“What advantage do they expect of it,” he goes on to ask in an ironical vein; “they put men to death, but we work for life and take many wives.” This he said, according to the notes, “with a joyful countenance and amidst loud laughter.”[111] “God has resolved to vex the people, and, when my turn comes, I will give them hard words and tell them to look Marcolfus ‘_in anum_’ since they refuse to look him in the face.” He then went on: “I don’t see why I should trouble myself about the matter. I shall commend it to our God. Should the Macedonian [the Landgrave] desert us, Christ will stand by us, the blessed Schevlimini [םיבילי כש: Sit at my right hand (Ps. cix. 1)]. He has surely brought us out of even tighter places. The restitution of Würtemberg puts this scandal into the shade, and the Sacramentarians and the revolt [of the Peasants]; and yet God delivered us out of all that.” What he means to say is: Even greater scandal was given by Philip of Hesse when he imposed on Würtemberg the Protestant Duke Ulrich, heedless of the rights of King Ferdinand and of the opposition of the Emperor and the Church;[112] in the same way the ever-recurring dissensions on the Sacrament were an even greater scandal, and so was the late Peasant War which threatened worse things to the Evangelical cause than the Hessian affair. “Should the Landgrave fall away from us.”--This fear lest Philip should desert their party Luther had expressed in some rather earlier utterances in 1540, when he had described more particularly the Landgrave’s character and attitude. “A strange man!” he says of him. “He was born under a star. He is bent upon having his own way, and so fancies he will obtain the approval of Emperor and Pope. It may be that he will fall away from us on account of this affair.... He is a real Hessian; he cannot be still nor does he know how to yield. When once this business is over he will be hatching something else. But perhaps death will carry him, or her (Margaret), off before.” A Hessian Councillor who was present quite bore out what Luther had said: Nothing was of any avail with the Landgrave, “what he once undertakes he cannot be induced to give up.” In proof of this those present instanced the violence and utter injustice of the raid made on Würtemberg. “Because he is such a strange character,” Luther remarked, “I must let it pass. The Emperor, moreover, will certainly not let him have his way.”[113] “No sensible man would have undertaken that campaign, but he, carried away by fury, managed it quite well. Only wait a little! It [the new scandal] will pass!” Luther was also ready to acknowledge that the Landgrave, in spite of the promises and offers of the Emperor and Duke of Saxony, had remained so far “very faithful” to the Evangel.[114]