The last temptation which shall assail the faithful, he says, will be “an undisciplined life”; then we shall “grow sick of the Word and disgusted with it.” “Not even the Word of God will they endure; ... the Gospel which they [his own people] once confessed, they now look upon as merely the word of man.” “Do you fancy you are out of the world, or that Satan, the Prince of this world, has died or been crucified in you?”[905] It is bitter experience that causes him to say: “The day will dawn when Christ shall come to free us from sin and death.”[906] “May the world go to rack and ruin and be utterly blotted out,” “the world which has shown me such gratitude during my own lifetime!”[907] “May the Lord call me away, for I have done, and seen, and suffered enough evil.”[908] “Would that the Lord would put an end to the great misery [that among us each one does as he pleases]! Oh that the day of our deliverance would come!”[909] “The people have waxed cold towards the Evangel.... May Christ mend all things and hasten the Day of His Coming.”[910] “It is a wonder to me what the world does to-day,” he said, alluding to the turmoil in the newly acquired bishopric of Naumburg; he then goes on to complain in the words already given (p. 233), that a new world is growing up around him; no one will admit of having done wrong, of having lied or sinned; those only who meet with injustice are reputed unrighteous, liars and sinners. Verily it would soon rain filth. “The day of our redemption draweth nigh. Amen.” “The world will rage, but good-bye to it”![911]—“The world is indeed a contemptible thing,” he groans, after describing the morals of Wittenberg.[912] The conduct of the great ones at the Saxon Court led him to surmise that “soon,” after but a few days, hell would be their portion.[913] For those who infringe the rights of his Church he has a similar sentence ready: “Hell will be your share. Come, Lord Jesus, come, listen to the groaning of Thy people, and hasten Thy coming!”—“Farewell and teach your people to pray for the day of the Lord; for of better times there is no longer any hope.”[914] “During our lifetime,” he laments in 1545, “and under our very eyes, we see sects and dissensions arising, each one wishing to follow his own fancy. In short, contempt for the Word on our own side and blasphemy on the other seem to me to announce the times of which John the Baptist spoke to the people, saying: ‘The axe is laid to the root of the tree,’ etc. Accordingly, since the end at least of this happy age is imminent, there seems no call to bother much about setting up, or coming to an understanding regarding, those troublesome ceremonies.”[915]