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 THE 
 
 LIFE OF LUTHER; 
 
 Iptwl ftifmnr* in its (felhr 
 
 OPENING SCENES 
 
 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 BY BARNAS SEARS, D.D. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA : 
 AMERICAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION, 
 
 Ho. 146 CHESTNUT STREET. 
 
 NSW roSJC: No. 147 NASSAU STREET BOSTON: No. CORMUILL. 
 
 LOVISriLLK: No. 108 FOC&TH VIKEZT.
 
 Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1849, by the 
 
 AMERICAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION, 
 
 hi the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Eastern District of 
 Pennsylvania. 
 
 49" No books are published by the AMERICAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION 
 without the sanction of the Committee of Publication, consisting of 
 fourteen members, from the following denominations of Christians, yiz. 
 Baptist, Methodist, Congregationalist, Episcopal, Presbyterian, and Re- 
 formed Dutch. Not more than three of the members can be of the 
 same denomination, and no book can be published to which any mem- 
 ber of the Committee shall object
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 IN an age so distinguished for historical research as the 
 present, it would be remarkable if there were no demand 
 for a Life of LUTHEK, founded upon new investigations. In 
 the English language the want of such a work is much 
 greater than in the German. In the latter, the facts 
 newly discovered, though they lie scattered in many dif- 
 ferent publications, are recorded ; while, in the former, 
 they are nearly or quite unknown. To say nothing of 
 Luther's letters, edited by De Wette, and of Melancthon's, 
 by Bretschneider, without which no good biography of 
 Luther can be written, elaborate historical essays, almost 
 without number, on points connected with the life of the 
 Reformer have been published within a few years in Ger- 
 many, of which hardly a trace can be found in English 
 or American books. The year 1846, the third centennial 
 of Luther's death, was, in this respect, unusually prolific. 
 In the recent histories, too, of old towns and cities, in the 
 publications of learned societies, in the later critical bio- 
 graphies of many of the associates and contemporaries of 
 the Reformer, and in several special and general histories
 
 4 PREFACE. 
 
 relating to the affairs of Germany in that period, import- 
 ant additions have been made to our knowledge of the 
 life and times of Luther. 
 
 About three years ago, the Committee of Publication 
 of the American Sunday-School Union applied to the 
 writer, to prepare a life of Luther, to be published under 
 the auspices of that society. Having, from the time 
 of my temporary residence in Germany, in the years 
 1834-6, when my historical studies, under the guidance 
 of Neander, commenced, contracted some familiarity with 
 the writings of Luther, and with the history of his age, 
 I was induced by my historical tastes, and my interest 
 in the Reformer, some of whose minor works I had edited, 
 no less than by the hope of doing a service to the young, 
 to engage in the undertaking. During this interval of 
 three years, nearly all the works, amounting to some 
 hundreds of volumes, which cast new light on the subject 
 in hand, have been carefully examined. Many new facts 
 have been brought together, and many obscurities re- 
 moved, while not a few apocryphal accounts have been 
 discarded. 
 
 Persons who are conversant with the sources of infor- 
 mation, will not complain that the admirable work of 
 Jurgens on the youth of Luther should be followed, so far 
 as it extends. No other single work, except Luther's 
 letters, has been used so much as this. But from the 
 year 1517, to Luther's death in 1546, no such explorer 
 and guide could be found. Fortunately, from that date,
 
 PREFACE. 5 
 
 Luther is his own best biographer. The five large volumes 
 of his published letters, with the supplementary collec- 
 tions, embrace the history of this period of his life with 
 remarkable fulness of detail. The fact that no life of the 
 Reformer had been written, in which was incorporated 
 the body of materials contained in his correspondence, 
 determined the mind of the writer to make that corres- 
 pondence a subject of particular study with reference to 
 his object. The new colouring which would hereby be 
 given to the narrative would, it was believed, render it 
 both more truthful and more interesting. Luther would 
 appear in his own dress. His thoughts, expressed in his 
 own words, would reveal his true character as nothing 
 else would. Never could such a plan be more justifiable 
 than in the case of one so accustomed as he was, to give 
 unreserved freedom to his tongue and pen, and to speak 
 out all that was in his heart. Indeed, so perfectly does 
 the character of the individual shine forth in his own 
 utterances and actions that a separate portraiture of it 
 has been omitted as superfluous. 
 
 It will, I trust, appear that the author has had no 
 theory to establish, no secret purpose to answer, but has 
 studiously laboured to set forth Luther in his real cha- 
 racter. His faults have not been concealed, nor his 
 virtues wittingly overdrawn. It seemed irreverent to 
 interrupt the solemn voice of history, and ill-advised to 
 imitate the example of those who transfigure imperfect 
 1*
 
 6 PREFACE. 
 
 and erring men into pure saints, for the blind homage of 
 the ignorant and credulous. 
 
 In order to give full relief to the picture of Luther's 
 youth and early manhood, for the benefit of the young 
 reader, it was necessary to abridge the latter "part of his 
 life. This design was favoured by the consideration that 
 Luther's later years were involved in controversies, which 
 it would be improper to perpetuate in the publications of 
 the Union. Indeed, the biographical _ interest sensibly 
 abates at the point where it begins to expand into general 
 history, a circumstance which would of itself justify the 
 
 limited plan of the present work. 
 
 B. SEARS. 
 Newton Centre, Jan. 21, 1850.
 
 DESCRIPTION OF ENGRAVINGS. 
 
 Page 6. Entrance to Luther's House in Wittenberg, 
 with "1540" inscribed at the top. 
 
 Page 9. The Electoral or All-saints' Church at Wit- 
 tenberg, described on page 122. 
 
 Page 11. Taken from a medal struck in Saxony, in the 
 year 1617, the first Jubilee of the Reformation. It re- 
 presents Luther taking a bushel from a lamp or candle 
 a symbol of the gospel, as is intimated by the open 
 Bible at the side, and the name of Jehovah above, in 
 Hebrew letters. 
 
 Page 43. Luther's House, or the Old Augustinian 
 Cloister. His apartment was in the second story, con- 
 nected with the second and third windows from the 
 right. The entrance was at the door on the right of 
 the tower and near by it. 
 
 Page 44. Taken from a medal struck by the city 
 of Worms in 1617. It represents a burning candle 
 standing upon an open Bible, with a serpent endeavour- 
 ing to extinguish it, and a hand from the clouds point- 
 ing to it, and intimating that divine strength feeds the 
 flame. The medal itself has a Latin inscription sig- 
 nifying, "0 Lord! let it shine on for ever." 
 
 Page 56. The Ninety-five Theses of Luther on Indul- 
 gences, posted up on the door of the Electoral Church at 
 Wittenberg. The hammer is lying at his feet.
 
 DESCRIPTION OF ENGRAVINGS. 
 
 Page 64. The Augusteum, or University, on the left, 
 and Melancthon's house towering high on the right. 
 
 Page 114. Luther's Monument, erected in 1817 1821, 
 in the Market-place at Wittenberg. 
 
 Page 115. Jubilee-medal struck in Saxony, in 1617, 
 representing the Elector, Frederick the Wise, 'In his 
 robes of office, holding a sword in his right hand, and 
 pointing with his left to the name of Jehovah. By his 
 side stands Luther, holding a burning light in his right 
 hand, and with the left pointing to the Bible. On the 
 table-cloth is seen the Elector's coat of arms. 
 
 Page 262. Luther's seal, described by himself, p. 449. 
 
 Page 131. A rear- view of the Parochial or City 
 Church in Wittenberg, where Luther commonly preached. 
 
 Page 176. From a medal of the second Jubilee of the 
 Reformation, in 1717, in Saxe-Weisenfels. It represents 
 the Church founded upon a rock the waves of the ocean 
 dashing wildly around it. 
 
 Page 287. Taken from a medal struck by the City of 
 Nuremberg, in 1717, representing a Bible open to the 
 passage "The word of the Lord endureth for ever." 
 V. D. M. I. M. are the initials of the same words in 
 Latin "Verbum Dei Manet In Sternum." On the 
 left of the Bible is a mason's plummet-rule or level, 
 with reference to the passage (Gal. vi. 16): "As many 
 as walk according to this rule, peace be on them and 
 mercy," &c. 
 
 Page 294. The Double-headed Eagle and Crown repre- 
 sent the German Empire. 
 
 Page 318. Taken from a medal struck in Saxony, in 
 1617, representing a brick-kiln on the left ; on the right,
 
 DESCRIPTION OF ENGRAVINGS. 9 
 
 the brazen serpent, or serpent on the cross, and the 
 name of Jehovah with a pillar of cloud between. The 
 meaning is, that as Moses conducted the children of 
 Israel from the bondage of Egypt, so did Luther conduct 
 the people of God from papal captivity. 
 
 Page 365. The Castle of the Elector at Wittenberg. 
 
 Page 366. Taken from a medal struck at Halle, in 
 Suabia, in 1617, resembling that on page 294 ; except 
 that it has the city arms or seal. 
 
 Page 403. Chapel Corpus Christ! (Body of Christ), 
 one of the oldest public buildings in Wittenberg. 
 
 Page 404. From a medal of Saxe-Gotha, struck in 
 1717, representing a palm-tree among thorns, and yet 
 flourishing. Its emblematical import, as applied to the 
 church, is obvious. Upon the medal itself is inscribed a 
 verse from Ovid "Vixi annos bis centum, nunc tertia 
 vivitur setas" " I have lived two centuries, and am now 
 living in the third." 
 
 Page 486. The Yard or Court of the Elector's Castle 
 at Wittenberg.
 
 PART I. 
 
 FROM LUTHER'S BIRTH TILL THE BEGINNING OF THE 
 REFORMATION IN 1517. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 LUTHER'S BOYHOOD TO THE FOURTEENTH YEAR OF HIS AGE, 
 WHEN HE LEFT HIS FATHER'S HOUSE. 
 
 SECTION I. Luther's Birth-place and Parentage. 
 
 OME twenty- 
 five miles 
 north-west of 
 Leipsic is situ- 
 ated the old 
 town of Halle, 
 on the Saale. 
 From this 
 town, the road 
 running to the 
 west, after 
 crossing a fer- 
 tile plain,leads 
 to a romantic 
 spot, at a dis 
 tance of ten 
 miles, where the hills of south-western Saxony be- 
 gin to rise, and the flat lands, extending all the 
 way from the Baltic Sea, reach their termination. 
 Here the road, passing between two beautiful 
 sheets of water, the one fresh and the other salt, 
 enters a vale, with ranges of vine-clad hills on eithei 
 side, which becomes wider and wider, till at the dis 
 tance of nearly ten miles, it contracts again, and the 
 heights that bounded it converge and form the varied 
 
 11
 
 12 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1483-97. 
 
 and pleasant scenery of Eisleben, once the capital 
 of the county of Mansfeld. As the traveller enters 
 this town, he leaves, on the left, before proceeding 
 very far, the house where Luther was born, now 
 converted into an edifice for the accommodation of an 
 orphan school. In the same quarter of the city, a 
 few rods to the east, is St. Peter's Church, where, 
 according to the custom of the times, the boy was, 
 on the very next day after his birth, baptized, and 
 christened Martin, as that happened to be St. Martin's 
 day. This circumstance is highly characteristic of 
 the religious sentiments of that age. The senses and 
 the imagination were employed, more perhaps than 
 the heart, in the service of religion. The infant 
 child was to be brought at once, in imagination at 
 least, into connection with a saint; and it was be- 
 lieved that an association of the name would be 
 adapted to awaken in him a corresponding assoqa- 
 tion of ideas. The font which was used on that occa- 
 sion is still shown to the curious traveller. 
 
 Leaving these places and passing directly on, 
 about half-way through the town, the visiter will 
 reach the point where a broad street, coming from 
 the left, meets at right-angles with the one he is in. 
 Turning in that direction he will see most of the 
 city lying before him, on a rising eminence. At a 
 little distance stands, on the left, the old and some- 
 what stately house in which Luther died. On the 
 other side of the street, a few rods above, is to be 
 seen the church in which he preached his last ser- 
 mon, the very pulpit in which he stood being still 
 preserved. 
 
 Let us now look for that district in Thuringia, or 
 Western Saxony, where the ancestors of Luther re-
 
 2E. 1-13.] BIRTH-PLACE. 13 
 
 sided. We will imagine ourselves at the castle of 
 Wartburg, about seventy-five miles south-west of 
 Eisleben, and about twenty-five west of Erfurt. 
 Before us, as we face the east, we shall have Eise- 
 nach, in a valley, almost at our feet, and along the 
 hills and dales beyond, Gotha, Erfurt, Weimar and 
 Jena, lying respectively at distances of about twelve 
 or fourteen miles from each other. 
 
 To the left, towards Eisleben, we look directly 
 across four or five ranges of hills, which run parallel 
 with the Thuringian Forest, with long narrow vales 
 between them. To the right, or in a south-easterly 
 direction, lies the Thuringian Forest itself a roman- 
 tic range of hills or mountains, extending about forty 
 miles. Through all this tract of country were scat- 
 tered different branches of the family which bore the 
 name of Luther. 
 
