ABSTRACT
NOTWITHSTANDING the signal success of Luther's work, his last years were far from happy. He died an embittered, almost a disappointed man. The main cause of his increasing irritability and sadness is undoubtedly to be found in his torturing diseases, which, after their manner, became worse and worse. He was also grieved by the death of friends and of his daughter. Neither did public matters suit him. In the unstable political condition he foresaw, vaguely but uneasily, the storm about to burst, as it did just after his death, sweeping back, for a moment at least, the dykes and barriers of the Evangelic faith. Fierce quarrels within his Church, like that with the Antinomians, and that between Cordatus and Melanchthon, at times almost made him doubt. Finally, in 1540, a terrible scandal crippled the infant Church and made it a reproach to its enemies.
