Thus it is the devil alone who is at work in those who commit suicide, for the death a man fancies he inflicts on himself is nothing but the “devil’s work”;[1066] the devil simply hoodwinks him and others who see him. To Frederick Myconius he wrote, in 1544: “It is my habit to esteem such a one as killed ‘_simpliciter et immediate_’ by the devil, just as a traveller might be by highwaymen.... I think we must stick to the belief that the devil deceives such a man and makes him fancy that he is doing something quite different, for instance praying, or something of the sort.”[1067] In the same sense he wrote to Anton Lauterbach, in 1542, when the latter informed him of three men who had hanged themselves: “Satan, with God’s leave, perpetrates such abominations in the midst of our congregation.... He is the prince of this world who in mockery deludes us into fancying that those men hanged themselves, whereas it was he who killed them. By the images he brought before their mind, he made them think that they were killing themselves”—a statement at variance with the one last given.[1068] Whereas in this letter he suggests that the people should be told of such cases from the pulpit so that they may not despise the “devil’s power from a mistaken sense of security,” previously, in conversation he had declared, that it ought not to be admitted publicly that such persons could not be damned not having been masters of themselves: “They do not commit this wilfully, but are impelled to it by the devil.... But the people must not be told this.”[1069] Speaking of a woman who was sorely tempted and worried, he said to his friends, in 1543: “Even should she hang herself or drown herself through it, it can do her no harm; it is just as though it all happened in a dream.” The source of this woman’s distress was her low spirits and religious doubts.[1070] _On all that the Devil is able to do_ Many, in Luther’s opinion, had been snatched off alive by the devil, particularly when they had made a compact or had dealings with him, or had given themselves up to him.