Those fanatic Protestants who still believe that Luther was a meek and mild sort of monk who was driven to revolt by the sins of the “Whore of Babylon” should read his _Table-talk_ in order that they may learn what manner of man he really was; and it will be surprising if they rise from it without an insight into Luther’s character that may possibly change their whole conception of the Reformation. Far from being a gentle and Christlike son of the Church, he was, so far as I can gather from his own words, perhaps the most frenzied theologian of that dark century of theologians. In sheer outrageous superstition he could outdistance even the most ignorant peasant; his fear of the devil amounted to possession, because he attributed to the action of the foul fiend every single thing that he could not understand. An hour spent in reading Luther’s _Table-talk_ gives a better insight into the mind of man during that most terrible of all centuries than a year spent in reading an ordinary history. The most reasonable excuse that we can make for him is that he was ill during the greater part of his life, suffering from one of the most distressing of all ailments. From about the age of thirty he suffered from dreadful noises in the head, banging, whistling, thumping, and crashing. These were accompanied by terrible attacks of giddiness, which sometimes actually caused him to fall from his stool, and rendered work impossible. Towards middle life he became so neurasthenic that his mental condition became almost that of a lunatic—and indeed the Catholics did not miss the opportunity to say that he had actually become mad; but probably this was but a tit for Luther’s own tat of extraordinary theological violence, and was certainly never true. But what is true is that he began to suffer from pains in the region of the heart, accompanied by a sense of dreadful oppression, so that sometimes he thought himself to be dying. As he grew older he became very deaf, and his cardiac distress became still more terrible.