Later on, when dealing with his delusions, we shall have to speak of the diabolical apparitions Luther is supposed to have had. There is no doubt, however, that Luther’s first admirers took his statements concerning his experiences with the devil rather more seriously than he intended, as, for instance, when Cyriacus Spangenberg in his “Theander Lutherus”[1206] relates a disputation on the Winkle-Mass which he supposed Luther to have actually held with the devil, and even goes so far as to prove from the bruises which the devil in person inflicted on him that Luther was “really a holy martyr.”[1207] Even some of his opponents, like Cochlæus, fancied that because Luther said “in a sermon that he had eaten more than one mouthful of salt with the devil, he had therefore most probably been in direct communication with the devil himself, the more so since some persons were said to have seen the two hobnobbing together.”[1208] Here we shall merely point out generally that to Luther the power of Satan, his delusions and persecutions, were something that seemed very near,[1209] an uncanny feeling that increased as he grew older and as his physical strength gave out. “The devil is now very powerful,” he says in 1540, “for he no longer deals with us through the agency of others, of Duke George, for instance, or the Englishman [Henry VIII], or of the Mayence fellow [Albert], but fights against us visibly. Against him we must pray diligently.”[1210] “Didn’t he even ride many grand and holy prophets. Was not David a great prophet? And yet even he was devil-ridden, and so was Saul and ‘Bileam’ too.”[1211] We must, moreover, not overlook the link which binds Luther’s devil-mania to his doctrinal system as a whole, particularly to his teaching on the enslaved will and on justification. Robbed of free-will for doing what is good, when once the devil assumes the mastery, man must needs endure his anger and perform his works. Luther himself found a cruel rider in the devil. Again, though man by the Grace of God is justified by faith, yet the old diabolical root of sin remains in him, for original sin persists and manifests itself in concupiscence, which is essentially the same thing as original sin. All acts of concupiscence are, therefore, sins, being works of our bondage under Satan; only by the free grace of Christ can they be cloaked over. The whole outer world which has been depraved by original sin is nothing but the “devil’s own den”; the devil stands up very close (“_propinquissimus_”)[1212] even to the pious, so that it is no wonder if we ever feel the working of the spirit of darkness. “Man must bear the image either of God or of the devil.” Created to the image of God he failed to remain true to it, but “became like unto the devil.”[1213]