 Directly south from Wartburg, on the south- 
 western declivity of the forest, on the way to 
 Salzungen, lies the hamlet of Mora, where was 
 the homestead of that branch of the family 
 from which Martin Luther sprung. Here the 
 grandfather, Heine Luther, had a small farm, which 
 he seems to have left to his eldest son Heinz 
 or Henry Luther, the uncle of Martin. While 
 Heinz received the small estate and assumed the 
 maintenance of his parents, Hans or John, Martin 
 Luther's father, appears to have been dependent 
 upon his own industry for his livelihood. The most 
 probable opinion is, that not long after his marriage 
 he removed to Eisleben, in order to engage in the 
 business of mining. From the Hartz Mountains, 
 lying to the north-west, between Eisleben and 
 Hanover, there runs a vein of copper with a small
 
 14 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1483-97. 
 
 ingredient of silver, passing through Mansfeld and 
 extending to Eisleben. At this last place, Hans 
 Luther, Martin's father, took up his first residence 
 after leaving Mora ; and during this residence Martin 
 Luther was born, November 10, 1483. 
 
 The story to which Seckendorf gave currency, on 
 the authority of a writer too late by a century to 
 be a witness, namely, that Luther was born while 
 his parents, yet residents of Mora, were attending 
 a fair at Eisleben, is not only improbable in itself, 
 as D'Aubigne" well remarks, but has been proved to 
 be untrue from the fact, that fairs were never held 
 at Eisleben in the month of November. Melancthon, 
 the best authority on this subject, says : " The pa- 
 rents of Luther first dwelt in the town of Eisleben, 
 where Luther was born, and afterwards they went 
 to Mansfeld." This view is confirmed by Ratze- 
 berger's Manuscript, which says : " Forasmuch as 
 the mining business had for many years been in a 
 prosperous state in the county of Mansfeld, Hans 
 Luther, with his wife Margaret, betook himself to 
 that place, and gave himself, according to his best 
 ability, to mining, till he became owner of a share in 
 the mines and of a foundry. There, in the town 
 of Eisleben, in the year 1483, was his son Martin 
 Luther born, .... but the elder Luther, Hans, re- 
 moved with his household to Mansfeld and was, on 
 account of his knowledge and industry in mining, 
 much beloved of the old Count Gunther." 
 
 The report that Luther's father fled to Eisleben in 
 consequence of having killed a person at Mora, was 
 undoubtedly got up at a later period by the Papists, 
 in order to throw discredit upon the Reformation. 
 Eisleben, which has now a population of about seven
 
 M. 1-13.] BIRTH-PLACE. 15 
 
 thousand, was, at that time, the largest town of the 
 territory of the Counts of Mansfeld.* 
 
 As Luther passed only about half a year of his 
 earliest infancy in Eisleben, it was only the associa- 
 tions of his mind and subsequent connections with 
 this place that could have any influence upon him. 
 Indeed, it may be said that Eisleben owes more to 
 Luther, than Luther to Eisleben. He always che- 
 rished an affection for the place, and had warm and 
 intimate friends there ; and the very last act of his 
 life was, to make arrangements for establishing a 
 Latin high-school in Eisleben, which soon numbered 
 seven hundred pupils, and has not only existed, but 
 flourished from that time to the present. 
 
 After about six months' residence at Eisleben from 
 the time of Luther's birth, his parents removed to 
 Mansfeld, six miles to the north-west, of which the 
 present population is about twelve hundred and fifty. 
 Though this was a much smaller place than the for- 
 mer, it was the residence of the various branches of 
 the family of the Counts of Mansfeld. The castle, now 
 in ruins, stood upon a rocky eminence on the south, 
 and overlooked the vale in which the town was situ- 
 ated. The scenery, in and around the place where 
 Luther spent the first thirteen years of his life, was 
 rather wild and romantic. The country, though not 
 mountainous, is elevated and hilly; partly cultivated, 
 partly covered with pine forests, and partly a bald 
 and sterile rock. The pits and slag lying on the 
 
 * The independent county of Mansfeld was a small ir- 
 regular tract, lying between Halle and Nordhausen, not 
 extending forty miles in any direction ; and yet D'Au- 
 bigne" says Mora was in it, whereas it was more than 
 sixty miles from its nearest boundary.
 
 16 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1483-97. 
 
 surface indicate at once that it is a mining dis- 
 trict. To the south-east, towards Eisleben, an ex- 
 tensive, varied and smiling landscape meets the eye. 
 In the time of Luther's childhood, Mansfeld was a 
 place of active business. Money, in considerable 
 quantities, was coined from the silver ore ; and the 
 copper worked in those mines led to commercial in- 
 tercourse with the larger places of trade in the south 
 of Germany, and with Venice. It was undoubtedly 
 the prospect of doing better in his business that in- 
 duced the miner, Hans Luther, to leave Eisleben, 
 and settle at Mansfeld ; and the result justified his 
 expectation. For we find him at a later period ris- 
 ing, if not to affluence, to a state of comfort and 
 respectability. He became the owner of a house 
 and two furnaces, and left, at his death, besides 
 these, about one thousand dollars in money. He 
 was so much esteemed, that he was made a member 
 of the town council. 
 
 SECTION II. Character of Luther's Parents, and their Con- 
 dition during his Boyhood. 
 
 LUTHER always spoke of himself and of his an- 
 cestors as belonging to the peasantry. " I am a 
 peasant's son. My father, my grandfather, and my 
 forefathers were all true peasants. Afterwards my 
 father went to Mansfeld, and became an ore-digger." 
 As it has been already intimated, Luther's father, after 
 he became a miner, rose by industry and effort from 
 the condition of a peasant to that of a burgher or 
 free citizen. He commenced his career at Mansfeld 
 in penury, but with a force of character that could 
 not leave him in that state. " My parents," says
 
 JE. 1-13.] PARENTAGE. 17 
 
 Luther, " were, in the beginning, right poor. My 
 father was a poor mine-digger,* and my mother did 
 carry her wood on her shoulders ; and after this sort 
 did they support us, their children. They had a 
 sharp, bitter experience of it; no one would do like- 
 wise now." 
 
 It was not till about seventeen years afterwards, 
 when Luther was a member of the university, that 
 his father had the means of paying the expenses of 
 his education.^ His honesty, good sense, energy and 
 decision of character won for him the respect of his 
 fellow-citizens. He was open-hearted and frank, and 
 was wont to follow the convictions of his under- 
 standing, fearless of consequences. His firmness 
 was characterized by severity, sometimes approach- 
 ing to obstinacy. In his actions which are known 
 to us, he appears clear-headed and decided, going 
 right forward to his object. His son's bold and un- 
 wavering course after committing himself to the 
 work of reform, was just to his mind. In the very 
 
 * ffauer, a word which has often been misunderstood 
 as meaning a wood-cutter. It is time this mistake was 
 corrected in the English and American writers on Luther. 
 
 f Michelet is evidently in an error when he speaks of 
 the parents being " in the enjoyment of a small property, 
 for which they were no doubt indebted to their ton." The 
 position of the father in society at Mansfeld, long before 
 Luther's celebrity, the liberal support which he is known 
 to have given his son while at the university, his appear- 
 ance with an attendance of twenty horsemen at the time 
 of Martin's consecration as priest, the present of thirty 
 guldens then made, and Luther's own poverty up to the 
 time of the father's death, all forbid such a conjecture. 
 Besides, the early biographers of Luther, who were his 
 intimate friends, testify directly to the contrary. 
 2*
 
 18 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1483-97. 
 
 midst of the Peasants' War, which the enemies of 
 Luther said was caused by him, his father advised 
 him to take the bold, and, at that time, even hazard- 
 ous step of trampling on the vow of celibacy, and, 
 in that way, bearing his most decided testimony 
 against the pretended sanctity of a monastic life. 
 
 Hans Luther was strictly religious in his charac- 
 ter, but, at the same time, had the good sense, (so 
 rare in that age,) to distinguish religion from monas- 
 ticism, upon which he looked with suspicion and 
 aversion. Hence he was highly displeased when his 
 son became a monk, and it was two years before a 
 reconciliation was effected, and even then his opinion 
 remained unchanged. When Martin left the mo- 
 nastic life, as he afterward says, "My father was 
 heartily glad, for that he well knew the wicked cun- 
 ning of the monks." Melancthon describes him as 
 being " a magistrate at Mansfeld, beloved of all for 
 the honesty of his character." Mathesius, who had 
 lived in the family of Luther, represents the father 
 as "patterning the widow of Sarepta, and training 
 up his son in the fear of the Lord." 
 
 Of the history of Luther's mother less is known. 
 Her maiden name was Margaret Lindemann. She 
 was born at Neustadt, a small town directly south of 
 Eisenach, and west of Grotha. Her father, who had 
 been a burgher there, had removed from that place to 
 Eisenach. It was, no doubt, here that Luther's father 
 formed an acquaintance with her. The circumstance 
 that three of her brothers were liberally educated 
 would seem to indicate that she belonged to an in- 
 telligent family. Melancthon says, " She had many 
 virtues agreeing to her sex ; and was especially not- 
 able for her chaste conversation, godly fear, and
 
 M. 1-13.] DOMESTIC EDUCATION. 19 
 
 diligent prayer, insomuch that other honourable 
 women looked upon her as a model of virtue and 
 honesty." That her piety was strongly tinged with 
 the superstitions of the times and had a monastic 
 severity, is proved by a variety of incidental re- 
 marks found in the writings of Luther. On one 
 occasion he says, " My mother's strait and rigorous 
 carriage toward me served afterward to make me fly 
 to a cloister and become a monk." 
 
 As one of the most important objects aimed at in 
 this biography is to trace out the causes that ope- 
 rated in the formation of Luther's character; and 
 as the incidents of his early life have been very 
 sparingly handed down to us, it will be requisite to 
 direct attention successively to the character of the 
 various influences that acted upon him ; and then to 
 collect from the scenes of common life, in the time 
 and places of his education, and from his own 
 frequent allusion to them in his later writings, 
 as many collateral rays of light as possible, and 
 concentrate them on the points in question. In this 
 way, we can, in no small degree, fill up the chasm 
 which has so long existed in respect to his early 
 history. 
 
 SECTION III. Luther ' Domestic Education. 
 
 LUTHER'S parents bestowed great care upon his 
 early training. In the strictest sense, he was brought 
 up in the fear of God, and with reverence for the 
 then existing institutions of religion. The inten- 
 tions of his parents were of the most laudable cha- 
 racter ; the faults of their discipline were those of 
 the age in which they lived. They were highly con- 
 scientious, earnest and zealous in the discharge of
 
 20 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1483-97. 
 
 their parental duties. But the age was one of rude- 
 ness and severity, and they themselves had more 
 talent than culture, more force and sternness of cha- 
 racter than skill in awakening and fostering the 
 generous impulses of childhood. Their discipline 
 was, almost exclusively, one of law and authority. 
 The consequence was, that Martin, instead of feeling 
 at ease and gamboling joyfully in their presence, 
 became timid and shy, and was kept in a state of 
 alarm, which closed up the avenues of his warm and 
 naturally confiding heart. "Once," says he, "did 
 my father beat me so sharply, that I fled away from 
 him, and was angry against him, till, by diligent en- 
 deavour, he gained me back." " Once did my mo- 
 ther, for a small nut, beat me till the blood came 
 forth." " Their intent and purpose were of the best 
 sort ; but they knew not how to put a difference be- 
 tween dispositions, and to order their discipline ac- 
 cordingly; for that it should be exercised in a way 
 that the apple might be put with the rod." 
 
 To this rigid domestic discipline is to be traced, in 
 a measure, his being long subject to sudden alarms, 
 or being harsh and violent when he rose above them. 
 Though in later life he was fully aware that many 
 errors had been committed in his domestic training; 
 and though, as he himself says, he tried in vain to 
 remove all the effects of it upon his feelings and 
 habits, still he found in it much more to approve 
 than to condemn. Alluding to his own case, and 
 that of others of his age, he says : " Children should 
 not be entreated too tenderly of their parents, but 
 should be forced to order and to submission, as were 
 their parents before them." 
 
 The fact that, from three or four brothers, Martin 
 alone was designated for a liberal education, is suffi-
 
 JE. 1-13.] AT SCHOOL. 21 
 
 cient proof that he gave some early indications of 
 talent. It is also evident that the father took a re- 
 ligious view of this subject and desired for his son 
 something higher and better than mere worldly dis- 
 tinction. An early writer states, that he had heard 
 from the relations of. Luther at Mansfeld, that the 
 father was often known to pray earnestly at the bed- 
 side of his son, that God would bless him and make 
 him useful. Mathesius says, that Luther's father, 
 not only for his own gratification, but especially for 
 the benefit of his son, frequently invited the clergy- 
 men and school-teachers of the place to his house. 
 Thus were domestic influences brought in aid, in 
 every suitable way, to form a taste for moral and in- 
 tellectual culture. "Well would it be for the world, 
 if others, in more eligible circumstances, and in more 
 enlightened times, would bestow similar care and 
 attention upon training up a son of special promise 
 in such a way that he may become a public bene- 
 factor. This is what Monica did for Augustine; 
 Arethusa for Chrysostom, and Basil's and Gregory 
 Nazianzen's parents for them, and, through them, for 
 the world. 
 
 SECTION IV. Luther in the School at Mansfeld. 
 
