“Satan has often said to me: How if your own doctrine were false which charges the Pope, monks and Mass-priests with such errors? Often he so overwhelmed me that the sweat has poured off me, until I said to him, go and carry your complaints to my God Who has commanded me to obey this Christ.”[1300]—“The devil would often have laid me low with his argument: ‘Thou art not called,’ had I not been a Doctor.”[1301]—“I have had no greater temptation,” he said after dinner on Dec. 14, 1531, “and none more grievous than that about my preaching; for I have said to myself: You alone are at the bottom of this; if it’s all wrong you have to answer for all the many souls which it brings down to hell. In this temptation I have often myself descended into hell till God recalled me and strengthened me, telling me that it was indeed the Word of God and true doctrine; but it costs much until one reaches this comfort.”[1302]—“Now the devil troubles me with other thoughts [than in the Papacy], for he accuses me thus: Oh, what a vast multitude have you led astray by your teaching! Sometimes amidst such temptation one single word consoles me and gives me fresh courage.”[1303] Not merely does he say this in the Table-Talk but even writes it in his Bible Commentaries. In his exposition of Psalm xlv. he speaks of an “argumentation and objection” which the devil urges against him: “Lo, you stand all alone and are seeking to overthrow the good order [of the Church] established with so much wisdom. For even though the Papacy be not without its sins and errors, what about _you_? Are _you_ infallible? Are _you_ without sin? Why raise the standard of revolt against the house of the Lord when you yourself can only teach them what you yourself are full of, viz. error and sin? These thoughts,” he continues, “upset one very much.... Hence we must learn that all our strength lies in hearing God’s Word and laying hold on it, in seeing God’s works and believing in them. Whoever does not do this will be taken captive by the devil and overthrown.” He is fully cognisant of the strength of the objection which dogs his footsteps: Though sins and faults are to be met with in individual members of the hierarchy, still we must honour their “office and authority.”[1304] Among Luther’s peculiar doctrines the principal ones which became the butt of “temptations” were his fundamental theses on Justification, on the Law and on good works.