The opening lines show that the book was intended to inflame and excite the masses. The jocular tone blatantly contrasts with the august subject of the episcopate and supplies a good “example” of the author’s mode of controversy. The work begins: “Martin Luther, Doctor. We poor heretics have once more committed a great sin against the hellish, unchristian Church of our most fiendish Father the Pope by ordaining and consecrating a bishop for the see of Naumburg without any chrism, without even any butter, lard, fat, grease, incense, charcoal or any such-like holy things.” Cheerfully indeed did he own, acknowledge and confess this sin against those, who “have shed our blood, murdered, hanged, drowned, beheaded, burnt, robbed and driven us into exile, and inflicted on us every manner of martyrdom, and now, with Meinz and Heinz, have taken to sacking the land.” With a couple of Bible passages he bowls over the legal difficulties arising out of the expulsion of the bishop-elect and the oath of the Estates: “Thou shalt have none other Gods before me”; “Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravening wolves,” etc. We must sweep away the “wolf-bishops whom the devil ordains and thrusts in.” “Oath and obedience stand untouched,” for they “could take no [valid] oath to the wolf.”[703] The further question, “whether it was right to accept consecration or ordination from such damnable heretics [i.e. as he], was disposed of by saying, that the Evangel was no heresy, and that though he understood Holy Scripture but little, yet at any rate he understood it far better—and also knew better how to consecrate a Christian bishop—than the Pope and all his men, who one and all were foes of Holy Writ and of the Word of God.”[704] This screed stands undoubtedly far below many of Luther’s other productions. It tends to be diffuse and to harp tediously on the same ideas. Luther had already overwritten himself, and when engaged on it was struggling with bad health, the forerunner of his fatal sickness three years later. His disgust with life spoiled his work.