 MANSFELD was situated in a narrow valley along 
 the brook Thalbach, skirted by hills on both sides. 
 From that part of the town where Luther's father 
 resided, it was some distance to the school-house, 
 which was situated on a hill. The house is still 
 standing, and the first story of it remains unaltered. 
 One writer says, (on what authority we do not 
 know,) that Luther commenced going to school at 
 the age of seven. Certainly he was so young that
 
 22 LIFE OF LUTHEE. [1483-97. 
 
 he was carried thither by older persons. When 
 forty-four years old, two years before his death, he 
 wrote on the blank leaf in the Bible of Nicholas 
 Oemler, who had married one of his sisters, the 
 twenty-fourth verse of the fourteenth chapter of 
 John, and under it : " To my good old friend, Nicho- 
 las Oemler, who more than once did carry me in his 
 arms to school and back again, when I was a small 
 lad, neither of us then knowing that one brother-in- 
 law was carrying another in his arms." In this 
 school, though its teachers were frequently guests at 
 his father's house, he was brought under a much 
 harsher discipline than he had been subject to at 
 home. It was not without allusion to his own ex- 
 perience, that he afterwards speaks of a class of 
 teachers, " who hurt noble minds by their vehement 
 storming, beating and pounding, wherein they treat 
 children as a jailer doth convicts." He somewhere 
 says, that he was once flogged fifteen times in a single 
 forenoon at school. Again, he says, " I have seen, 
 when I was a boy, divers teachers who found their 
 pleasure in beating their pupils." "The schools 
 were purgatories, and the teachers were tyrants and 
 task-masters." 
 
 The injurious manner in which such treatment 
 acted upon his fears is illustrated by an anecdote 
 related by Luther in his Commentary on Genesis. 
 " When I was a lad, I was wont to go out with 
 my companions begging food for our sustentation 
 while we were at the school. At Christmas, dur- 
 ing divine service, we went around among the small 
 villages, singing from house to house, in four parts 
 as we were wont, the hymn on the child Jesus born 
 at Bethlehem. We came by chance before the 
 hut of a peasant who lived apart at the end of the
 
 2E. 1-13.] AT SCHOOL. 23 
 
 village ; and when he heard us singing, he came out 
 and, after the coarse and harsh manner of the pea- 
 sants, said, ' Where are you, boys ?' at the same time 
 bringing us a few sausages in his hand. But we 
 were so terrified at these words, that we all scampered 
 off, though we knew no good reason why, save that 
 from the daily threats and tyranny practised by the 
 teachers toward their pupils at that time, we had 
 learned to be timid." This incident, which has com- 
 monly been referred to the time when Luther was at 
 Magdeburg, probably belongs to the period of his 
 earlier childhood at Mansfeld. For it was when he 
 was " a small boy," and was under severe teachers, 
 which seems not to have been the case except at 
 Mansfeld. The circumstance that Luther was then 
 living at his father's house will be no objection, if 
 we consider the customs of the times and the poverty 
 of the family at that early period. We are else- 
 where informed that Luther was then accustomed to 
 attend funeral processions as a singer, for which he 
 received a groschen, (about three cents,) each time. 
 
 The school at Mansfeld, at that time, was taught 
 by one master, assisted by two members of the 
 church choir, that is, two theological students, who, 
 for a small stipend, attended on the daily services of 
 the church. Here it becomes necessary to describe 
 the character of the lower schools of Germany at the 
 close of the fifteenth century. They were called 
 '' trivial schools," because originally the first three 
 of the seven liberal arts, namely, grammar, rhetoric, 
 and logic, were taught in them. 
 
 At this time, however, and particularly at Mansfeld, 
 a little monkish Latin, the pieces of music commonly 
 sung at church and the elements of arithmetic, con- 
 stituted the studies of the lower schools. These schools
 
 24 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1483-97. 
 
 were all taught by a master, assisted by theological stu- 
 dents and candidates for some of the lower clerical 
 offices. But as nearly all the offices of state at that 
 time were in the hands of the clergy, there was a gene- 
 ral rush to the schools on the part of all who were seek- 
 ing to rise above the common walks of life. The 
 great mass of the youth were wholly destitute of 
 education. All the others, except a few from the 
 sons of the rich, went through a clerical or ecclesias- 
 tical course of instruction. No matter to what offices 
 they were aspiring, they must study under the direc- 
 tion of the church and under the tuition of monks 
 and priests, or candidates for the priestly office. The 
 character, however, both of pupils and of teachers in 
 these schools, was as unclerical as could well be con- 
 ceived. The schools were properly in the charge 
 either of the bishop and the canons of his chapter, 
 or of the monks; and hence they formed two classes, 
 and were called cathedral and monastic schools. But 
 these ecclesiastics and friars became indolent, and 
 employed cheap substitutes as teachers, and lived in 
 ease and in plenty. "The drones," says Luther, 
 when speaking on this point, " drove the honey-bees 
 out of the hive; and monk and canon divided the 
 pay with the poor schoolmaster, as the beggar did, 
 who promised to share equally with the church the 
 half of what he received, and gave the outward half 
 of nuts and the inner half of dates for pious uses, 
 and consumed the residue himself." 
 
 The arrangements of the schools were these : 
 The teachers, and the pupils who were from abroad, 
 occupied large buildings with gloomy cells. A 
 sombre monastic dress distinguished them both from 
 other persons. A large portion of the forenoon of 
 each day was devoted to the church. At high mass
 
 JE. 1-13.] AT SCHOOL. 25 
 
 all must be present. The boys were educated to 
 perform church ceremonies, while but little attention 
 was given to what is now commonly taught in schools. 
 The assistant teachers, candidates for the clerical 
 office, generally taught a few hours in the day, and 
 performed, at the same time, some daily inferior 
 church service, for both of which they received but 
 a trifling reward. 
 
 Thus the schools were but a part and parcel of the 
 church. The assistants were commonly taken from 
 those strolling young men who infested the country, 
 going from place to place either as advanced stu- 
 dents, and changing their place at pleasure, or seek- 
 ing some subordinate employment in the schools or 
 in the church. When they failed to find employ, 
 they resorted to begging and even to theft to pro- 
 vide for their subsistence. The older students 
 would generally seek out each a young boy as his 
 ward, and initiate him into the mysteries of this 
 vagrant mode of life, receiving in turn his services 
 in begging articles of food, and in performing other 
 menial offices. 
 
 We have a living picture of the manners and 
 habits which prevailed in these schools, in the auto- 
 biography of Thomas Platter, a contemporary of 
 Luther and a native of Switzerland. "At that 
 time," that is, in his tenth year, he says in his bio- 
 graphy, " came a cousin of mine, who had been at 
 the schools [to become a priest] in Ulm and Munich 
 in Bavaria. My friends spake to him of me, and he 
 promised to take me with him to the schools in Ger- 
 many ; for I had learned of the village priest to sing 
 a few of the church hymns. When Paul (Tor that 
 was my cousin's name) was ready to go on Iris way, 
 my uncle gave me a gulden, [sixty-three cents,] which 
 
 3
 
 26 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1483-97. 
 
 I put into the hands of Paul. I must promise that 
 I would do the begging, and give what I got to him, 
 my bacchant, (protector,) for his disposal. We 
 journeyed to Zurich, where Paul would wait till he 
 should be joined by some companions. Then we 
 determined to set out for Misnia, [in the present king- 
 dom of Saxony.] Meanwhile I went a-begging, and 
 thus furnished the sustentation of Paul. After tarry- 
 ing eight or nine weeks, we left Zurich and went on 
 our way to Misnia, in a company of eight, whereof 
 three of us were young schiitze, [wards ;] the rest 
 were large bacchantes, as they are called. Of all 
 the wards I was the youngest. When I was so weary 
 that I could hardly go, my cousin Paul would go 
 behind me and scourge me on my bare legs, for I 
 had no hose and only poor shoes. While on the 
 way, I heard the bacchantes tell how that in Misnia 
 and Silesia the scholars were wont to steal geese and 
 ducks and other things for food, and that no other 
 notice was taken thereof, if one could but only escape 
 from the owners. Then said I to my companions, 
 t When shall we come to Misnia, where I may go out 
 stealing geese ?' They replied, ( We are already 
 
 there.' We went to Halle in Saxony, and 
 
 there we joined ourselves to the school of St. Ulrich. 
 But as our bacchantes entreated us roughly, some of 
 us communed on the matter with my cousin Paul, 
 and we agreed together that we would run away from 
 them, and depart to Dresden. Here we found no 
 good school, and the houses, moreover, were infested 
 with vermin. Wherefore we went from that place to 
 Breslau. We suffered much in the way from hunger, 
 having on certain days nothing to eat but raw onions 
 with salt. We slept oftentimes in the open air ; be- 
 cause we could not get an entrance into the houses,
 
 2E. 1-13.] AT SCHOOL. 27 
 
 but were driven off, and sometimes the dogs were set 
 upon us. When we came to Breslau we found 
 abundant stores, and food was so cheap that some of 
 our company surfeited themselves and fell sick. We 
 went at the first into the school at the dome [cathe- 
 dral] of the Holy Cross; but learning that there 
 were some Switzer youth in the parish of St. Eliza- 
 beth, we removed thither. The city of Breslau hath 
 seven parishes, with a school in each. No scholar is 
 suffered to go around singing in another parish ; and 
 if any one taketh upon him to do so, he getteth a 
 round beating. Sometimes, it is said, sundry thou- 
 sands of scholars are found in Breslau, who get their 
 living by begging. Some bacchantes abide in the 
 schools twenty and even thirty years, having their 
 sustentation from what their wards beg. I have 
 oftentimes borne five or six loads home to the school 
 the selfsame evening for my bacchantes ; for being 
 small, and a Switzer besides, I was kindly received 
 by the people. ... In the winter, the small boys 
 were wont to sleep on the floor of the school-house, 
 the bacchantes in the mean season sleeping in the 
 cells, whereof there are not a few hundreds at the 
 school of St. Elizabeth. In the warm parts of the 
 year, we were wont to lie on the ground in the 
 churchyard; and when it rained, to run into the 
 school-house, and if it stormed vehemently to sing 
 responses and other pieces the whole night long with 
 the sub-chanter. Ofttimes after supper, in the summer 
 evenings, did we go into the beer-houses to buy beer, 
 and sometimes would drink so much that we could 
 not find our way back. To be short, there was plenty 
 of food, but not much studying here. At St. Eliza- 
 beth's, nine bachelors did teach every day, one hour 
 each in the selfsame room. The Greek tongue was
 
 28 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1483-97. 
 
 not studied at all. No printed books did the students 
 have of their own. The preceptor alone had an im- 
 printed Terence. What should be read was at the 
 first dictated and copied, and then construed and ex- 
 plicated, so that the bacchantes bore away great heaps 
 of manuscripts." 
 
 It was from such strolling bacchantes as are here 
 portrayed to the life, by Platter, that the assistant 
 teachers were taken, who assumed the name of lo- 
 cati (located or settled) when they obtained a place. 
 Their education consisted of a knowledge of the church 
 service, of church music, of a little Latin, and of 
 writing and arithmetic. Their character corre- 
 sponded to that of the church at large in that rude 
 and licentious age. They were, for the most part, 
 mere adventurers and vagabonds, neither loving nor 
 understanding the art of teaching any better than 
 they did the nature of true religion, whose servants 
 they professed to be. They remained but a short 
 time in a place, never pretended to study the cha- 
 racter and disposition of their pupils, taught me- 
 chanically, and ruled not by affection but by brute 
 and brutal force. The greater part of what they 
 taught was nearly useless. Study was a mere exer- 
 cise of the memory. 
 
 The school at Mansfeld was no exception to the 
 general character of the schools in the smaller towns 
 at that time. We are not left to conjecture whether 
 Luther was familiar with such scenes as have been 
 alluded to. Speaking, at a later period of life, on 
 the duty of maintaining good public schools, he 
 says, somewhat indignantly : " Such towns as will 
 not have good teachers, now that they can be 
 gotten, ought, as formerly, to have locati and bac- 
 chantes, stupid asses, who cost money enough and
 
 JE. 1-13.] AT SCHOOL. 29 
 
 yet teach their pupils nothing save to become asses 
 like themselves." " Not a single branch of study," 
 Bays he, in another place, " was at that time taught 
 as it should be." Referring to their brutality, he 
 says, " When they could not vent their spleen 
 against the higher teachers, they would pour it out 
 upon the poor boys." 
 
 In respect to the studies of Luther at Mansfeld, 
 which continued up to his fourteenth year, Mathe- 
 sius, his intimate friend, says he learned there " his 
 Ten Commandments, the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's 
 Prayer, Donatus, the Child's Grammar, Cisio Janus, 
 and church music." Donatus was to the Latin 
 grammar of the middle ages what Murray has been 
 to English grammar. Cisio Janus are the first words 
 of a church calendar in monkish Latin verse, made 
 up of mutilated words, risio standing for circumcisio, 
 (circumcision.) Next to monastic works, Terence and 
 Plautus, the two Roman comedians, were most studied, 
 as they furnished the readiest means of learning the 
 colloquial Latin, so important to the clergy at that 
 time. 
 
