Agricola nevertheless was staunch in his contention, that, in his earlier writings, Luther had expressed himself quite differently, and this was a fact which it was difficult to disprove. On account of Agricola’s renewal of activity, Luther, on Sep. 13, 1538, held another lengthy and severe Disputation against him and his supporters, the “hotheads and avowed hypocrites.” For this occasion he produced a fifth and last set of theses. He also insisted that his opponent should publicly eat his words. This time Luther admitted that some of his own previous statements had been injudicious, though he was disposed to excuse them. In the beginning they had been preaching to people whose consciences were troubled and who stood in need of a different kind of language than those whose consciences had first to be stirred up. Agricola, finding himself in danger of losing his daily bread, yielded, and even agreed to allow Luther himself to pen the draft of his retractation, hoping thus to get off more easily. Instead of this, and in order, as he said, to “paint him as a cowardly, proud and godless man,” Luther wrote a tract (“Against the Antinomians”) addressed to the preacher Caspar Güttel, which might take the place of the retractation agreed upon.[56] It was exceedingly rude to Agricola. It represented him as a man of “unusual arrogance and presumption,” “who presumed to have a mind of his own, but one that was really intent on self-glorification”; he was a standing proof that in the world “the devil liveth and reigneth”; by his means the devil was set on raising another storm against Luther’s Evangel, like those others raised by Carlstadt, Münzer, the Anabaptists and so forth.[57] In spite of all this the writing, according to a statement made by its author to Melanchthon, was all too mild (“_tam levis fui_”), particularly now that Agricola’s great “obstinacy” was becoming so patent.[58] Luther even spoke of the excommunication which should be launched against so contumacious a man. As a penalty he caused him to be excluded from among the candidates for the office of Dean, and when Agricola complained to the Rector and to Bugenhagen of Luther’s “tyranny” both refused to listen to him.[59] In the meantime Agricola expressed his complete submission in a printed statement, which, however, was probably not meant seriously, and thereupon, on Feb. 7, 1539, was nominated by the Elector a member of the Consistory. He at once profited by this mark of favour to present at Court a written complaint against Luther, referring particularly to the scurrilous circular letter sent to Caspar Güttel. He protested that, for wellnigh three years, he had submitted to being trodden under foot by Luther, and had slunk along at his heels like a wretched cur, though there had been no end to the insult and abuse heaped upon him. What Luther reproached him with he had never taught. The latter had accused him of many things which he “neither would, could nor might admit.”[60]