One ground for considering the question of Luther’s revelations in connection with the darker side of his life lies in the gloomy and unearthly circumstances, which, according to his own account, accompanied the higher communications he received (“_sub æternæ iræ maledictione_”),[444] or else preceded them, inducing within his soul a profound disturbance (“_ita furebam._”…), “I was terrified each time.”[445] A further reason is the unfortunate after-effect that the supposed revelations from above had upon his mind. Outwardly, indeed, he seemed an incarnation of confidence, but, inwardly, the case was very different. Chapter xxxii. (vol. v.) of the present work will have shown how it was his new doctrines, and his overturning of the Church which accounted for his “agonies of soul,” his “pangs of hell” and “nightly combats” with the devil, or rather with his own conscience. “Why do you raise the standard of revolt against the house of the Lord?… Such thoughts upset one very much.”[446] His irritation, melancholy and pessimism were largely due to his disappointment with the results of his revelations. “They know it is God Whose Word we preach and yet they say: We shan’t listen.” “We are poor and indifferent trumpeters, but to the assembly of the heavenly spirits ours is a mighty call.” “My only remaining consolation is that the end of all cannot be far off.” “It must soon come to a head. Amen.”[447] And yet, for all that, he insisted on his divine mission so emphatically (above, vol. iii., p. 109 ff.). The revelations which confirmed him in the idea of his mission deserve more careful examination than has hitherto been possible to us in the course of our narrative. That Luther ever laid claim to having received his doctrine by a personal revelation from God has been several times denied in recent times by his defenders. They urge that he merely claimed to have received his doctrine from above, “in the same way that God reveals it to all true Christians”; in this and in no other sense, does he speak of his revelations, nor does he ascribe to himself any “peculiar mission.” It is true Luther taught that the content of the faith to which every true Christian adheres had come into the world by a revelation bestowed on mankind; he also taught that the Holy Ghost lends His assistance to every man to enable him to grasp and hold fast to this revelation: “This is a wisdom such as reason has never framed, nor has the heart of man conceived it, no, not even the great ones of this world, but it is revealed from heaven by the Holy Ghost to those who believe the Gospel.”[448]—This, however, is not the question, but rather, whether he never gave out that he had reached his own fresh knowledge, and that reading of the Bible which he sets up against all the rest of Christendom, thanks to a private and particular illumination, and whether he did not base on such a revelation his claim to infallible certainty? _Luther’s Insistence on Private Revelation_