Luther’s hostility continued to the day of his death. He found justification for his harshness and for his refusal to be reconciled in the evident inconstancy and turbulence of his opponent. For a while, too, he was disposed to credit the news that Antinomianism was on the increase in Saxony, Thuringia and elsewhere. Not only was Agricola’s fickleness not calculated to inspire confidence, but his life also left much to be desired from the moral standpoint. Though Luther was perhaps unaware of it, we learn from Agricola’s own private Notes, that the “vices in which the young take delight” had assailed him in riper years even more strongly than in his youth. Seckendorff also implies that he did not lead a “regular life.”[66] In 1547 Agricola, together with Julius Pflug, Bishop of Naumburg, and Helding, auxiliary of Mayence, drew up the Augsburg Interim. As General Superintendent of the Brandenburg district and at the invitation of his Elector he assisted in the following year at the religious Conferences of the Saxon theologians. He died at Berlin, Sep. 22, 1566, of a disease resulting from the plague. Of the feeling called forth in circles friendly to Luther by Agricola’s part in the Interim we have proof in the preface which introduces in the edition of 1549 Luther’s letter of 1539 to the Saxon Court. Here we read: If the Eisleben fellow (Agricola) “was ever a dissolute sharper, who secretly promoted false doctrine and made use of the favour and applause of the pious as a cloak for his knavery,” much more has this now become apparent by his outcry concerning the Interim and the alleged good it does. The editors recall the fact, that “Our worthy father in God, Dr. Martin Luther of happy memory, shortly before his end, in the presence of Dr. Pommer, Philip, Creutziger, Major, Jonas and D. Paulus Benedictus” spoke as follows: “Eisleben (Agricola) is not merely ridden by the devil but the devil himself lodges in him.” In proof of the latter statement they add, that trustworthy persons, who had good grounds for their opinion, had declared, that “it was the simple truth that devils had visibly appeared in Eisleben’s house and study, and at times had made a great disturbance and clatter; whence it is clear that he is the devil’s own in body and soul.” “The truth,” they conclude, “is clear and manifest. God gives us warnings enough in the writings of pious and learned persons and also by signs in the sky and in the waters. Let whoever wills be admonished and warned. For to each one it is a matter of life eternal; to which may God assist us through Christ our Lord, Amen.”[67] A writing of Melanchthon’s, dating from the last months of his life and brought to light only in 1894, gives further information concerning a later phase of the Antinomian controversy as fought out between Agricola and Melanchthon.[68]