_Suspicion and Mania of Persecution_ A growing inclination to distrust, to seeing enemies everywhere and to indulging in fearsome, superstitious fancies, stamps with a peculiar impress his prevailing frame of mind. His vivid imagination even led him, in April, 1544, to speak of “a league entered into between the Turks and the most holy, or rather most silly, Pope”; this was undoubtedly one of the “great signs” foretold by Christ; “these signs are here in truth and are truly great.”[847] “The Pope would rather adore the Turk,” he exclaims later, “nay, even Satan himself, than allow himself to be put in order and reformed by God’s Word”; he even finds this confirmed in a new “Bull or Brief.”[848] He has heard of the peace negotiations with the Turks on the part of the Pope and the Emperor, and of the neutrality of Paul III towards the Turcophil King of France; he is horrified to see in spirit an embassy of peace, “loaded with costly presents and clad in Turkish garments,” wending its way to Constantinople, “there to worship the Turk.” Such was the present policy of the Roman Satan, who formerly had used indulgences, annates and countless other forms of robbery to curtail the Turkish power. “Out upon these Christians, out upon these hellish idols of the devil!”[849]—The truth is that, whereas the Christian States winced at the difficulties or sought for delay, Pope Paul III, faithful to the traditional policy of the Holy See, insisted that it was necessary to oppose by every possible means the Turk who was the Church’s foe and threatened Europe with ruin. The only ground that Luther can have had for his suspicions will have been the better relations then existing between the Pope and France which led the Turkish fleet to spare the Papal territory on the occasion of its demonstration at the mouth of the Tiber.[850] But Luther was convinced that the Pope had no dearer hope than to thwart Germany, and the Protesters in particular. It was the Pope and the Papists whom he accused to Duke Albert of Prussia of being behind the Court of Brunswick and of hiring, at a high price, the services of assassins and incendiaries. To Wenceslaus Link he says, that it will be the priests’ own fault if the saying “To death with the priests” is carried into practice;[851] to Melanchthon he also writes: “I verily believe that all the priests are bent on being killed, even against our wish.”[852]—It was the Papists sure enough, who introduced the maid Rosina into his house, in order that she might bring it into disrepute by her immoral life;[853] they had also sent men to murder him, from whom, however, God had preserved him;[854] they had likewise tried to poison him, but all to no purpose.[855] We may recall how he had said: “I believe that my pulpit-chair and cushion were frequently poisoned, yet God preserved me.”[856] “Many attempts, as I believe, have been made to poison me.”[857]