In spite of his high esteem for Luther, Schwenckfeld wrote, in 1523: It is evident “that little improvement can be discerned emerging from the new teaching, and that those who boast of the Evangel lead a bad and scandalous life.... This moves us not a little, indeed pierces our heart when we hear of it.”[278] To the Duke he dedicated, in 1524, a writing entitled: “An exhortation regarding the misuse of sundry notable Articles of the Evangel, through the wrong understanding of which the common man is led into the freedom of the flesh and into error.” The book forms a valuable source of information on the religious state of the people at the time of the rise of Lutheranism. Therein he laments, with deep feeling and with an able pen, that so many Lutherans were being influenced by the most worldly of motives, and that a pernicious tendency towards freedom from social restrictions was rife amongst them.[279] Though Schwenckfeld was all his life equally averse to the demagogue Anabaptist movement and to Zwinglianism with its rationalistic tendency, yet his fate led him into ways very much like theirs. Together with his associate Valentine Krautwald, a former precentor, he attacked the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament, giving, however, a new interpretation of the words of Institution., different from that of Zwingli and Œcolampadius. To the fanaticism of the Anabaptists he approximated by his opposition to any organised Church, to the sacraments as means of grace, and to all that appeared to him to deviate from the spirit of the Apostolic Church. He besought Luther in a personal interview at Wittenberg, on Dec. 1, 1525, to agree to his doctrine of the Sacrament, explaining to him at the same time its affinity with his supposedly profounder conception of the atonement, the sacraments and the life of Christ as followed in his communities; he also invited him in fiery words to throw over the popular churches in which all the people received the Supper and rather to establish congregations of awakened Christians. Luther, though in no unfriendly manner, put him off; throughout the interview he addressed him as “Dear Caspar,” but he flatly refused to give any opinion. According to Schwenckfeld’s own account he even allowed that his doctrine of the Sacrament was “plausible” ... if only it could be proved, and, on parting, whispered in his ear: “Keep quiet for a while.”[280]