of straw is burnt up and about to go out, then it gives forth a flame as if it was going to bum brightly and even at the same moment goes out : — even so Christendom now does with the light of the Gospel.*
Moreover all prophets in and out of the Bible write that after this time, namely, after the present year of 1530, things will go well again. That which they so rightly point to and prophesy will be, I hope, the last day, which will free us from all evil and help us to everlasting joy. So I reckon this epoch of the Gospel light as none other than the time in which God shortens and restrains tribulation by means of the Gospel, as Christ says in Matthew xxiv : "If the Lord short- ened not these days, no man would be saved." For if the world had to stand longer as it has hitherto stood, the whole world would become Mohammedan or skeptical,* and no Chris- tian would be left, as Christ says:* "When the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth ?" And, in fact, there was no more right understanding nor doctrine in the Chris- tian faith present, but mere error, darkness and superstition with the innumerable multitude.
Truly there has been no greater tribulation on the earth, and none will come that goes farther, endures longer and rages more fiercely than the abomination of Mohammed and the Pope, for they have destroyed the world temporally with ceaseless blood and murder, but have seduced and murdered souls much more terribly. Thus the third woe in Revela- tion xii also shows that one must say that the devil is loose, and rules bodily with all rage and wantonness.
Such thoughts have caused me to publish this prophet Daniel before the others who still remain, so that he may come to light before everything perishes, and he may exercise his of- fice and comfort the poor Christians for whom he wrote, and for whom he was spared and preserved unto this last time. . • .
History relates how Alexander the Great always had the poet Homer by him and at night put it under his head and
1 The last flare of the candle was a farorite umile of Luther's; c/. Conversa- tions with Luther, ed. Smith and Gallinger, p. 25of.
- Bpicurisch always has this sense in Lather, not the modern meaning of
hedonist.
- Luke xviii, 8.
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