Note 347 — Chapter XXXVI · THE DARKER SIDE OF LUTHER’S INNER LIFE. HIS AILMENTS

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.”