His pessimism sees the origin of the corruption in the Church in the fact, that, already in the first centuries, “the devil had broken into Holy Scripture and made such a disturbance as to give rise to many heresies.” To counteract these the Christians surrendered themselves to human ordinances; “they knew of no other way out of the difficulty than to set up a multitude of Councils side by side with Scripture.” “In short, the devil is too clever and powerful for us; everywhere he is an obstacle and a hindrance. If we go to Scripture, he arouses so much dissension and strife that we grow sick of the Word and afraid to trust to it. Yet if we rely on human councils and counsels, we lose Scripture altogether and become the devil’s own, body and soul.” This evil was not solely due to setting up human ordinances in the place of Scripture, but also to the preference shown in theory to works which arose when people saw, that “works or deeds did not follow” from the preaching of the Apostles, “as they should have done.” “Hence the new disciples set to work to improve upon the Master’s building and proceeded to confuse two different things, viz. works and faith. This scandal has been a hindrance to the new doctrine of faith from the beginning even to the present day.” From all this one would rather gather that the fault lay more in the nature of Christianity than in the devil. Luther’s pessimistic tendency also expresses itself in the conviction, that it was the “gruesome, frightful and boundless anger of God” that was the cause of the desolation of Christendom during so many centuries, though he assigns no reason for such anger on the part of God. His gloomy view of the world, exercising an increasing domination over him, led him to take refuge in fatalistic grounds for consolation, which, according to his wont, he even attributed to Christ who had inspired him with them. Haunted by his diabolical visions he finally became more deeply imbued with pessimism than any present-day representative of the pessimistic philosophy. “Here you are living,” so he writes to one of his friends, “in the devil’s own den of murderers, surrounded by dragons and serpents. Of two things one must happen; either the people become devils to you, or you yourself become a devil.”[464]