Pessimistic consideration of the “last age of the world” was quite in his line; the dark though not altogether unfriendly shadow of the approaching end of all was discernible in the moral disorders, in the unbelief and anti-christian spirit of the foe. He would not dwell, so he once said, on the state of things among the people towards whom he was willing to be indulgent, but it could not be gainsaid that, “among the learned open contempt for religion was on the increase; they lean either towards the Epicureans or towards universal scepticism. Forgetfulness of God, the wickedness of the times, the senseless fury of the Princes, all unite in proving that the world lies in the pains of travail and that the joyous coming of Christ is nigh.”[965] It was his hopelessness and the great solace he derived from the approaching end of all things that called forth this frame of mind. It is also plain that he saw no prospect of improvement. “In these last days,” he says, even a zealous preacher can no longer hope for success, though this does not give him the right to quit his post.[966] The poetic reference to the frenzied old age of the world (“_delira mundi senecta_”) is several times met with in his letters. In 1537 he grumbled to Johann Brenz, the preacher, of the hostility of the theologians, especially of the Luther-zealots; he had seen what hatred the mitigations he had introduced in Luther’s doctrines had excited. “I conceal everything beneath the cloak of my moderation, but what shall I do eventually faced by the rage of so many (‘_in tanta rabie multorum_’)?”[967] “I seek for a creephole,” he continues, “may God but show me one, for I am worn out with illness, old age and sorrow.” Of Amsdorf he learnt with pain that he had warned Luther against him as a serpent whom he was warming in his bosom.[968] Andreas Osiander likewise wrote of Melanchthon to Besold at Nuremberg, that, since Apostolic times, no more mischievous and pernicious man had lived in the Church, so skilful was he in giving to his writings the semblance of wholesome doctrine while all the time denying its truth. “I believe that Philip and those who think like him are nothing but slaves of Satan.” On another occasion the same bitter opponent of Melanchthon inveighs against the religious despotism which now replaced at Wittenberg the former Papal authority, a new tyranny which required, that “all disputes should be submitted to the elders of the Church.”[969]—It was men such as these who repaid him for the labours he had reluctantly undertaken on behalf of the Church. Of their bitter opposition he wrote, that, even were he to shed as many tears as there was water in the flooded Elbe, he would still not be able to weep away his grief.[970] _Melanchthon’s Strictures on Luther. His “Bondage”_