistle where the admonition in question occurs,[1060] but it is curious to note how cursorily he dismisses the words, with which, maybe, he felt somewhat out of sympathy, though here, as elsewhere, he refers to the evil consequences of any proneness to anger. On the other hand, he insists, that “our censures and rebukes” must be in accordance with the “right and true Word,” i.e. with theology as he understood it.[1061] He prefers to devote far the greater portion of the exposition to proving his favourite thesis, that, thanks to the Evangel now proclaimed, “we have a good and cheerful conscience, stronger than all fear, sin and temptation, and containing the sure hope of life everlasting”;[1062] “it is a Word that has power to save your souls; what more can you desire?”[1063] He seems averse to inculcating that meekness which the text requires. * * * * * One factor which frequently fanned the flames was jealousy, when, for instance, he had to deal with theological opponents who appeared to be making too small account of him. The new Evangel, he said, was endangered by none more than by the “fanatics and sacramentarians”; to defend his personal position against them had cost him the hardest struggle of his whole life; no wonder that against them he opened wide the sluice-gates of his eloquence. He was keenly sensitive to any slight. “Things are going all wrong in the world,” he sighed in 1532. “We are already looked upon with contempt, but let us gather up the fragments when they are cheapest, that is what I advise.”[1064] Of Carlstadt twelve years previous he had written: “If he has no respect for me, which of us then will he respect? And what is the good of admonishing him? I believe he reckons me one of the most learned men in Wittenberg, and yet he actually tells me to my very face that I am nobody.... He writes right and left just as he chooses and looks on poor Wittenberg as quite beneath his notice.”[1065] Luther’s vexation explains his language. A pity one of the Princes did not let him taste cold steel; if Carlstadt believed in a God in heaven, then might Christ never more be gracious to him (Luther); he was no man, but an incarnation of the evil spirit, etc.