In his Table-Talk Luther’s habit of shielding himself from objections behind the strangest misrepresentations is again apparent. Such misrepresentations, occurring in his most intimate conversations, show that he was very far from merely using them in public or from motives of policy; rather they influence his whole mode of thought and feeling and were a second nature with him. We have only to turn to his conversations on the subject of the “Church,” collected in 1538 by his friend and companion Anton Lauterbach.[1264] Here we meet with the revolting assertion that, in the Papistical Church, the Pope claimed to be the only one who had a right to interpret Scripture, and that he did this “out of his own brain”; this Church, so Luther goes on, had set up a mass of human regulations and vain observances which stifled all freedom and true religion; “the name Church was a pretext for the most abominable errors.” Further, “the true Church [i.e. mine] teaches the free forgiveness of sins, secondly, she teaches us to believe firmly, and, thirdly, to bear the cross with patience. But the false Church [the Pope’s] ascribes the forgiveness of sins to our own merits, teaches men to waver, and, finally does not carry the cross but rather persecutes others.” Besides, how can the Papists have the true Church, seeing that they are “some of them Epicureans, some of them idolaters?”—Fancy talking about the authority of the Church! Is it with this that the fanatical Anabaptists are to be vanquished? “Moreover, we know that: The true Church never at any time bore the name or title that the godless so boldly claim; she was ever nameless and is therefore believed rather than seen; for the most part she lies downtrodden and neglected; weakness, crosses and scandals are her portion. Only look at the Church under the tyranny of the Pope; the Papal Decretals are the _ne plus ultra_ of ungodliness.” “I am astonished,” so he ends, speaking of the Roman Primacy, “at the great blindness with which men worshipped the Pope’s lies and his boundless and utterly shameless audacity, as though Holy Scripture depended on the authority of the Roman Church whose head he claimed to be, basing his claim on the words of Christ (Matt. xvi. 18) ‘Thou art Peter and on this rock I will build My Church.’” _Luther’s Tactics in the Interpretation of the Bible_ The text just quoted leads us to glance at his Biblical arguments; to conclude this chapter we shall therefore give as a sample of his exegesis on the Church a more detailed account of his exposition of the chief argument for the papal primacy, viz. Christ’s promise to Peter, using for this purpose his last book against Popery.[1265]