In fact, he is determined not “to bother much,” not merely about the “ceremonies,” but about the whole question of Church organisation, for of what use doing so when the signs of the general end of all are increasing at such a rate? “To set up laws” is, according to him, quite impracticable; let everything settle itself “according to the law of God by means of the inspection.”[916] “To Luther the end which Christ was about to put to this wicked world seemed so near,” so we read in Köstlin-Kawerau’s biography,[917] “that he never contemplated any progressive development and expansion of Christendom and the Church, nor was he at all anxious about the possible ups and downs which might accompany such development.... It is just in his later years that we find him more firmly established than ever in the belief, that the world will always remain the world and that it must be left to the Lord to take what course He pleases with it and with His Christendom, until the coming of the ‘longed-for Last Day.’” At any rate, since the sectarians in his own camp and the various centrifugal forces inherent in his creation made impossible any real organisation, he was all the more ready to welcome the thought of the end of the world in that it distracted his mind from the sad state of things. On the top of the schisms and immorality of the people there was also the avarice of those in high places, which roused his hatred and contributed to make him sigh for the coming of the Day. “They all rage against God and His Messias.” “This is the work of those centaurs, the foes of the Church, kept in store for the latter days. They are more insatiable than hell itself. But Christ, Who will shortly come in His glory, will quiet them, not indeed with gold, but with brimstone and flames of hell, and with the wrath of God.”[918] It was his displeasure against some of the authorities which wrung from him the words: “But the end is close at hand,” the end which will also spell the end of “all this seizing—or rather thieving greed for Church property—of the Princes, nobles and magistrates, hateful and execrable that it is.”[919] Taking this in conjunction with the attitude of the Catholic rulers he could say with greater confidence than ever: “Nothing good is to be hoped for any more but this alone, that the day of the glory of our great God and our Redeemer may speedily break upon us.” “From so Satanic a world” he would fain be “quickly snatched,” longing as he does for the Day and for the “end of Satan’s raging.”[920] _The End of the World in the Table-Talk_