Unspeakable fear issuing in bodily prostration was also at work in him on the occasion of the already related incident in the choir of the Erfurt convent, when he fell to the ground crying out that he was not the man possessed. Not only does Dungersheim relate it, on the strength of what he had heard from inmates of the monastery,[309] but Cochlæus also speaks of the incident, in his “Acta,” and, again, in coarse and unseemly language in the book he wrote in 1533, entitled “Von der Apostasey,” doubtless also drawing his information from the Augustinian monks: “It is notorious how Luther came to be a monk; how he collapsed in choir, bellowing like a bull when the Gospel of the man possessed was being read; how he behaved himself in the monastery,” etc.[310] We may recall, how, according to Cochlæus, his brother monks suspected Luther, owing to this attack and on account of a “certain singularity of manner,” of being either under diabolical influence or an epileptic.[311] The convulsions which accompanied the fit may have given rise to the suspicion of epilepsy, but, in reality, they cannot be regarded as sufficient proof. Epilepsy is well-nigh incurable, yet, in Luther’s case, we hear of no similar fits in later life. In later years he manifested no fear of epileptic fits, though he lived in dread of an apoplectic seizure, such as, in due course, was responsible for his death. A medical diagnosis would not fail to consider this seeming instance of epileptic convulsions in conjunction with Luther’s state of fear. For the purpose of the present work it will be sufficient to bring together for the benefit of the expert the necessary data for forming an opinion on the whole question, so far as this is possible. From the beginning Luther seems to have regarded these “states of terror” as partaking to some extent of a mystic character. To what a height they could sometimes attain appears from the description he embodied in his “_Resolutiones_” in 1518, and of which Köstlin opines that, in it Luther portrayed the culminating point to which his own fears had occasionally risen. It is indeed very probable that Luther is referring to no other than himself when he says in the opening words of this remarkable passage: “I know a man who assures me that he has frequently felt these pains.”[312] G. Kawerau also agrees with Köstlin in assuming that Luther is here speaking of himself,[313] a view which is, in fact, forced upon us by other similar passages. Walter Köhler declares: “Whether Luther intended these words to refer to himself or not, in any case they certainly depict his normal state.”[314] Luther, after saying that, “many, even to the present day,” suffer the pangs of hell so often described in the Psalms of David, and [so Luther thinks], by Tauler, goes on to describe these pangs in words which we shall now quote in full, as hitherto only extracts have been given.[315]