[343] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 268.
[344] On uric acid and gout as the explanation of all his bodily troubles, see below, xxxvi. 5.
[345] Cp. above, vol. v., 333 ff.
[346] Köstlin-Kawerau, 2, p. 268.
[347] For the different passages quoted cp. “Colloq.,” ed. Bindseil, 2, p. 315: Other temptations were nothing compared with this interior “angelus Sathanæ colaphizans, σκόλοψ,” where a man is nailed to the gibbet. Cp. “Briefwechsel,” 7, p. 53: “Ego vertigine seu capite hactenus laboravi, præter ea quæ angelus Sathanæ operatur. Tu ora pro me Deum, ut confortet me in fide et verbo suo” (to N. Hausmann, Feb. 13, 1529). The “sting of the flesh” was not in his case, as has been asserted, the result of nervousness, but an intellectual temptation to waver in the “faith” he preached, and to doubt of the “Word.”
[348] Cp. the numerous statements of contemporaries who were unable to explain Luther’s uncanny behaviour, his “infernal outbreaks of fury” and morbid hatred of the Pope (above, vol. v., p. 232 f.), otherwise than by supposing him to be possessed or mad (vol. iv., p. 351 ff.).
[349] To Hier. Weller (July?), 1530, “Briefwechsel,” 8, p. 159 f.
[350] Schlaginhaufen, “Aufzeichn.,” p. 9, of Staupitz: “dicebat, se nunquam sensisse.”
[351] Cordatus, “Tagebuch,” p. 129.
[352] See vol. i., pp. 120 ff., 223 ff., 269 ff.