 Luther laments that he had not, in those schools 
 which he attended in his boyhood, " read the poets 
 and historians, which no one tawjlit Mm,'' instead 
 of which he " learned with great labour what with 
 equal labour he now had to unlearn." " Is it not 
 plain," he somewhere says, " that one can now 
 teach a boy in three years, by the time he is fifteen 
 or eighteen years old, more than was aforetime learned 
 in all the universities and cloisters ? Twenty, yea 
 forty years have men studied, and yet known neither 
 Latin nor German, not to mention the scandalous 
 lives which the youth there learned to lead." "It 
 was pitiful enough for a boy to spend/many years 
 
 3*
 
 30 > LITE OP LUTHER. [1483-97. 
 
 only to learn bad Latin sufficient for becoming a 
 priest and for saying mass, and then be pronounced 
 happy, and happy, too, the mother who bore him." 
 " And he is still a poor ignorant creature can nei- 
 ther cluck nor lay eggs ; and yet such are the 
 teachers which we have everywhere had." 
 
 It is impossible to read these and other similar pas- 
 sages of Luther, so full of reminiscences of his boy- 
 hood, and compare them with the account of Platter's 
 boyhood about the same time, without a strong con- 
 viction that they both describe very similar scenes, 
 and that the one writer serves but to illustrate the 
 other. What effort must it have cost Luther, under 
 so great disadvantages, to learn what he did ! With- 
 out uncommon abilities and perseverance, it would 
 have been impossible. 
 
 SECTION V. Luther's Religious Education. 
 
 THIS is one of the most important and yet most 
 difficult of all the inquiries to be instituted respecting 
 the history of the great Reformer. His character 
 was formed under a variety of influences, each of 
 which deserves particular notice. He was educated 
 in the bosom of the Catholic church the church as 
 it was in Germany the church as it was in Thu- 
 ringia. He was furthermore influenced by the per- 
 sonal character of his parents, their social relations 
 in Mansfeld, and the character of his teachers and 
 associates at Mansfeld, Magdeburg, Eisenach, and 
 Erfurt. On most of these points some valuable in- 
 formation has, by the researches of Jiirgens, been 
 placed within our reach. 
 
 He was educated in the Papal church as it was 
 about the close of the fifteenth century. And what
 
 M. 1-13.] RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 31 
 
 were its characteristic features at that time? The 
 writings of Luther contain the answer. This is not 
 the place to enter at large upon a description of 
 the Papal church, partly because the subject is not 
 novel, or unknown to the reader, and partly because 
 it must necessarily be interwoven with all the narra- 
 tion of Luther's life. If, instead of bringing to- 
 gether what Luther and other writers of that age 
 have left recorded on this point, we were to present 
 an analysis of their testimony, we should find that 
 nearly all their statements could be reduced to the 
 following summary : The Papal religion is a reli- 
 gion of law rather than of gospel; a Pelagian system 
 of works rather than of divine grace ; a religion 
 of forms more than of spiritual life ; a religion of 
 human rather than of divine mediation, priests and 
 saints occupying the place belonging to our great 
 High-priest and Saviour; a religion prescribed by 
 the Papal hierarchy rather than by the Bible; a 
 religion in which the sanctity of ceremonies and of 
 the sacred orders prevailed over the sanctity of the 
 heart and life; a religion of the senses and of a 
 poetical imagination rather than of saving faith ; and, 
 in fine, a religion founded more on the ignorance and 
 superstition of the middle ages than on the revela- 
 tion of the truth by Jesus Christ and his apostles. 
 
 Luther was educated in the Papal church as it 
 was in Germany. But what distinguished the church 
 in Germany from that of the other nations of Europe, 
 and particularly from that of Italy? 
 
 With the lower and middling classes in Gennany, 
 religion was, comparatively, though less than it 
 should be, a matter of deep and sincere interest. 
 With the Italian, it was a holiday amusement, merely 
 sanctifying, by solemn ceremonies, a worldly and not
 
 32 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1483-97. 
 
 unfrequently an unbelieving spirit. The German 
 was superstitious, but was at the same time sincere 
 and earnest. The piety of the Italian was frivolous 
 and superficial; that of the German was serious and 
 went to the heart. In the soul of the latter were 
 deep fountains, but superstition and ignorance ren- 
 dered their waters dark and turbid. That so many 
 were found in Germany to embrace cordially the 
 evangelical views of religion as soon as they were 
 presented by Luther and his associates, proves that 
 there was already, though smothered by the weight 
 of rubbish that lay upon it, much of sincere devo- 
 tional sentiment. We cannot reasonably suppose 
 that all, or even the majority, of the early followers 
 of Luther were converted to Christ by his preaching 
 and writings. That which distinguished Germany 
 from the rest of Christendom, therefore, was the 
 amount of spiritual nourishment drawn from the 
 teachings of the church, defective as they were. The 
 flowers were no more plentiful here than in other 
 countries, but the bees nevertheless gathered more 
 honey. Of this we have an example in the mother 
 of Luther; and she was but one of many. 
 
 Luther was educated under that peculiar type of 
 religion which prevailed in Thuringia. Here it was 
 that Boniface, the Apostle of Germany, in the eighth 
 century, with other missionaries from the British 
 islands, carried on their most important operations 
 for evangelizing Germany, founding there the Pa- 
 pal church, and thus corrupting Christianity at its 
 very introduction. Here was the great cloister of 
 Fulda, the chief seminary of sacred learning, and 
 the centre of religious influence for the surrounding 
 country. It was in Thuringia that St. Elizabeth, 
 the Thuringian landgravine, whose memory lived in
 
 IE. 1-13.] RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 33 
 
 popular legends till Luther's times, and who was a 
 favourite saint with him, was the embodiment of 
 the religious spirit of the people, a spirit of deep 
 sincerity united with childish simplicity and super- 
 stition. The Thuringians are proverbially an honest 
 and simple-hearted people. Luther's mother appears 
 to have been of this character; possessing, perhaps, 
 more earnestness in matters of religion, but not less 
 superstition, than others. His father was also a 
 genuine Thuringian of the better sort. 
 
 Either because Luther sympathized more readily 
 with the warm and credulous piety of the mother than 
 with the more sober and discriminating piety of the 
 father, or because he was, in early life, more under 
 the influence of the former and of priests and monks 
 who strengthened her influence, he eagerly imbibed 
 the popular religious sentiments of his neighbourhood. 
 At Mansfeld, in particular, the religious views here 
 described prevailed. As late as 1507, one of the 
 Counts of Mansfeld made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. 
 Two countesses of the same family were in the nun- 
 nery at Eisleben during nearly all the period that 
 Luther remained at home with his parents. The 
 cloister of Mansfeld, about two miles east of the 
 town, was supposed to be the scene of several mira- 
 cles wrought by St. Elizabeth, with all of which 
 Luther was necessarily very familiar in his boyhood. 
 
 The account of the Papal church in Thuringia, 
 given by Myconius, who was preacher at Gotha, 
 perfectly agrees with what has here been said on 
 other authorities, as do also the many incidental 
 notices of it by Luther in his writings. There can 
 be no doubt, therefore, that we have before us a true 
 description of the religious influence under which 
 Luther spent his childhood. We also know that his
 
 34 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1483-97. 
 
 susceptible mind yielded itself like wax to receive 
 the impressions which his mother and his religious 
 teachers attempted to make. The unsuspecting and 
 confiding simplicity of his character must be con- 
 stantly borne in mind, if we would rightly interpret 
 his actions and understand his history. He himself 
 was fully aware of it, and said it was the cause of 
 many blunders. He was, even in 1517, simple- 
 hearted enough to believe that the church, and the 
 pope himself, would consent to reform. 
 
 To Albert of Mainz and other bishops he wrote 
 with confidence, not doubting that they would 
 readily correct the abuses of which he complained. 
 How long did he deceive himself with the vain hope 
 that a union with the Papal church might still be 
 effected? Those who regard Luther as a sort of 
 Gregory VII., bringing about the greatest results by 
 a well-planned scheme, utterly mistake his character. 
 He was not a man of policy or calculation, but a 
 true-hearted, conscientious man, a man of principle, 
 whose great power consisted in doing right without 
 regard to consequences. He himself says, " I once 
 thought all that came unto me, professing to have 
 a regard for the gospel, were godly men ; but the 
 knaves have taught me to be wise. A fish is never 
 more in his place than when in the water, nor a 
 knave than when on the gallows." " I have become 
 a wise Rupert, as the proverb is." 
 
 Of a part of his religious education, he after- 
 wards speaks with approbation ; but of the rest, far 
 otherwise. These are his words : " In the house or 
 church of the pope was I baptized ; and there did I 
 learn the catechism and the Bible. ... I will hold 
 my father's house in great honour, and fall prostrate 
 before it, if it will but leave me my Christ and my
 
 JE. 1-13.] RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 35 
 
 conscience without a burden." " I cannot set forth 
 in a better or simpler way what one should believe, do, 
 leave undone, or know in religion, than hath been done 
 from the beginning in these three pieces, to wit, the ten 
 commandments, the creed, and the Lord's prayer. . . . 
 But these ought not to be taught as they were in time 
 past, by making them stick only in the memory." 
 "This only was taught and practised, to wit, the 
 invoking of the Virgin Mary and other saints, as 
 mediators and intercessors ; much fasting and pray- 
 ing ; making pilgrimages, or running into monaste- 
 ries ; the becoming a monk, or the establishing of 
 mass to be held at certain times. And while we 
 were doing such-like things, we dreamed we were 
 meriting heaven. Those were the times of dark- 
 ness, when we knew nothing at all of God's word, 
 but, with our own mummery and dreamy cogita- 
 tions, plunged ourselves and others into misery. 
 Whereof I was one, and was myself bathed in this 
 hot-bath of sweat and agony." 
 
 These expressions, referring to his own experience, 
 though they apply with chief force to his monastic life, 
 run back also to those earlier teachings and impres- 
 sions which conducted him to the monastery. " From 
 my childhood up," he says still more explicitly, " I 
 was trained after such a sort as to turn pale with terror 
 when I heard so 'much as the name of Christ, for I 
 was not otherwise taught than to think of him as 
 a severe and angry judge, who would deal with me 
 according to my merits and works. Wherefore, I 
 was wont all the time to think how I might set forth 
 many good works, with which to pacify Christ, my 
 judge." In his commentary on the words ''Serve 
 the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling," in 
 the second Psalm, he remarks, " When I was a child
 
 36 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1483-97. 
 
 I was angry at these words, in that I did not then 
 know that joy and hope should be coupled with 
 fear." " We were scandalously led astray in the 
 papacy; for Christ was not painted out in so mild a 
 character as he is by the prophets and apostles." 
 "We were all taught that we must ourselves make 
 satisfaction for our sins, and that, at the judgment, 
 Christ would call us to an account in respect of our 
 penances, and the amount of our good works. . . . 
 And because we could never do penances and works 
 enough, and felt nothing else but terrors and fears 
 before his wrath, we were directed to the saints in 
 heaven, as them that should be mediators between 
 us and Christ. We were taught to call upon the 
 mother of Christ, that she would beseech him, by 
 the breasts wherewith she nursed him, to put away 
 his anger, and show mercy. If she were not suf- 
 ficient, then the apostles and other saints were to 
 be invoked, till at last we came to saints whose 
 sanctity was unknown, nay, who for the greater part 
 never existed, as St. Anne, St. Barbara, St. Christo- 
 pher, St. George, and such like." " I had none 
 other knowledge of Christ, than to form him in my 
 mind, as sitting on a rainbow, and to account him as 
 a rigorous judge. For that we had no true know- 
 ledge of Christ, we fell away from him, and cleaved 
 to the saints, and called on them to be our patrons 
 and mediators." "Especially had we recourse to 
 Mary, and prayed, saying, ' 0, thou holy Virgin 
 Mary, show thy breasts to Jesus Christ, thy son, and 
 procure for me favour in his sight." Luther speaks 
 of himself as having a predisposition to an ascetic, 
 religious life. " I was so framed by nature, and so 
 trained up in the Papal church, that I loved to fast, 
 watch, pray, and accomplish pilgrimages and other
 
 M. 1-13.] RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 37 
 
 good works, to the end that I might make recom- 
 pense for my sins." He says, that these ideas clung 
 to him long after he had renounced the doctrine, for 
 " this is an inbred corruption, whereunto is super- 
 added education and custom, insomuch that we are 
 not only born into superstition, but, in the papacy, 
 are instructed and exercised in it." 
 
 Of the character of the 'preaching he heard he 
 speaks thus : " The monks preached daily their new 
 visions, dreams and fantasies, new wonders and 
 tales, and that without measure. Not a monk, if 
 he had preached two or three years, but he must 
 needs make a new sermon book, which for a season 
 would reign in the pulpit. Of such books the world 
 was full, and yet was therein nothing of Christ and 
 of faith, nothing else but our works, merits and 
 worshippings, with abundance of false and scandalous 
 tales. When therein they did their very best, it 
 pertained to supplicating saints, those of their own 
 Order not being forgotten, till they went so far as to 
 portray before all the world the holy and excellent 
 person, the Virgin Mary, as an intercessor for poor 
 sinners even against her son, Christ. For we all know,, 
 and I as well as the rest, that we were taught to put 
 Mary in the stead and in the office of Christ. . . No- 
 monk dreamed any thing, but it must needs come- 
 into the pulpit, and be. made a matter of divine ser- 
 vice. No falsehood so shameful which would not 
 be received, if it was but brought into the pulpit. 
 ... Is it not true ? Save we not, alas ! all had 
 trial and experience thereof?" 
 
