Elsewhere Luther himself describes hate as a “true image of the devil; in fact, it is neither human nor diabolical but the devil himself whose whole being is nothing but an everlasting burning,” etc. “The devil is always acting contrary to love.” “Such is his way; God works nothing but benefits and deeds of charity, while he on the contrary performs nothing but works of hate.”[361] On other occasions in his sermons he speaks in familiar and at the same time inspiring words of the beauty of Christian love. “Love is a great and rich treasure, worth many hundred thousand gulden, or a great kingdom. Who is there who would not esteem it highly and pursue it to the limit of his power, nay, pour out sweat and blood for it if he only hoped or knew how to obtain it!... What is sun, moon, heavens or all creation, all the angels, all the saints compared with it? Love is nothing but the one, unspeakable, eternal good and the highest treasure, which is God Himself.”[362] But his “Vermanũg an die geistlichen versammelt auff dem Reichstag zu Augsburg” (which he wrote from the Coburg) was the fruit, not of love, but of the most glowing hate.[363] In a private letter he calls it quite rightly, not an “exhortation” (Vermanũg), but “an invective” against the clergy,[364] and, in another letter, admits the “violent spirit” in which he had written it; when composing it the abusive thoughts had rushed in on him like an “uninvited band of moss-troopers.”[365] But, that he drove them back as he declares he did, is not discernible from the work in question. In the booklet under discussion he several times uses what would seem to be words of peace, and, in one passage, even sketches a scheme for reunion; but, as a Protestant critic of the latter says, not altogether incorrectly, the “idea was of its very nature impossible of execution.”[366] Indeed, we may say that Luther himself could see well enough that the idea was a mere deception; the best motto for the writing would be: Enmity and hatred until death!