Whenever he meets with contradiction, whenever he hears even the hint of a reproach or accusation, he at once ranges himself—as he does, for instance, in the “Vermanũg”—on the side of the persecuted “prophets and apostles,” nay, he even likens himself to Christ.[376] He stood alone, without miracles, and devoid of holiness, as he himself candidly informed Henry VIII. of England; nevertheless he pits himself against the heads of both Church and Empire assembled at the Diet. All he could appeal to was his degree of Doctor of Theology: “Had I not been a Doctor, the devil would have given me much trouble, for it is no small matter to attack the whole Papacy and to charge it” (with error).[377] In the last instance, however, his self-confidence recalls him to the proud consciousness of his entire certainty. “Thus our cause stands firm, because we know how we believe and how we live.”[378] With these words from his “Vermanũg” he defies the whole of the present and of the past, the Pope and all his Councils. He knows—and that suffices—that what he has and proclaims is God’s Word; “and if you have God’s Word you may say: Now that I have the Word what need have I to ask what the Councils say?”[379] “Among all the Councils I have never found one where the Holy Spirit rules.... There will never be no Council [_sic_], according to the Holy Spirit, where the people have to agree. God allows this because He Himself wills to be the Judge and suffers not men to judge. Hence He commands every man to know what he believes.”[380] Luther only, and those who follow him, know what they believe; he takes the place of all the councils, Doctors of the Church, Popes and bishops, in short, of all the ecclesiastical sources of theology. “The end of the world may now come,” he said, in 1540, “for all that pertains to the knowledge of God has now been supplied” (by me).[381]