At the Coburg the indifference, coldness and avarice of his followers appears to him in an even darker light than usual. He well sees that if the schools continue to be neglected as they have been hitherto the result will be a mere “pig sty,” a “hideous, savage horde of ‘Tatters’ and Turks.” Hence he fulminates against the ingratitude displayed towards the Evangel and against the stinginess which, though it had money for everything, had none to spare for the schools and the parsons; the imagery to which he has recourse leaves far behind that of the Old Testament Prophets. Here we have the real Luther whom, as he himself admits, though in a different sense, stands revealed in this writing penned at the Coburg.[33] “Is this not enough to arouse God’s wrath?… Verily it would be no wonder were God to open wide the doors and windows of hell and rain and hail on us nothing but devils, or were He to send fire and brimstone down from heaven and plunge us all into the abyss of hell like Sodom and Gomorrha … for they were not one-tenth as wicked as Germany is now.”[34] Has then Christ, the Son of God, deserved this of us, he asks, that so many care nothing for the schools and parsonages, and “even dissuade the children from becoming ministers, that this office may speedily perish, and the blood and passion of Christ be no longer of any avail.”[35] Here again his chief reason for maintaining the schools is his anxiety: “What is otherwise to become of the ghostly office and calling.”[36] Only after he has considered this question from all sides and demonstrated that his Church’s edifice stands in need not merely of “worked stones” but also of “rubble,” i.e. both of clever men and of others less highly gifted,[37] does he come in the second place to the importance of having learned men even in the secular office. He had begun this writing with an allusion to the devil, viz. to “the wiles of tiresome Satan against the holy Evangel”; he also concludes it in the same vein, speaking of the “tiresome devil,” who secretly plots against the schools and thereby against the salvation of both town and country.[38] The author goes at some length into the question of languages and declares that the main reason for learning them was a religious one.