 As children were ordinarily confirmed at the age 
 
 of twelve, and brought at once to the confessional 
 
 as preparatory to the supper, Luther's last two 
 
 years at Mansfeld were undoubtedly im-bittered 
 
 4
 
 38 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1483-97. 
 
 with those superstitious fears and penances of which 
 he afterward complained. While he was taught 
 that baptism took away original sin, he was told 
 that subsequent transgressions extinguished that 
 grace, and that he must regain his former state by 
 penances and satisfactions. He says, on this point, 
 "As soon as we had laid aside our infantile socks, 
 and were scarcely out of -the laver of regeneration, 
 they took it all away again by such teaching as this, 
 to wit, ' Oh thou hast long since lost thy baptism, 
 and polluted thy baptismal robe with sin. Now thou 
 must consider how thou canst do penance and make 
 satisfaction . . . till thou dost pacify God and come 
 again to a state of grace.' " He adds that he had 
 such experience before he was a monk, and that 
 " by such thoughts he was driven to monasticism." 
 From these and many other expressions of his, it 
 appears that he was a faithful and submissive dis- 
 ciple in the school of superstition in which he was 
 so diligently trained. 
 
 When Luther was a boy, the common belief in 
 witches was at its height. Of the very celebrated 
 work entitled "The Maul for Witches," (Malleus 
 Maleficarum,) teaching priests and magistrates what 
 rules to observe in their proceedings against witches, 
 and circulated with both the papal and imperial 
 sanction, three editions were printed while Luther 
 was a boy, and was in his father's house at Mans- 
 feld. He tells a story of a witch that lived near 
 by, and used to trouble his mother very much ; an- 
 other, of an attempt of the devil, in human form, to 
 separate husband and wife ; and another still, of an 
 instance where the devil actually entered the pulpit 
 and preached for a minister. Some of these stories 
 he .-seems to believe, others he ridicules. " I my-
 
 JE. 1-13.] RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 39 
 
 self," he observes, "have seen monks, shameless and 
 wicked fellows, who feigned to cast out the devil, 
 and then to sport with him as with a child. Who 
 can recount all their crafty tricks done in the name 
 of Christ, of the Virgin Mary, of the holy cross, of 
 St. Cyriac ?" 
 
 Though Luther afterwards became much more 
 enlightened on these subjects, still the supersti- 
 tions in which he was educated in his childhood 
 clung to him to the last. No one is ignorant 
 of the story of his inkstand thrown at the devil in 
 his cell in Erfurt. Though it may be an apocryphal 
 story, it still is a true illustration of the character 
 of Luther. We find him afterward holding such 
 language as the following : " The devil is all about 
 us, though he often putteth on a mask. I myself 
 haye seen that he sometimes appeareth as if he were 
 a swine, and sometimes as a burning wisp of straw." 
 "The devil often beguileth the outward senses, so 
 that men think something taketh place before them 
 which doth not, ... as was the case in Hesse with 
 the child that, when it was not dead, the devil so 
 blinded the eyes of the people that they thought it 
 to be dead. The devil held the child's breath, as 
 he hath power to do." This is only some of the 
 smut which adhered to Luther from the foul and 
 smoky age in which he received his birth and educa- 
 tion. If we are free from it, it is not owing to any 
 individual superiority of our own, but to the noon- 
 day light, which never could have existed but for 
 the dawn which preceded it. Luther and Bacon 
 were among those from whom proceeded the rays of 
 light which streaked the east, and ushered in the 
 day, before which, the hobgoblins of false religion 
 and false science have fled away.
 
 40 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1483-97. 
 
 That Luther, in his boyhood, was thoroughly 
 initiated into the tastes, manners and habits of the 
 miners, is certain. This might be inferred from the 
 fact of his being a miner's son and living at Mans- 
 feld ; but we have statements in respect to his 
 maturer life which can be explained on no other 
 supposition. He always treated miners with parti- 
 cular attention. He was familiar with all their 
 habits and even their amusements ; he knew their 
 songs and their plays, and could, through life, en- 
 tertain them as few others could. Mathesius, in 
 one of his discourses on Luther's life, says, " To-day 
 let us hear about Luther's love and affection for 
 mining and to miners." The council of Wittenberg 
 had a festival which lasted several days. Luther 
 was invited to attend. But as he had been the 
 means of doing away several Catholic festivals on 
 account of the excesses committed at them, he 
 thought it imprudent to attend, and therefore de- 
 clined the invitation. The young people, according 
 to ancient custom, went about the streets in masks, 
 and sought admittance to the houses of the citizens. 
 "At one time," continues Mathesius, "some of 
 them came to Luther's house or cloister. But, to 
 avoid offence and scandal, he did not admit them 
 into his house. Albeit, at length, a company, dis- 
 guised as miners, came along, with their mining 
 hammers, and a chess-board for their amusement. 
 'Let them come in,' said Luther, 'they are my 
 countrymen, and the fellow-workmen of my father. 
 Since they pass whole weeks under ground in a 
 damp atmosphere and amid impure exhalations, we 
 must allow them proper recreation.' They came, 
 placed their chess-board upon his table, and he
 
 M. 1-13.] RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 41 
 
 joined them. ' Now, miners/ said he, 'whosoever 
 will go into this or other deep shafts and come out 
 unharmed, or not close up the passage with refuse, 
 must, as the saying is, not have his eyes in his 
 pocket.' Luther easily won the game ; and they 
 all remained, and, under due restraint, indulged in 
 merriment, singing and frolicking, as our doctor 
 was inclined to be sportive at proper times, and was 
 not displeased when he saw the young playful and 
 merry, if it was but with propriety and moderation." 
 This discourse of Mathesius is full of anecdotes about 
 Luther's allusions to his father's employment, and 
 his borrowing illustrations from it in his writings 
 and conversations. 
 
 Luther was the son of a peasant, that is, of a poor 
 miner who sprung from the peasantry. How did 
 this circumstance affect his character ? It had more 
 effect upon his language, habits and associations 
 than upon his sentiments and subsequent standing 
 in society. For as his father became a burgher and 
 magistrate, and as he himself was a man of educa- 
 tion, he came to regard society from a higher point 
 of view. But born and bred as he was, he was 
 never adapted to court-life. He always appeared 
 uneasy when speaking or writing to princes or nobles, 
 not out of fear, but from a consciousness that he was 
 not familiar with the modes of intercourse and of 
 address customary among them. His language, 
 though uncommonly rich and varied, and sparkling 
 with sense and wit, was often homely. His illustra- 
 tions were often drawn from common and low life. A 
 vein of slight vulgarity, as well as drollery, pervades 
 all his writings. His pungent wit, his creative genius, 
 and his sterling sense follow him everywhere. He 
 
 4*
 
 42 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1483-97. 
 
 was the man of the people, knowing all their thoughts 
 and feelings, and employing all their words and ex- 
 pressions in his magnificent, but still rude eloquence. 
 
 But from the flower of his youth, through life, Lu- 
 ther was associated with burghers and attached to them, 
 the middling class between the nobles and the pea- 
 sants, the mercantile, enterprising, patriotic inhabitants 
 of the larger towns and cities. To this class he was 
 introduced, partly by his father's later connections 
 and partly by his own cultivated practical sense and 
 his hearty devotedness to the good of all the people. 
 He was never fond of princes and nobles; nor, on 
 the other hand, of the sottish, blind and disorderly 
 peasantry. In all his writings, he treats both classes, 
 a few individuals excepted, somewhat roughly. He 
 did not depend on either for carrying forward the Re- 
 formation, but addressed himself more immediately 
 to the magistrates and free denizens. He wished 
 neither the authority of kings nor the violence of 
 peasants to be brought to his aid, but preferred that 
 these, no less than the middling classes, should be 
 controlled by intelligence and virtue. He uniformly 
 checked the two former, while he directed, stimu- 
 lated and supported the latter. 
 
 His position as a man of education, always practi- 
 cal, led to the same results. Learning with him was 
 not, as with so many others, a matter of profession, but 
 a source of practical wisdom. He encouraged and 
 sympathized with men of classical learning only so 
 far as they aided in explaining the Scriptures and in 
 enlightening the people. He wrote more and better 
 in the language of the people than in the . language 
 of the learned. This circumstance strengthened his 
 alliance with intelligent, active and patriotic men.
 
 JE. 1-13.] RELIGIOUS EDUCATION. 43 
 
 Thus, when he came to act the part of a reformer, 
 he occupied the central ground of society, the point 
 where extremes meet and opposite influences neutral- 
 ize each other. 
 
 With this agreed his geographical position. Thu- 
 ringia is the most German of all the German dis- 
 tricts. The Saxon electorate was locally and 
 politically what Virginia is in the United States, 
 situated midway between the north and the south, 
 having the advantage of position over either extreme. 
 All Germany called Thuringia its own. It belonged 
 to no section, but was the middle portion, often hold- 
 ing the balance of power. In the Middle Ages, it 
 was neither the scholastic south, nor the barbarous 
 north, but the enlightened, sober, practical district 
 of Erfurt, and yet the chivalrous vicinity of the 
 Wartburg, renowned in arms and in song. 
 
 In language, too, it was near the northern verge of 
 the high German, and consequently not far south of 
 the line beyond which the low German was spoken. 
 Had Luther lived either north or south of Thuringia 
 and Saxony, he could not have moulded the national 
 language as he has done ; nor have found the wide- 
 spread sympathy which he did find ; nor have acted 
 from the heart of the nation out to all its extremi- 
 ties.
 
 44 
 
 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1497-1505. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 LUTHER AT THE SCHOOLS OF MAGDEBURG AND EISENACH AND 
 AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ERFURT, FROM 1497 TO 1505. 
 
 SECTION I. Luther's Journey from Mansfeld to Magdeburg. 
 
 UTHER had 
 
 now reach- 
 ed his four- 
 teenth year, 
 when the or- 
 dinary or tri- 
 vial school 
 of Mansfeld 
 no longer met 
 his wants. 
 Hard as his 
 life had thus 
 far been, a 
 harder lot 
 awaited him. 
 He was to 
 leave the pa- 
 ternal roof, and go forth, young and inexperienced, 
 to try his fortune among strangers. Without money 
 and without friends, he was to commit himself to the 
 charities of mendicant monks and of the people of a 
 great ecclesiastical metropolis. He did not, however, 
 take his departure entirely alone. He was sent in 
 company, or, as Mathesius intimates, under the care 
 of John Reineck, a fellow-student of more experi- 
 ence, the son of a respectable citizen of Mansfeld. 
 This friendship, formed at the school, lasted through
 
 JOURNEYroMAGDEBURG 
 
 /MAGDEBURG 
 
 t 
 
 \Matitfeld 
 
 \ o, . 
 
 \ f- 1. -Id 1 en 
 
 . 
 -Alstedt S '' 
 
 p. 45.
 
 M. 13-21.] JOURNEY TO MAGDEBURG. 45 
 
 life ; and it was this same person who accompanied 
 Luther in his journey to the diet of Worms. Luther 
 in his correspondence calls him "one of his best 
 friends," and the letters of Melancthon to him and 
 tp his distinguished son, educated at Wittenberg, 
 breathe the warmest friendship. Virtuous and choice 
 friendships formed in early life are often of far greater 
 importance than the young are apt to suppose. 
 
 Melancthon says, the " Latin schools of Saxony 
 were then in good repute," and Mathesius says, "the 
 school at Magdeburg was more celebrated than many 
 others." Not far from the south gate of the city 
 was the school of the Brethren of the Life in Com- 
 mon. Near this was the celebrated cathedral school, 
 and in the north-west part of the town, the school 
 of the Franciscan monks. It was to the Franciscan 
 school that Luther and his friend are said to have 
 resorted. As this is the only monastic school which 
 he attended in his boyhood, we must suppose that 
 he had this particularly in mind when he afterward 
 wrote on the subject. In 1497, then, two boys, the 
 one quite young and indigent, the other older and in 
 better circumstances, left their home in a romantic 
 town on the border of the Hartz Mountains, and 
 journeyed on foot, north, about fifty miles, through a 
 rich and level country to the large and fortified city 
 of Magdeburg, then under the civil rule of the arch- 
 bishop and the place of his residence. The direct 
 road would lead them to the west of Hettstedt, (the 
 last considerable town in the county of Mansfeld,) to 
 Aschersleben, at which point the mountains and 
 forests begin to disappear, to Egeln, beyond the ter- 
 ritory of Halberstadt, and within that of Magde- 
 burg, and thence to the place of their destination. 
 The mode of travel was probably not very different 
 from that described by Platter above.
 
 46 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1497-1505. 
 
 What an impression must the scene now spread 
 before our young traveller's eye have made upon 
 him ! For the first time in his life, he finds himself 
 in a large and splendid capital, with a population of 
 thirty or forty thousand. Eisleben was the largest 
 town he had ever before seen. Magdeburg was the 
 seat of the archbishop, at that time the sovereign of 
 a large territory on both sides of the Elbe. Ernest, 
 then archbishop, brother of Frederic the Wise, Elec- 
 tor of Saxony, was an excellent man, celebrated for 
 the simplicity of his character, and yet no less than 
 twelve trumpeters must entertain him with their 
 music when he dined.* And yet of all the splen- 
 dour of this city, Luther could enjoy little. He 
 was to be shut up in the school-room of the gloomy 
 Franciscan cloister. The spirit of the mendicant 
 friars was to rule over him. In a city of great in- 
 telligence and high culture, he was to be under the 
 guidance of ignorance and superstition, procuring his 
 bread by choral and other services in the church, and 
 by singing with his companions, in their dark clerical 
 robes, in the streets, from door to door. This is the 
 way in which boys were then accustomed to main- 
 tain themselves in the schools. 
 
