him in the wrong: his heart died
within him, and he was nearly strangled by the devil. At this time
Bugenhagen visited Luther, who showed him the threatening text.[43]
Bugenhagen, probably infected by the eagerness of his friend, began
also to doubt, unconscious of the greatness of the misery which it
occasioned Luther. Now was Luther indeed terrified, and again passed a
fearful night. The next morning Bugenhagen came back. "I am very
angry," he said; "I have now, for the first time, understood the text
rightly; it has quite another sense." "And it is true," said Luther
later, "it was a ridiculous argument; ridiculous indeed for one who is
in his right mind, and not under temptation."

He often lamented to his friends, over the terrors which these
struggles with the devil occasioned him. "He has never been from the
beginning so fierce and raging as now, at the end of the world. I feel
him well. He sleeps much nearer to me than my Kate; that is to say, he
gives me more disquiet than she does pleasure." Luther never ceased to
abuse the Pope as antichrist, or the papal system as devilish. But
whoever observes more accurately, will perceive behind this hatred of
the devil, the indestructible reverence by which the loyal spirit of
the man was bound to the old Church. What became to him temptations,
were often only the pious recollections of his youth, which stood in
striking contrast to the changes he had gone through as a man.

Indeed, no man is entirely transformed by the great thoughts and deeds
of his manhood. We ourselves do not become new through new actions; our
inward life consists of the sum of all the thoughts and feelings which
we have ever had. He who has been chosen by fate to create the new by
the destruction of the old, shatters in pieces at the same time a
portion of his own life: he must violate lesser duties to fulfil
greater ones. The more conscientious he is, the more deeply he feels
the rent which he has made in the order of the world, and also in his
own inward nature. This is the secret sorrow, and even the regret, of
every great historical character. Few mortals have felt this grief so
deeply as Luther; and that which was so great in him, was his never
being prevented by this feeling from acting with the utmost boldness.

This appears to us a tragical moment in his inward life; and equally so
was the effect of his teaching upon the life of the nation. He had laid
the foundation of a new Church upon