In this sermon the Gospel of Dives and Lazarus recalls to his mind the fact that, in the Saxon Electorate, he and his preachers were being treated very much as Lazarus, whom the rich man left lying at his gate and who had to get his fill of the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table. “When we complain to the great, we get only kicks,” he exclaims indignantly; “our foes would gladly put a stop to the Evangel with the sword, whilst our own people would no less gladly cut off our head, like John the Baptist, only that the sword they use is want, misery and hunger.” If we preach against their wickedness they say we are trying to defy and contradict them! Let the devil defy them. They declare we want to set ourselves up against them, and to rule, and to bring them under our feet. For preaching against the rebellious peasants we are thanked by being called the Pope of Germany, as though we were playing the master. Not indeed that they mean this in earnest, but they are anxious to bring us to preach as they wish, otherwise they punish us with starvation. “The poor preachers they tread under foot, take the bread out of their mouths and abuse them most shamefully.” “This ingratitude is worse than any tyranny!” He tells them finally that their fate will be that of Dives, viz. hell-fire; then they will long in vain even for a drop of water.[216] The world hates me, we read in another sermon, for it ever “hates the good.” “They refuse to have anything to do with the ministers [of religion], there is hardly a place where they suffer the preacher, much less support him. My opponents declare that: Did I preach the truth, the people would become pious.” This is the Anabaptists’ way of concealing their own errors. “But do not wonder,” so he consoles his hearers, for “the purer the Word, the worse almost all become; only a few become good. This is a sure sign that the doctrine is true; … for Satan, who is stung by the truth, tries to wreck it by corruption of morals.… He it is who sets himself up in defiance of it.” “But there are some few who are faithful and in earnest.” Nevertheless, the world must heap ingratitude and bitterness upon us otherwise it would not be the world. “By my preaching I have helped several, but what can I do? If you wait till the world honours you, then you wait a long time and only prepare a cross for yourself.”[217]