would appear that it was in the Wartburg, in 1521; for he says that the Evil One charged him with having said Mass during fifteen years; and Luther was ordained priest towards the end of 1507.
Probably the incident was due to a waking dream, and that Luther, in brooding over it came to suppose that the contest had actually occurred. He began his account of it thus: "I happened to awake suddenly at midnight, when Satan commenced debating with me." And this is suspicious.
Luther's character is vastly easy to blacken, and it will never do to accept as facts the scandalous tales told of him by his opponents. There were two sides to the man, as there are to all of us with hardly an exception. S. Paul admitted it of himself. On the one hand, it is possible to read many pages of the Table-talk without meeting with anything offensive; indeed, without being edified. In The Liberty of a Christian Man may be found passages of the deepest spirituality. On the other hand his conversation, and his writings too, often display incredible grossness. When an ex-friar has laboured for years by pen and by tongue to convince both sexes that a pure and chaste life is impossible for any save an angel or spirit; when he proclaimed that a visit to a house of ill-fame was more tolerable in the sight of God than to go to a church to hear Mass; when he advised every clergyman to "marry the cook secretly," or even to form an illicit connexion, it is hardly to be expected that he himself should be supposed the rare exception to his own rule. However, he claimed to be this, though "ferveo carnis libidine," and one cannot doubt that in this he spoke the truth. Nietzsche praises Luther in that he "possessed the courage of his sensuality, in those days tactfully described as Gospel freedom."
We went for the time, till shortening days and growing cold warned us that it was the season for hibernating, to enjoy the change of the leaf and the autumnal after-summer, to Homburg. It was not the gambling saloons that attracted my father, but the range of the Taunus, which though not extensive, nor the height attained at all considerable, yet present many scenes of great beauty. Moreover, the grounds about the Casino, and the park of the Schloss afforded very agreeable walks. Homburg then pertained to the Landgraves of Hesse-Homburg, a Calvinistic