 * The cathedral, the first finished specimen of Gothic 
 architecture in the north of Germany, and the Closter 
 Berg, had adorned the city for more than a century. 
 When it was dedicated, there were present a papal legate, 
 Beven archbishops, six bishops, six abbots, three dukes 
 of Saxony, two margraves of Misnia, three dukes of 
 Brunswick, four princes of Anhalt, and many counts, 
 lords, knights, nobles, deputies from the towns belonging 
 to the see, ladies of rank, besides the people of the city 
 and its suburbs. These and all the clergy were treated 
 to a splendid repast, and then four days were spent in 
 tournaments and other chivalrous entertainments !
 
 M. 13-21.] JOURNEY TO MAGDEBURG. 47 
 
 The Franciscans wore a gray robe with black scap- 
 ularies, and were especially employed in attending 
 on the sick, and in the burial of the dead. The boy, 
 in whose heart was a sealed fountain of fervent and 
 joyous passion, found nothing under his new masters 
 and in his new mode of life to satisfy his internal 
 wants. The few incidents which he records, from his 
 recollections of this period, are strikingly character- 
 istic of the order, and indeed of the church at large. 
 " I have seen," says he, " with these eyes, in my 
 fourteenth year, when I was at school in Magdeburg, 
 a Prince of Anhalt, brother of Adolphus, Bishop of 
 Merseburg, going about the streets in a cowl, begging 
 bread with a sack upon his shoulders, like a beast of 
 burden, insomuch that he stooped to the ground. . . . 
 He had fasted and watched and mortified his flesh 
 till he appeared like to an image of death, with only 
 skin and bones, and died soon after." 
 
 He speaks of a painting, symbolical of the senti- 
 ments entertained by the church, seen by him about 
 this time, and leaving a deep impression upon his 
 mind. "A great ship was painted, likening the 
 church, wherein there was no layman, not even a 
 king or prince. There were none but the pope with 
 his cardinals and bishops in the prow, with the Holy 
 Ghost hovering over them ; the priests and monks 
 with their oars at the side ; and thus they were sail- 
 ing on heavenward. The laymen were swimming 
 along in the water around the ship. Some of them 
 were drowning ; some were drawing themselves up 
 to the ship by means of ropes, which the monks, 
 moved by pity, and making over their own good 
 works, did cast out to them, to keep them from 
 drowning, and to enable them to cleave to the vessel, 
 and go with the others to heaven. There was no
 
 48 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1497-1505. 
 
 pope, nor cardinal, nor bishop, nor priest, nor monk 
 in the water, but laymen only. This painting was 
 an index and summary of their doctrine. ... I was 
 once one of them, and helped teach such things, 
 believing them and knowing no better." 
 
 We know but little of this Franciscan school, and 
 of Luther's residence there, except that in the mode 
 of instruction there was no material improvement upon 
 that which he had received at Mansfeld ; that the 
 religious influence exerted upon him was of the same 
 gloomy and superstitious character as before; and 
 that his suffering from want became so extreme that 
 it was no longer tolerable, and hence he left the 
 school after one year's bitter trial, never to see the 
 place again, till he should visit it in a very different 
 capacity. 
 
 SECTION II. Luther's Removal from Magdeburg to Eisenach. 
 
 So great were the privations and sufferings of young 
 Luther at Magdeburg, that it was decided by his 
 father that he should remove to Eisenach, where his 
 maternal grandparents and other relatives resided, 
 and where also there was a good Latin school. It 
 was hoped that he would here be so far provided for 
 as to be relieved from pressing want. But parents, 
 who themselves were familiar with hardships, would 
 expect that their son should be exposed to them also. 
 
 We can easily imagine with what different feelings 
 the boy performed the journey home, from those 
 with which he passed over the same ground when he 
 first went abroad into the wide world. After indulg- 
 ing in the exquisite pleasures of home as they are 
 felt by a boy on returning from his first absence 
 for Mansfeld was directly on the way to Eisenach
 
 M. 13-21.] REMOVAL TO EISENACH. 49 
 
 he must have gone forth with moderated and yet 
 pleasing expectations. Moderated, because he had 
 taken one sad lesson in the knowledge of the world; 
 and pleasing, because he was about to go, not among 
 utter strangers, but among the kindred of his mother. 
 What strange emotions would have filled the breast 
 of the boy, had he then had a prophetic vision of the 
 tragic events that should take place a quarter of a 
 century after, in the places through which he was 
 now to pass ! About twenty miles on his way from 
 Mansfeld, he might see Allstedt, where Muncer was 
 to become the leader in the bloody Peasants' War. 
 To the west is seen the river Helme, on whose beauti- 
 ful banks is situated the Golden Meadow, (Goldene 
 Aue,) extending more than thirty miles to tne neigh- 
 bourhood of Nordhausen.* 
 
 * This tract of enchanted land extends nearly the whole 
 distance from Naumburg to Nordhausen. Memleben on the 
 Unstrut, about ten miles south of Allstedt, was the favourite 
 residence of the German emperors of the Saxon line. Here 
 Matilda, royal consort of Henry the First, founded a nun- 
 nery. Here, probably, Henry the Fowler was busying him- 
 self with his falcons when it was announced to him that he 
 was chosen emperor; and here, too, he breathed his last. 
 Here his son, Otto the First, on his way to the diet of 
 Merseburg, passed the season of Lent, and died immedi- 
 ately after the services. A little farther up the river, and 
 on the opposite side, is Rossleben. Here was an ancient 
 nunnery, afterward converted into an excellent cloister- 
 school or gymnasium, in which Ernesti, Von Thiimmel 
 and other eminent men received their elementary educa- 
 tion. Passing another cloister-school, we come to the 
 junction of the Helme and Unstrut. South is to be seen 
 the Palace of Heldrungen, and on the summit the ruins of 
 Sachsenburg. Ascending the Helme, west of Alstedt, we 
 come to Wallhausen, where Otto the Great built a palace 
 and often resided, as did his son after him. In this vici- 
 nity the German emperors loved to pass their time. A 
 5
 
 50 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1497-1505. 
 
 At a distance of about sixteen miles from Allstedt 
 is Frankenhausen, where the decisive battle was 
 fought, May 5, 1525, and Muncer and his party com- 
 pletely routed. Still farther on, toward Eisenach, lies 
 Muhlhausen, which was the head-quarters of Mun- 
 cer's army. Eisenach lies about twenty miles south 
 of Miihlhausen. Between these two places is one of 
 the largest of the five ranges of hills, which it is neces- 
 sary to cross in taking this route. Just before reach- 
 ing Eisenach we cross the most southerly range. As 
 one enters the town from the north, he looks down 
 upon it, and sees it lying before him in a valley, under 
 the castle of Wartburg towering on the right. 
 
 Next to Wittenberg and Erfurt, this is the place 
 richest in historical recollections in respect to Luther. 
 Here he found the end of his sorrows arising .from 
 poverty. Here he first found sympathizing and 
 skilful teachers, under whose influence he acquired 
 a love of learning. Here his musical talent, his taste 
 and imagination were first developed, throwing their 
 cheerful serenity over his sorrowful and beclouded 
 mind. Here, too, he subsequently lived in his Pat- 
 mos, or desert, as he playfully termed the Castle of 
 Wartburg, in the character of Squire George, and 
 passed his time sometimes in the chase on the moun- 
 tains, but mostly in translating the New Testament. 
 
 There were in Eisenach at this time three churches, 
 
 little farther on, beyond Tilleda, another royal residence, 
 to the left of the Golden Meadow, rises Kyffhausen with 
 Frederic's tower. There are many legends respecting 
 Frederic Barbarossa and this castle. It was here that 
 Henry the Sixth and Henry the Lion became reconciled 
 to each other, and checked for a time the feuds between 
 Guelf and Ghibiline. West of this is the peak of Rothen- 
 berg, with another tower, whose history runs back to pagan 
 times.
 
 2E. 13-21.] REMOVAL TO EISENACH. 51 
 
 to which were attached as many parochial schools. 
 Only one of these, however, was a Latin school; and 
 that was at the church of St. George, a little east of 
 the centre of the town. The name of the head 
 master was Trebonius, the first skilful teacher under 
 whose care Luther came, and to whom he felt a per- 
 sonal attachment. Though he did not belong to the 
 new school of classical scholars trained in Italy, his 
 Latin was much purer than that of the monks and 
 priests generally. His personal character, too, though 
 perhaps a little eccentric, was such as to win the 
 love of his pupils. In coming before them, he used 
 to take off his hat and bow to them, and complained 
 that his assistants were disinclined to do likewise. 
 He said, with truth, and with a sense of responsi- 
 bility which showed that he understood the true 
 dignity of his office, " among these boys are burgo- 
 masters, chancellors, doctors and magistrates." 
 Though he is called a poet, that is, a writer of Latin 
 verses, we must remember that this was a trivial 
 school, and that but little more than Latin hymns and 
 prayers were read ; and that it excelled other schools 
 only by having a better method, by employing in con- 
 versation a purer Latin, and by having exercises in 
 Latin verse. It is a mistake to suppose that Luther 
 studied Greek here, or even such Latin authors as 
 Cicero, Virgil and Livy. He commenced the study 
 of the latter in Erfurt, and the former at a much later 
 period in Wittenberg as professor. The following 
 is Melaricthon's account of Luther's studies at Eise- 
 nach : " After leaving Magdeburg, he attended in 
 the school at Eisenach four years on the instructions 
 of a teacher who taught him grammar (Latin) better 
 than it was elsewhere taught. For I remember how 
 Luther commended his talents. He was sent thither
 
 52 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1497-1505. 
 
 because his mother was descended from an honour- 
 able and ancient family of that town. Here he 
 became master of grammar; and, because of his 
 superior understanding and natural aptitude for 
 eloquence, he made more proficiency, and easily ex- 
 celled his fellow-pupils, both in his powers of speech 
 and in writing prose and verse." Here is the 
 first intimation we have of the manifestation of 
 those remarkable powers which distinguished him in 
 after-life. His teacher undoubtedly knew how to 
 draw out of him what had hitherto been suffered to 
 lie dormant. Perhaps, too, this was the time in life 
 when his mind came, by the course of nature, to 
 develope itself. At such a crisis, the value of a wise 
 and genial instructor is inestimable. It is precisely 
 when the corn is shooting most rapidly from the earth 
 that the weeds should be subdued, so that all the 
 strength of the soil may be given to the growth of 
 the future harvest. 
 
 Luther, who had been driven from Magdeburg by 
 poverty, removed to Eisenach in hopes of sympathy 
 and support from his relatives in that place. In 
 this his hopes were disappointed. He was still 
 compelled to beg his bread, singing in a choir 
 from door to door. His sufferings appear to have 
 been even greater here than in Magdeburg. No 
 doubt, the early indigence of Luther, and the fact 
 of his feeling that he was thrown back upon his 
 own resources, contributed to the strength of his 
 character. He probably had his own case in view 
 when he said, " The young should learn especially 
 to endure suffering and want; for such suffering 
 doth them no harm. It doth more harm for one to 
 prosper without toil than it doth to endure suffer- 
 ing." " It is God's way, of beggars to make men
 
 JE. 13-21.] REMOVAL TO EISENACH. 53 
 
 of power, just as he made the world out of 
 nothing. Look upon the courts of kings and 
 princes, upon cities and parishes. You will there 
 find jurists, doctors, counsellors, secretaries and 
 preachers, who were commonly poor, and alway such 
 as have been students, and have risen and flown 
 so high through the quill, that they are become 
 lords." " I have been a beggar of crumbs, and 
 have taken my bread at the door, especially in 
 Eisenach, my favourite town, although afterwards 
 my dear father with all love and fidelity sustained me 
 at school in Erfurt, and by his sweat and hard labour 
 helped me to that whereunto I have attained. Never- 
 theless I have been a beggar of bread, and have pros- 
 pered so far forth with the pen, that I would not ex- 
 change my art for all the wealth of the Turkish em- 
 pire. Nay, I would not exchange it for all the wealth 
 of the world many times over. And yet I should not 
 have attained thereunto, had I not gone to school, 
 and given myself to the business of writing. There- 
 fore doubt not to put your boy to study ; and if he 
 must needs beg his bread, you nevertheless give unto 
 God a noble piece of timber whereof he will carve a 
 great man. So it must always be; your son and mine, 
 that is, the children of the common people, must 
 govern the world both in the church and in the 
 commonwealth." 
 
 The pressure of poverty, on the other hand, may 
 be too great, so as to depress the spirit instead of 
 invigorating it. Luther is represented as having 
 verged, while at Eisenach, to the very brink of de- 
 spondency, and to have contemplated relinquishing 
 study altogether, and returning to the occupation of 
 his father. 
 
