Another point on which we must also do him justice is the service performed by him in his controversies with rivals, in the field both of theology and Scripture-exegesis, by repressing with such energy and general success the dangerous tendencies apparent in the Anabaptist heresy and the Antinomianism of Johann Agricola. In the attacks of the Antinomians on all law, even on the Decalogue, there undoubtedly lay a great danger for morality and religion. Certain of Luther’s own principles were carried to rash, nay, foolhardy, lengths by the Antinomians. Hence it was not unfortunate that Agricola found pitted against him so redoubtable an opponent as Luther who, as was his wont, interfered and nipped the evil in the bud. _The Conceit and the Obstinacy of the “Heretics”_ Luther bitterly accuses of boundless presumption all the heretics within the New Faith, but particularly Agricola. The latter might even be classed with those doctors who might most fittingly be compared with Arius and treated in the same way. “This man,” he says of Agricola, “is presumption itself. Neither with the flute nor with tears is he to be won.… I see it is my goodness that puffs him up. He says he is a guiltless Abel. He is, forsooth, being made a martyr at my hands.…” But, so Luther continues, he will be such a martyr as was Arius and Satan.[1018] In 1542, when the conversation at table turned on the teachers of the New Faith whose opinions differed from Luther’s, a good many names were mentioned, “Those at Zürich” (Zwingli’s pupils), Carlstadt, Bucer and Capito, “Grickel and Jeckel”—some of them living and some of them already dead—all of whom were insufferably presumptuous. It was then that Bugenhagen, who was present, could not refrain from quoting the passage in the Old Testament where Moses had commanded in God’s name “That prophet shall be slain because he spoke to draw you away from the Lord your God.… If thy brother would persuade thee (to serve other gods), thou shalt presently put him to death. Let thy hand be the first upon him and afterwards the hands of all the people. With stones shall he be stoned to death: because he would have withdrawn thee from the Lord thy God. If in one of the cities thou hear that some have withdrawn the inhabitants of their city, inquire carefully and diligently the truth of the thing by looking well into it, and if thou find that which is said to be certain and that this abomination hath been committed, thou shalt forthwith kill the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword, and shalt destroy it and all things that are in it, even to the cattle.”[1019] Hence it was perhaps rather lucky that the Wittenberg tribunal was presided over by the sovereign of the land, and that the sentences pronounced at Luther’s table or in the learned circles of the Theological Faculty required subsequent ratification by the authorities.