Luther: "Affliction is the best book in my library"

Here's a popular Martin Luther quote making the cyberspace rounds, even finding it's way into Christian History Magazine:
"Affliction is the best book in my library." Another version says, "The best book in the library of my life is the Book of Affliction." Did Luther say it? I don't think so.

Documentation
Since this quote often appears undocumented throughout cyberspace, let's use Christian History Magazine as the source. While entertainingly written, Christian History is often lacking in regard to precise documentation. This particular quote is included in their section, "Colorful Sayings of Colorful Luther: A sample of the reformer's wit and wisdom" (Issue 34, Vol. XI, No. 2, pp.27-28), compiled by Mary Ann Jeffreys (apparently, a freelance writer if this is the same person).

What's interesting about Ms. Jeffreys is that a simple Google search of her name + "Christianity Today" (the publisher of Christian History) puts forth a number of hits to articles on or by Charles Spurgeon.  A basic Google book search of this Luther quote also puts forth a number of hits to books by Charles Spurgeon. Coincidence?  Probably not! It appears to me that the basic English form of this quote originated from a Charles Spurgeon sermon published in the nineteenth-century. Spurgeon preached,

Another reason for this discipline is, I think, that in heaviness we often learn lessons that we never could attain elsewhere. Do you know that God has beauties for every part of the world; and he has beauties for every place of experience? There are views to be seen from the tops of the Alps that you can never see elsewhere. Ay, but there are beauties to be seen in the depths of the dell that ye could never see on the tops of the mountains; there are glories to be seen on Pisgah, wondrous sights to be beheld when by faith we stand on Tabor; but there are also beauties to be seen in our Gethsemanes, and some marvelously sweet flowers are to be culled by the edge of the dens of the leopards. Men will never become great in divinity until they become great in suffering. “Ah!” said Luther, “affliction is the best book in my library;” and let me add, the best leaf in the book of affliction is that blackest of all the leaves, the leaf called heaviness, when the spirit sinks within us, and we can not endure as we could wish.

Context
I could not locate anything exactly like "affliction is the best book in my library" from Luther.  The closest I could locate was the following Table Talk utterance:

To have Patience in Suffering.

On the 8th of August, 1529, Luther, together with his wife lay sick of a fever; then he said, God hath touched me sorely, and I have been impatient: but God knoweth better than we whereto it serveth. Our Lord God doth like a printer, who setteth the letters backwards; we see and feel well his setting, but we shall see the print yonder, in the life to come: in the mean time we must have patience.

The tribulations of God-fearing christians are strong and profitable. Tribulation is a right school, and an exercise of flesh and blood: whoso is without them, the same understandeth nothing. Therefore the Psalms, almost in every verse, speaketh of nothing but tribulations, and perplexities, sorrows, and troubles: it is a book of tribulations.

Conclusion
That Table Talk quote was taken from one of the oldest modern English versions, a version published in the nineteenth-century. Included in this volume is a lengthy anthology of quotes on "Temptation and Tribulation." Did Spurgeon have this edition? During Spurgeon's time period, there was only a limited pool of Luther's writings available in English, so it's highly likely he had a copy. It was a very popular book!  It certainly would make sense that he would gravitate to those Table Talk topics that expounded on suffering. Spurgeon's sermon is about spiritual "heaviness," or rather despair. It's a fairly uncontested fact that Spurgeon suffered from bouts of depression, as did Luther.

I suspect though, Spurgeon had a flair for using the phrase, "best book," and he was not citing Luther at all.  Elsewhere, Spurgeon says:

Let me yet further observe, that YOUR FAITH WILL BE TRIED FOR AN ABUNDANTLY USEFUL PURPOSE. The trial of your faith will increase, develop, deepen, and strengthen it. “Oh,” you have said, “I wish I had more faith.” Your prayer will be heard through your having more trial. Often in our prayers we have sought for a stronger faith to look within the veil. The way to stronger faith usually lies along the rough pathway of sorrow. Only as faith is contested will faith be confirmed. I do not know whether my experience is that of all God’s people; but I am afraid that all the grace that I have got out of my comfortable and easy times and happy hours, might almost lie on a penny. But the good that I have received from my sorrows, and pains, and griefs, is altogether incalculable. What do I not owe to the hammer and the anvil, the fire and the file? What do I not owe to the crucible and the furnace, the bellows that have blown up the coals, and the hand which has thrust me into the heat? Affliction is the best bit of furniture in my house. It is the best book in a minister’s library. We may wisely rejoice in tribulation, because it worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope; and by that way we are exceedingly enriched, and our faith grows strong.

Notice also this comment from Spurgeon:

We learn more true divinity by our trials than by our books. The great Reformer said, "Prayer is the best book in my library." He might have added affliction as the next. Sickness is the best Doctor of Divinity in all the world; and trial is the finest exposition of Scripture. This is so inestimable a mark of the love of our blessed Lord that we might almost desire trouble for the sake of it.

Notice also this comment from Spurgeon:

LUTHER has well said that the experience of the minister is the best book in his library. I am persuaded it is so, and that God often leads his servants through peculiar states of mind, not so much for their own benefit as for the sake of those to whom they may afterwards minister.

The similarities are apparent, but no mention of Luther in the first quote, and referring to the "great Reformer" in the second, and "Luther" in the third. I suspect the "best book" was Spurgeon's phrase, not Luther's.

If Spurgeon was citing Luther, he was probably working from memory in his sermon and not citing Luther directly, perhaps summarizing the Table Talk's extensive quotes on suffering. The quote, as has been popularized, may simply also be Spurgeon's recollection of what he recalls reading Luther to have said, perhaps by Luther, or perhaps a book about Luther. Interestingly, elsewhere in the Table Talk, Luther does mention the "best book" in regard to suffering:

The Holy Scriptures are full of divine gifts and virtues. The books of the heathen taught nothing of faith, hope, or charity; they present no idea of these things; they contemplate only the present, and that which man, with the use of his material reason, can grasp and comprehend. Look not therein for aught of hope or trust in God. But see how the Psalms and the Book of Job treat of faith, hope, resignation, and prayer; in a word, the Holy Scripture is the highest and best of books, abounding in comfort under all afflictions and trials. It teaches us to see, to feel, to grasp, and to comprehend faith, hope, and charity, far otherwise than mere human reason can; and when evil oppresses us, it teaches how these virtues throw light upon the darkness, and how, after this poor, miserable existence of ours on earth, there is another and an eternal life.