 It is difficult for us to suppress speculation as to 
 
 5*
 
 54 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1497-1505. 
 
 what would have been the probable results of such 
 a determination, what his influence upon the desti- 
 nies of mankind, and his place in the records of his- 
 tory. But Providence had other counsels than those 
 the disheartened youth was almost ready to adopt, 
 and an event, in itself trifling, decided a point on 
 which were suspended interests of inconceivable mag- 
 nitude. 
 
 One day, as he and his companions were pass- 
 ing through St. George street, not far from the 
 school, their carols were unheeded, and, at three 
 successive houses, the customary charity was with- 
 held. With heavy hearts they passed on to Con- 
 rad Cotta's house, where they often received tokens 
 of friendly regard. Madam Cotta had conceived 
 an affection for young Luther, from the musical 
 talents which he had displayed, and from the earn- 
 estness of his devotions at church. She invited 
 him in, gave to him liberally, and afterwards re- 
 ceived him into her house. Though probably not 
 a relative of his, as some writers would have us 
 believe, he constantly called her his hostess, she 
 treated him as a son, and gave him support till he 
 went to the university. It is pleasant to know that, 
 though Madam Ursula Cotta herself died in 1511, 
 Luther, after arriving at an eminence hardly second 
 to that of any man of the age, remembered the debt 
 of gratitude, and in the years 1541 and 1542, only 
 a few years before his death, received Henry Cotta, 
 Ursula's son, into his house in turn, and this act 
 of kindness towards him as a student at Wittenberg 
 is mentioned in Cotta's epitaph at Eisenach, where 
 he died as burgomaster. 
 
 The influence of this connection upon Luther's 
 mind could hardly be otherwise than favourable.
 
 M. 13-21.] REMOVAL TO EISENACH. 5& 
 
 Both his heart and his intellect were rendered dark 
 and gloomy by the exclusively monastic character 
 of his training. The path of his life thus far had 
 been cheerless. Even the music which he loved, 
 and in which he indulged, was mostly pensive. Do- 
 mestic life he had been taught to regard as impure 
 and sinful ; and to the pleasures of a cheerful home 
 of his own he was forbidden, by his monastic super- 
 stition, to look. "When I was a boy," he after- 
 wards said, " I imagined I could not think of 
 the married state without sin." In the family of 
 Cotta, he acquired other and more correct views of 
 life. Here he became sensible to the charms of re- 
 fined society. Not only were the generous affections 
 strengthened by exercise, but the taste was cultivated 
 in that family circle. The perversions of the mo- 
 nastic morality were somewhat checked, though not 
 fully exposed and corrected. Madam Cotta vindi- 
 cated the dignity and sanctity of married life, and 
 taught Luther that his preconceived notions on this 
 subject were false. "My hostess at Eisenach," he 
 remarked, "said truly, when I was there at school, 
 ' There is not on earth any thing more lovely than 
 an affection for females (conjugal affection) when it 
 is in the fear of God.' " 
 
 It was here that Luther learned to play on the 
 flute. Some affirm that he at this time also learned 
 to compose music and to touch the lute. Though he 
 speaks of his voice as " slender and indistinct," he 
 had in reality a fine alto voice, and Melancthon says 
 '' it could be heard at a great distance." 
 
 Beneficial as were these gentle and bland in- 
 fluences, and winning and inspiring as were the in- 
 structions of the head-master of the school, Eisenach 
 itself was a priestly town, or, as the writers of that
 
 56 
 
 LIFE OF LUTHER. 
 
 [1497-1505. 
 
 age call it, " a nest of priests," and all the religious 
 associations of the place were adapted to nourish and 
 strengthen the convictions with which Luther had 
 grown up. There were nine monasteries and nun- 
 neries in and about the town, and an abundance of 
 churches, priests and chaplains. There, too, lay 
 the remains of the landgrave, Henry Raspe, at whose 
 tomb the visiters on St. Julian's day could obtain 
 two years' indulgence. Here St. Elizabeth, that 
 most benevolent and religious of the Thuringian 
 landgravines, had lived and laboured for the good of 
 the poor, and monuments of her zealous but super- 
 stitious piety were everywhere to be seen. 
 
 SECTION III. Luther in the University of Erfurt. 
 
 ARLY on the 
 17th of July, 
 in 1501, at the 
 opening of a 
 new and great 
 century, our 
 student left 
 the place 
 " where," in 
 his own lan- 
 
 guage, 
 
 he 
 
 had learned 
 and enjoyed 
 so much/' and 
 directed his 
 steps toward 
 the celebrated city and university which towered 
 high above all the rest in influence in that part of 
 Germany. Fifteen miles distant was Gotha, then, as 
 it is now, the beautiful capital of the duchy of the
 
 JE. 13-21.] IN THE UNIVERSITY. 57 
 
 same name. Here lived Mutianus, the centre of the 
 poetical club to which many of Luther's subsequent 
 Erfurt friends (as Lange, Spalatin, Crotus and others) 
 belonged. Here Luther preached in 1521^ on his 
 way to the diet of Worms, and his doctrines were 
 received; and here Myconius, the historian of the 
 Lutheran Reformation, was afterward the principal 
 Lutheran ecclesiastic. Proceeding as much farther, 
 through a country appearing, as one advances, more 
 and more like the Saxon plains, he came to Erfurt, 
 formerly the great mart of interior Germany. This 
 city, though in the very heart of Thuringia, was 
 never subject to the landgrave. It was once the 
 place of an episcopal see, and when this was trans- 
 ferred to Mainz, the archbishop of which was made 
 primate of Germany, Erfurt was retained under his 
 jurisdiction, and regarded as the second capital of 
 his electoral territory. Meanwhile the citizens of 
 Erfurt were aiming to make it a free imperial city, 
 and the emperor favoured the project. The result 
 was, that in the disorders of that feudal age, when 
 rights were settled less by law than by physical 
 power, the three contending parties, the Archbishop 
 of Mainz, the citizens of Erfurt, and the emperor, 
 each had a share in the government of the city. In 
 general, however, in the course of the struggle, the 
 citizens acquired more and more power, and the city 
 became more and more free. It was the citizens, 
 and not the archbishop nor emperor, who founded 
 the university, and consequently it had a practical 
 and liberal character which distinguished it very 
 widely from that of Cologne. The university of Er- 
 furt had more than a thousand students, and Luther 
 said that " it was so celebrated a seat of learning 
 that others were but as grammar-schools compared
 
 58 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1497-1505. 
 
 with it." At the time Luther entered there, it had 
 thirteen regular professors, besides the younger li- 
 centiates, or tutors, and there were several richly 
 endowed colleges, or religious foundations, where the 
 professors and students lived together as distinct cor- 
 porations. Theology and the canonical or ecclesias- 
 tical law took the highest rank among the studies 
 pursued there. In the two other learned professions, 
 law and medicine, the old Roman civilians and the 
 Greek medical writers were chiefly studied. In the 
 wide department of philosophy, a sort of encyclo- 
 paedia of the sciences, as contained in the writings 
 of Aristotle, constituted the course of instruction. 
 The Bible was not studied, and none of the Greek 
 authors above named were read in the original. 
 Neither languages, except the Latin, nor history were 
 taught after the manner which afterward prevailed 
 in the universities. Every thing still wore the garb 
 of the Middle Ages. There were no experiments or 
 observations in natural philosophy, no accurate cri- 
 ticism in language or history. Learning was either 
 a matter of memory, or it was a sort of gladiatorial 
 exercise in the art of disputation. In one of the 
 foundations at Erfurt, the beneficiaries were obligated 
 to observe daily the seven canonical hours, as they 
 are termed, or appointed seasons of saying prayers, 
 to read the miserere, or supplication for the dead, and 
 to hear a eulogy on the character of the Virgin Mary. 
 The laws were very oppressive, from the minuteness 
 of their details and the solemn oaths by which men 
 bound themselves to obey them. This is what Lu- 
 ther called "an accursed method." "Every thing," 
 said he, "is secured by oaths and vows, and the 
 wretched youth are cruelly and without necessity en- 
 tangled as in a net."
 
 M. 13-21.] IN THE UNIVERSITY. 59 
 
 The university life of Luther at Erfurt forms a 
 striking contrast with his abject and suffering con- 
 dition while begging his bread at the doors of the 
 charitable, and also with his monastic life imme- 
 diately after leaving the university. He now che- 
 rished, though with great moderation, that more 
 cheering view of human life with which he had been 
 made familiar in the house of Madam Cotta. He 
 was furthermore stimulated by a natural love of ac- 
 quisition in useful knowledge, now for the first time 
 awakened into full activity. The study of classical 
 literature, which had been revived in Italy and 
 France, was beginning to be cultivated with enthu- 
 siasm in Germany. Of the young men who prose- 
 cuted these studies with zeal, there was a brilliant 
 circle then at Erfurt. Without formally uniting 
 himself with this classical and poetical club, he took 
 up the study of the best Latin writers in prose and 
 verse, with an earnestness that fully equalled theirs, 
 and imprinted indelibly upon his memory those pas- 
 sages which were most striking whether for the sen- 
 timent or the expression. Thus he was the friend, 
 and in many respects the rival, of the poetical ge- 
 niuses who sparkled at Erfurt, though the more 
 earnest and practical character of his mind gave him 
 a decided preference for solid and practical learning. 
 Besides the Roman classics, the scholastic philosophy 
 engaged much of his attention. This must not, as 
 has often been the case with the biographers of Lu- 
 ther, be confounded with the scholastic theology. It 
 embraced logic, intellectual philosophy, and such a 
 course of physical science as is found in the writings 
 of Aristotle. Indeed, compeuds from Aristotle and 
 comments upon his writings constituted the sum and
 
 60 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1497-1505. 
 
 substance of the philosophy taught in the universities 
 at this time. 
 
 Luther was now in comparatively independent 
 circumstances. His father had been so far prosper- 
 ous in his business as to be able to support him. at 
 Erfurt. Could we have seen Luther at this time, 
 from the age of eighteen to that of twenty-two, full 
 of vigour and activity, exulting in the consciousness 
 of superior intellectual power, winning golden opi- 
 nions by the rapid progress made in his studies, ap- 
 .pearing, according to the usages of the age, with a 
 sword at his side, now eagerly devouring the contents 
 of Virgil and Cicero, now poring over the subtle- 
 ties of the Aristotelian logic, at one time overcoming 
 his opponents with surpassing power in debate ; at 
 another, teaching the Aristotelian philosophy, while 
 preparing for the legal profession, we can easily 
 imagine the sensation it created in Erfurt, and the 
 chagrin it gave his father, when it was announced 
 that Luther had entered the Augustinian convent ! 
 
 During the first two years which he spent at Er- 
 furt, (from 1501 to 1503,) he was chiefly engaged in 
 the study of Roman literature and of philosophy, at 
 the end of which period he took his first degree. 
 The year in which he received this honour is sup- 
 posed also to be the one in which the following oc- 
 currence took place. Early in the spring, he set out 
 in company with a friend, equipped as usual with a 
 sword, to visit his parents. Within an hour after 
 leaving Erfurt, he, by some accident, ran his sword 
 into his foot and opened a main artery. A physician 
 was called from the city, who succeeded, not without 
 difficulty, in closing up the wound. An unusual 
 swelling arising from the forced stoppage of the blood, 
 and a rupture taking place during the following night,
 
 M. 13-21.] IN THE UNIVERSITY. 61 
 
 Luther feared the accident would prove fatal, and, in 
 immediate prospect of death, commended himself to 
 the Virgin Mary. " Had I then died," he afterward 
 said, " I should have died in the faith of the Virgin." 
 
 It was during the same year that Luther had his 
 second severe illness. His first was while he was at 
 Magdeburg. In his extremity, and while despairing 
 of life, he was visited by an aged priest, who spoke 
 those memorable words which were afterward regarded 
 by some as prophetic : " Be of good comfort, my bro- 
 ther ; you will not die at this time. God will yet 
 make a great man of you, who shall comfort many 
 others. Whom God loveth and purposeth to make 
 a blessing, upon him he early layeth the cross, and 
 in that school those who patiently endure, learn 
 much." 
 
 Of two of Luther's principal teachers, Usingen 
 and Jodocus of Eisenach, and of the subject-matter 
 and manner of their teaching, we have the means 
 of knowing more than is common in such cases. 
 The works which they published between 1501 and 
 1514, containing undoubtedly the substance of the 
 very lectures which Luther heard, suggest to the cu- 
 rious reader interesting trains of thought. A com- 
 parison of their teachings in the physical sciences 
 with what Luther, long after, interwove in his com- 
 mentary on the beginning of Genesis, proves not 
 only that these books are but little more than the 
 printed lectures of their authors, but also that Lu- 
 ther faithfully stored those instructions away in his 
 capacious and retentive memory for future use. 
 Here we cannot suppress the general remark, that 
 the mass of the opinions which Luther afterward 
 expresses, on these and other kindred subjects, are to 
 be regarded, not as originating with himself, but as
 
 62 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1497-1505. 
 
 coming to him through the lectures which he heard 
 and the books which he read. Though the two 
 teachers just named were more simple in their me- 
 thod and more just in their thoughts than most of 
 their contemporaries, they are sufficiently prolix and 
 dry to satisfy even a scholastic taste. Usingen be- 
 longed to the Augustinian monastery in Erfurt, and 
 was, no doubt, Luther's teacher there in the scholas- 
 tic theology, as he had been before in philosophy or 
 dialectics. Jodocus of Eisenach, often called Trut- 
 vetter, was more eminent than Usingen. He was 
 afterward associated with Luther at Wittenberg as 
 professor of theology, and was one of those early 
 friends of Luther who were grieved at his bold and 
 decided measures as a Reformer. Siisse, a very pious 
 young man, who, later in life, openly espoused the 
 evangelical cause, is by some represented as Luther's 
 room-mate at the university. Others suppose he 
 only occupied the same cell with him in the convent. 
 The intimate friendship which subsisted through life 
 between Luther and Spalatin and Lange, was com- 
 menced when they were all students in Erfurt. 
 
