“Nevertheless, the time might well come,” so he continues in this passage of the Table-Talk, “when I might be pleased to see one [an angel] on certain matters.” “I do not, however, admit dreams and signs, nor do I worry about them. We have in Scripture all that we require. Sad dreams come from the devil, for everything that ministers to death and dread, lies and murder is the devil’s handiwork.”[478] It is true Luther was often plagued by terrifying dreams, and as he numbered them among his “anxieties and death-throes” what he says about them may fittingly be utilised to complete the picture of his inward state. To such an extent was the devil able to affright him, so he says, that he “broke out into a sweat in the midst of his sleep”; thus “Satan was present even when men slept; but angels too were also there.”[479] He assures us, that, in his sleep, he had witnessed even the horrors of the Last Judgment. _The “Temptations” as one of Luther’s Bulwarks_ The states of terror and the temptations he underwent were to Luther so many confirmations of his doctrine. Some of his utterances on this subject ring very oddly. To be “in deaths often” was, according to him, a sort of “apostolic gift,” shared by Peter and Paul. In order to be a doctor above suspicion, a man must have experienced the pains of death and the “melting of the bones.” In the Psalms he hears, as it were, an echo of his own state of soul. “To despair where hope itself despairs,” and “to live in unspeakable groanings,” “this no one can understand who has not tasted it.” This he said in 1520 in a Commentary on the Psalms.[480] And, later, in 1530, when engaged at the Coburg in expounding the first twenty-five psalms: “‘My heart is become like wax melting in the midst of my bowels’ [Ps. xxi. 15]. What that was no one grasps who has not felt it.”[481] “In such trouble there must needs be despair, but, if I say: ‘This I do simply and solely at God’s command,’ there comes the assurance: Hence God will take your part and comfort you. It was thus we consoled ourselves at Augsburg.”[482] Many others who followed him were also overtaken by similar distress of mind. Struggles of conscience and gloomy depression were the fate of many who flocked to his standard (cp. above, vol. iv., pp. 218-27). Johann Mathesius, Luther’s favourite pupil, so frequently referred to above, towards the end of his life, when pastor at Joachimsthal, once declared, when brooding sadly, that the devil with his temptations was sifting him as it were in a sieve and that he was enduring the pangs of hell described by David. The very mention of a knife led him to think of suicide. He was eager to hold fast to Christ alone, but this he could not do. After the struggle had lasted two or three months his condition finally improved.[483]