The reason of his readiness to depart, viz. the world’s hatred for his person, he elsewhere depicts as follows; the politicians who were against him, particularly those at the Dresden court, are “Swine,” deserving of “hell-fire”; let them at least leave in peace our Master, the Son of God, and the Kingdom of Heaven also; with a quiet conscience we look upon them as abandoned bondsmen of the devil, whose oaths though sworn to a hundred times over are not the least worthy of belief; “we must scorn the devil in these devils and sons of devils, yea, in this seed of the serpent.”[822] “The gruff, boorish Saxon,”[823] as Luther calls himself, here comes to the fore. He seeks, however, to refrain from dwelling unduly on the growing lack of appreciation shown for his authority; he was even ready, so he said, “gladly to nail to the Cross those blasphemers and Satan with them.”[824] “I thank Thee, my good God,” he once said in the winter 1542-43 to Mathesius and the other people at table, “for letting me be one of the little flock that suffers persecution for Thy Word’s sake; for they do not persecute me for adultery or usury, as I well know.”[825] According to the testimony of Mathesius he also said: “The Courts are full of Eceboli and folk who change with the weather. If only a real sovereign like Constantine came to his Court [the Elector’s] we should soon see who would kiss the Pope’s feet.” “Many remain good Evangelicals because there are still chalices, monstrances and cloistral lands to be taken.”[826] That a large number, not only of the high officials, but even of the “gentry and yokels,” were “tired” of him is clear from statements made by him as early as 1530. Wishing then to visit his father who lay sick, he was dissuaded by his friends from undertaking the journey on account of the hostility of the country people towards his person: “I am compelled to believe,” so he wrote to the sick man, “that I ought not to tempt God by venturing into danger, for you know how both gentry and yokels feel towards me.”[827] “Amongst the charges that helped to lessen his popularity was his supposed complicity in the Peasant War and in the rise of the Sacramentarians.”[828] “Would that I and all my children were dead,” so he repeats, according to Mathesius,[829] “_Satur sum huius vitae_”; it was well for the young, that, in their thoughtlessness and inexperience, they failed to see the mischief of all the scandals rampant, for else “they would not be able to go on living.”[830]—“The world cannot last much longer. Amongst us there is the utmost ingratitude and contempt for the Word, whilst amongst the Papists there is nothing but blood and blasphemy. This will soon knock the bottom out of the cask.”[831] There would be no lack of other passages to the same effect to quote from Mathesius. _Some of the Grounds for His Lowness of Spirits_