The same biographer has summed up the closing years of Luther's life, from which we have so many records in the shape of letters and documents of various kinds. As McGiffert says: "There is little sign of flagging powers in his later writings. The same Luther still speaks in them with all the racy humor, biting satire and coarse vituperation of his best days." He continues (p. 373):
"Despite the multiplicity of his occupations, his closing years were far from happy. As time passed, he became more censorious, impatient and bitter. He seems to have been troubled less frequently than in earlier life with doubts as to his own spiritual condition and divine mission, but he grew correspondingly despondent over the results of his labors and the unworthiness of his followers. Instead of finding the world transformed into a paradise by his gospel, he saw things continuing much as before, and his heart grew sick with { 253} disappointment. The first flush of enthusiasm passed, and the joy of battle gone, he had time to observe the results of his work, and they were by no means to his liking.
"Conditions even in Wittenberg itself were little to his liking. In this centre of gospel light he felt there should be a devotion and purity seen nowhere else. Instead, as the town grew in size and importance, and manners lost somewhat of their earlier simplicity, it seemed to his exaggerated sensibilities that everything was going rapidly to the bad."
Calvin, like Luther, was another of these vigorous active spirits so common in this time of the Renaissance who felt that he had a special call from on High to teach the world doctrines very different from those received before. Like Luther, he too used his native tongue in speech and writing with a forcefulness and originality that makes him one of the founders of the prose of his language. From his earliest youth of a very serious disposition, caring nothing for the games and sports in which his fellow-scholars indulged, shunning society and its pleasures, and prone to censure anything that was not deeply serious and to condemn everything that smacked of frivolity, he found abundant opportunity for reform. Severe to himself in the highest degree, relaxation seemed almost sinful. He insisted that others should follow the same regime and imputed even the ordinary amusements of life to sin. He was lacking entirely in that disposition for healthy, happy and hearty amusement which is a sign of good health of mind and body and the best possible proof of absolute sanity. The old Church had encouraged the recreations and amusements of the people. Calvin made it a cardinal principle of religion that there were to be none of them. He is probably no more to be held responsible for this, since it was due to the lack of something in him, than is the color-blind person for failure to perceive colors.