To all this was still added great trouble of conscience concerning his undertaking as a whole. When he was passionately declaring that his misgivings were from the devil and resolving never to flinch in his antagonism to the hated vow of chastity he was himself falling into the state which he himself describes: “You see how I burn within (‘_quantis urgear æstibus_’).” This to Melanchthon, after having explained to him the struggle waging within between his feelings and his knowledge of the Bible in the matter of the vow of chastity. He is being carried away to take action, and yet is unable, as he here admits, to prove his object by means of the text of Scripture.[376] He feels himself to be “the sport of a thousand devils” in the Wartburg on account of this and other temptations; he falls frequently, yet the right hand of God upholds him.[377] The castle is full of devils, so he wrote from within its walls, and very cunning devils to boot, who never leave him at peace but behave in such a way that he “is never alone” even when he seems to be so.[378] Hence he was writing “partly under the stress of temptation, partly in indignation.” What he was writing was his “_De votis monasticis_,” by means of which, as he here says, he is about “to free the young folk from the hell of celibacy.”[379] Ten years later he still recalls the “despair and the temptation concerning God’s wrath” which had then been raging within him.[380] His temptations at that time must have been rendered even worse by the morbid conditions then awakening in him, by the dismal, racking sense of fear that peopled his imagination with thousands of devils, and the mental confusion resulting from his state of nervous overstrain. It would carry us too far to pursue the diabolical temptations to despair (or what he held to be such) throughout the rest of his life, and to examine their connection with his maladies. We shall only remark, that, even at a later date, when we find him the butt of severe temptations of this sort, an under-current of other trouble is frequently to be detected. The “terrors” he endured in his youthful years indeed moderated but never altogether disappear. The “spiritual sickness” of 1537 of which he speaks, when for a whole fortnight he could scarcely eat, drink or sleep, shows the degree to which these thoughts of despair and struggles of conscience could reach. _Summary_