Luther: "I know that I have often done many things foolishly and very rashly"

"I know that I have often done many things foolishly and very rashly, so much so that I thought: “Why has God called me to preach when I do not have as much knowledge, discretion, and judgment as the importance of the office demands?” Although I performed everything with a pious and sincere heart, with pious devotion and zeal, yet a great deal of nonsense and many failures arose, with the result that heaven and the whole world seemed about to go to ruin. Then I was compelled to fall on my knees and to ask for help and counsel from God, who is powerful and turns a denouement in a tragedy into a catastrophe in a comedy while we are sleeping. Thus He creates Eve while Adam is sleeping. He takes a rib from him while he is sleeping, closes the place with flesh, and builds the rib which he took from Adam into flesh. Here someone may say that God had silken fingers, because He performs such a great work so nimbly and so easily. In the same manner He also governs His saints. Even if they have erred seriously in their thinking and have been guilty of great folly and rashness, from which countless evils can arise, yet He brings about a happy outcome, like the denouement in a comedy."

  [Luther, M. (1999). Luther's works, vol. 5: Lectures on Genesis: Chapters 26-30 (J. J. Pelikan, H. C. Oswald and H. T. Lehmann, Ed.) (Ge 27:14). Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House].