“It is the devil who hatches out such knaves,” remarked Luther, “particularly among the Papists, through whom he attacks and thwarts us.… Because we preach Christ alone he persecutes us in every way he can.” The bishops deserve to be called “lost and godless knaves and foes of God,” hence “those must not be tolerated here who praise them in verse and prose.”[1057] When Lemnius had a second edition of the Epigrams printed at Wittenberg this also was suppressed. He had added a third book, devoted to abuse of Luther and containing the famous “Merd-Song” on Luther, who was then ailing from diarrhœa. Luther retorted with a “Merd-Song” of his own on Lemnius. His verses he read aloud to his friends and they became public property through being incorporated in Lauterbach’s notes of the Table-Talk.[1058] Lemnius, whose career had been wrecked by Luther’s anger and revenge, then wrote an “Apologia against the unjust and lying decree” which the Wittenberg University had published against him at the instigation (“_imperio et tyrannide_”) of Martin Luther and Justus Jonas. He still retained his loose humanistic style after his return in 1538 to his native Switzerland, where he obtained a position as schoolmaster at Coire. The above Apologia was printed at Cologne, it would seem in 1539, but very few copies survive owing to the energy shown in their suppression. It is only of recent years that the complete text has become generally known;[1059] till then Protestants like Schelhorn and Hausen had only ventured to give fragments of the work. In it the writer complains bitterly that Luther “has published a pamphlet against him [the mandate read aloud in the church] in which, playing both the judge and the sovereign, Luther had condemned and abused him.” “Such authority in civil matters” does this soul-herd arrogate to himself. He robs the bishops of their secular power, but he himself is a tyrant. The charges against Luther’s private life made in this work are glaring, and they come, moreover, from a man who knew his Wittenberg, but it must not be forgotten that he was now a bitter foe of Luther.[1060] He goes so far as to declare that Luther’s shameless attacks on the sovereigns, for instance on the Elector of Mayence, gave grounds for apprehending contempt of all authority and the outbreak of a war that would spell the ruin of Germany. Meanwhile “Luther sits like a dictator at Wittenberg and rules; what he says must be taken as law.”[1061] He calls his opponent the “Wittenberg Pope” (“_Papa Albiacus_”), who had been faithless to his Vows. In order rightly to appreciate, from their psychological side, Luther’s angry outbursts against the heretics in his party we must above all remember his fears of a coming collapse of theology among his following; that he foresaw something of the sort has already been shown above.[1062]