as something that disturbs him.  It vexed his pure mind, and he fought against it as not many monks of his day have done, by fasting, prayer, and hard work.  Yes, hard work!  The remarks of Luther about his physical condition are simply twisted from their true import when Luther is represented as a victim of fleshly lust and a habitual debauchee.  Luther’s Catholic critics fail to mention that during his brief stay at the Wartburg Luther not only translated the greater part of the New Testament, but also wrote about a dozen treatises, some of them of considerable size, and that of his correspondence during this period about fifty letters are still preserved.  Surely, a fairly respectable record for a lazy man!

Catholic writers also declare Luther spiritually unfit for translating the Bible.  They say that all the time that Luther spent at the Wartburg he was haunted by the devil.  He would hear strange noises and see weird shadows flit before him.  He felt that he had come under the sway of the powers of darkness.  This, we are assured, was because he had risen in rebellion against the divine power of the papacy.  The Holy Father whom he had attacked was being avenged upon Luther by an accusing conscience.  Luther was given a foretaste of the terrors that await the reprobate.  He had become an incipient demoniac.  The inference which we are to draw from this delightful description is this:  Could such an abandoned wretch as Luther was during the exile at the Wartburg be favored with the holy calm and composure and the heavenly light which any person must possess who sets out upon the arduous task of telling men in their own tongue what God has said to them in a foreign tongue?

There is hardly a period in Luther’s life that is entirely free from spiritual affliction.  In this respect Luther shares the common lot of godly men in responsible positions in Church or State during critical times.  Moreover, Luther with all Christians believed in a personal and incessantly active devil.  Luther’s devil was not the denatured metaphysical and scientific devil of modern times, which meets us in the form of the principle of negation, or logical contradiction, or a demoralizing tendency and influence, but an energetic devil, possessed of an intelligence and will of his own, and going about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.  Luther accepted the teaching of the Bible that this devil is related to men’s sinning, that men can be made to do, and are doing, his will, and are led about by the devil like slaves.  Luther knew that for His own reasons God permits the devil to afflict His children, as happened to Job and Paul.  Add to this the reaction that must have set in after Luther had quitted the stirring scenes and the severe ordeals through which he had passed before the imperial court at Worms.  In the silence and solitude of his secluded asylum in the Thuringian Forest the recent events in which he had been a principal actor passed in review before his mind, and he began to spell out many a grave and ominous meaning from them.  If it is true that the devil loves to find a lonely man, here was his chance.