 It was in 1505, two years after taking his first 
 degree, that he was made master of arts, which en- 
 titled him to teach in the university. He actually 
 entered upon the duties of this office, and taught the 
 physics and logic of Aristotle. It was the wish of 
 his father that he should qualify himself for some 
 civil office by studying law ; and, at the same time 
 that he was teacher, he actually commenced the 
 study, which, though soon broken off by the events 
 which led him to the cloister, was important to him, 
 as enabling him to discuss those points in the canon 
 law which were urged against the Reformation by 
 his opponents.
 
 JE. 13-21 J DISCOVERS THE BIBLE. 63 
 
 SECTION IV. The Bible first seen by Luther in the Library 
 of the University. 
 
 WE learn from Mathesius, what we might, indeed, 
 infer from Luther's subsequent character, that he was 
 a young man of buoyant and cheerful feelings ; and, 
 at the same time, that he began every day with 
 prayer, and went daily to church service. Further- 
 more, " he neglected no university exercise, was 
 wont to propound questions to his teachers, did often 
 review his studies with his fellow students, and 
 whenever there were no appointed exercises, he was 
 in the library." 
 
 " Upon a time," continues the same writer, " when 
 he was carefully viewing the books one after another, 
 to the end that he might know them that were good, 
 he fell upon a Latin Bible, which he had never be- 
 fore seen in all his life. He marvelled greatly as he 
 noted that more text, or more epistles and gospels, 
 were therein contained than were set forth and ex- 
 plained in the common postils* and sermons preached 
 in the churches. In turning over the leaves of the 
 Old Testament, he fell upon the history of Samuel 
 and of his mother Hannah. This did he quickly 
 read through with hearty delight and joy ; and be- 
 cause this was all new to him, he began to wish 
 from the bottom of his heart that our faithful God 
 would one day bestow upon him such a book for his 
 own." 
 
 Luther, who often alludes to this incident, once 
 says that it occurred " when he was a young man and a 
 bachelor of arts." At another time he says, " when 
 I was twenty years old, I had never seen a Bible." 
 
 * Collections of Homilies.
 
 64 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1497-1505. 
 
 In another place, he intimates that he saw the Bible 
 only once while he was in the university, and that 
 an interval of about two years intervened before he 
 saw another copy in the cloister. " I was read- 
 ing," he says, " a place in Samuel ; but it was time 
 to go to lecture. I would fain have read the whole 
 book through, but there was not opportunity then. 
 I asked for a Bible as soon as I had entered the 
 cloister." He became owner of a postil, which 
 pleased him much, because it contained more of the 
 Gospels than were commonly read during the year. 
 The study of the Scriptures, therefore, seems, in the 
 case of Luther, to have commenced rather in the 
 cloister than in the university. It is natural, how- 
 ever, and almost necessary to suppose that the his- 
 tory of Samuel, who led a consecrated life in the 
 temple, and in whom Luther became providentially 
 so deeply interested, was not without its influence in 
 leading the mind of the latter to contemplate a mo- 
 nastic life.
 
 M. 21-25.] IN THE CLOISTER. 65 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 LUTHER IN THE CLOISTER AT ERFURT, FROM 1505 TO 1508. 
 
 THE origin of the Reformation, as a religious 
 movement and as connected with the efforts of Lu- 
 ther, is to be traced chiefly to what he himself 
 experienced in the convent at Erfurt. There he 
 first made thorough trial of that outward and legal 
 system of religion which had nearly banished the 
 gospel of Christ from the church. There he groped 
 his way through the mazes of papal error, and found 
 the path that led to Christ as the simple object of 
 his faith and love. He went through all the pro- 
 cess of overcoming the elements of a ceremonial, 
 and of appropriating those of an evangelical religion, 
 by the force of his individual character, and by the 
 power of the word and the Spirit of God. He found 
 himself standing almost solitary on the ground of 
 justification by faith alone, and private judgment in 
 interpreting the Scriptures. From the time of his 
 going to Wittenberg to the year 1517, he was 
 chiefly employed in working out these two ideas, 
 reconciling his experience with well-established 
 truths, and trying upon the minds of others, namely, 
 of his pupils and some of the younger professors, 
 the same experiment which he had unconsciously 
 made upon himself. When he came to feel the full 
 strength of his foundation, and, with the Bible and 
 the sober use of reason as his weapons, prostrated 
 the scholastic theology, and professor and student
 
 66 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1505-1508. 
 
 confessed their power, his conscience impelled him 
 to seize upon the first and upon every public oppor- 
 tunity to propagate these principles, that others 
 might share with him so unspeakable a blessing. 
 
 The study of Luther's religious experience has a 
 two-fold interest, first, in itself as one of the most 
 striking on record, and then as a key to the reli- 
 gious character of the Reformation. Until recently, 
 the subject has been wrapt in such obscurity and 
 confusion that it has appeared moye as a romance 
 than as a reality. To Jiirgens belongs the honour 
 of having first collected and arranged all the known 
 facts of the case in such a way as to furnish a pretty 
 clear history of what was before both imperfect and 
 chaotic. 
 
 SECTION I. Luther becomes a Monk. 
 
 THE whole course of Luther's training tended to 
 impress upon his mind the sanctity of the monastic 
 life. This, in his view, was the surest way of 
 pleasing God, and of escaping the terrors of the 
 world to come. Educated as he was to a legal view 
 of religion, and conscious, at the same time, that he 
 had not fulfilled the law, nothing remained to him 
 but to continue as he was, at the risk of his salva- 
 tion, or to seek for a higher kind of piety by which 
 the law of God might be satisfied. His prevailing 
 feeling was to continue in his former course of life, 
 but any sudden terror would revive the alarms of 
 his conscience, and suggest the thought of putting 
 his anxious mind for ever at rest by fleeing to a 
 cloister as a refuge for his soul. In this way was 
 his mind finally determined. In 1505, Alexius, a 
 friend of Luther in the university, was assassinated.
 
 M. 21-25.] BECOMES A MONK. 67 
 
 Soon after, about the first of July, as Luther was 
 walking in a retired road between Erfurt and 
 Stotterheim, probably on his way home to escape 
 the epidemic then prevailing at Erfurt, he was 
 overtaken by a violent thunder storm, and the 
 lightning struck with terrific force near his feet. 
 He was stunned, and exclaimed in his terror, " Help, 
 beloved St. Anne, and I will straightway become a 
 monk."* 
 
 Besides the above-mentioned occurrences, there 
 was an epidemic raging in the university, many of 
 the teachers and pupils had fled, and it was very 
 natural that Luther's mind should be in a very 
 gloomy state. St. Anne was the reigning saint in 
 Saxony at this time, having recently become an 
 object of religious regard, to whose honour the 
 Saxon town Annaberg was built, and who, for a 
 time, was the successful rival even of the Virgin 
 Mary. Hence, the invocation of this saint by 
 Luther. 
 
 Referring to this event, in a dedication of a work 
 on Monastic Vows to his father, Luther says : " I 
 did not become a monk joyfully and willingly, 
 much less for the sake of obtaining a livelihood, 
 but being miserable and encompassed with the ter- 
 rors and anguish of death, I made a constrained and 
 forced vow." He again says, " It was not done 
 from the heart, nor willingly." These statements, 
 taken in connection with several others where it is 
 
 * Such is the view in which the testimony of Luther, 
 Melancthon, Mathesius and other early witnesses is best 
 united. The representation of later writers that Alexius 
 was killed by lightning is now abandoned by most histo- 
 rians.
 
 68 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1505-1508. 
 
 said that certain views of religion drove him to the 
 monastery, make it plain that it required the force 
 of excited fears to induce him to enter upon a life 
 which he had always regarded as the most sacred, 
 and as most surely leading to heaven. How much 
 he then needed the instruction which* Staupitz at a 
 later period gave, him! 
 
 Before executing his purpose, he took two weeks 
 for reflection. It has been said, that during this 
 interval he regretted his rash vow. No doubt he 
 had to pass through severe mental struggles, that in 
 his calmer moments opposite considerations would 
 present themselves to his mind, and none with more 
 power than that of having gone counter to the 
 known wishes of his father, by whose toils he had 
 been sustained at the university. In his Com- 
 mentary on Genesis xlix. 13, he says, " When I 
 had made a beginning in the study of the liberal 
 arts and in philosophy, and comprehended and 
 learned so much therein that I was made master, I 
 might, after the example of others, have become 
 teacher and instructor in turn, or have prosecuted 
 my studies and made greater advancement therein. 
 But I forsook my parents and kindred, and betook 
 myself, contrary to their will, to the cloister, and 
 put on the cowl. For I had suffered myself to be 
 persuaded that by entering into a religious order, 
 and taking upon me such hard and rigorous labour, 
 I should do God great service." 
 
 Here may properly be introduced a few other 
 sayings of Luther in respect to the motives which 
 led him to take this step. In a manuscript pre- 
 served at Gotha, he is represented as saying, "I 
 went into the cloister and forsook the world because 
 I despaired of myself." "I made a vow for the
 
 &. 21-25.] BECOMES A MONK. 69 
 
 salvation of iny soul. For no other cause did I 
 betake myself to a life in the cloister than that I 
 might serve God and please him forevermore." "I 
 thought God did not concern himself about me/' he 
 says in one 1 of his sermons ; " if I get to heaven 
 and be happy, it will depend mostly on myself. I 
 knew no better than to think that by my own works 
 I must rid myself of sin and death. For this cause 
 I became a monk, and had a most bitter experience 
 withal. Oh ! thought I, if I only go into a cloister 
 and serve God in a cowl and with a shorn crown, 
 he will reward me and bid me welcome." 
 
 During the interval of two weeks, while he kept 
 his design from his parents and from his fellow-stu- 
 dents, the Gotha manuscript says that he communi- 
 cated it to Andrew Staffelstein, as the head of the 
 university, and to a few pious females. Staffelstein 
 advised him to join the Franciscan order, whose mo- 
 nastery had just been rebuilt in Erfurt, and went im- 
 mediately with him to the cloister, lest a change 
 should take place in Luther's mind. The teacher 
 resorted also to flattery, no doubt with a good con- 
 science, saying that of none of his pupils did he en- 
 tertain higher hopes in respect to piety and good- 
 ness. When they arrived at the cloister, the monks 
 urged his connecting himself immediately with the 
 order. Luther replied that he must first make known 
 his intention to his parents. But Staffelstein and 
 the friars rejoined that he must forsake father and 
 mother, and steal away to the cross of Christ. Who- 
 soever putteth his hand to the plough and looketh 
 back is not worthy of the kingdom of God. In this 
 "monstrous inhumanity," as Luther calls it, " savour- 
 ing more of the wolf and the tyrant than of the 
 Christian and the man/' the monks were only carry-
 
 70 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1505-1508. 
 
 ing out the principle which Jerome had taught them, 
 and which was the more weighty, being sanctioned 
 by his great name. As quoted by Luther, in his 
 Commentary on Gen. xliii. 30, the words of that 
 ancient Father run thus : " Though thy father should 
 lie before thy door weeping and lamenting, and thy 
 mother should show the body that bore thee and the 
 breasts that nursed thee, see that thou trample them 
 under foot, and go onward straightway to Christ." 
 By such perversion of Scripture and reason did the 
 monks deprive many a parent of the society of his 
 children. " That," says Luther again, "is the teach- 
 ing of antichrist, and you may boldly tell him, he 
 lieth. Next to obedience to himself, before all things 
 and above all things, God requireth obedience to 
 parents. ... A son or a daughter runneth away from 
 his father, and goeth into a cloister against his will. 
 The pope with his party of Herodians approveth the 
 act, and thus compelleth the people to tear in pieces 
 a command of God in order to worship God." " Hadst 
 thou known," it is said in the above-mentioned de- 
 dicatory epistle of Luther to his father, " that I 
 was then in thy power, wouldst thou not, from thine 
 authority as a father, have plucked me out of my 
 cowl ? Had I known it, I would not have essayed 
 such a thing against thy will and knowledge, though 
 I must suffer a thousand deaths." It seems, there- 
 fore, that Luther's mind was in a conflict between a 
 sense of duty to his parents and a false persuasion 
 of duty to his own soul and to God. Even the 
 father was somewhat puzzled by the speciousness of 
 the monastic logic. But the son made the former 
 consideration yield to the latter, which the father 
 always maintained was an error. We must not be 
 surprised that such scruples were entertained in re-
 
 JE. 21-25.] BECOMES A MONK. 71 
 
 spect to the filial obligation of one who was about 
 twenty-two years of age ; for, not to mention that by 
 law a son did not reach the age of majority till he 
 was twenty-five years of age, filial obedience was, as 
 in the patriarchal age, considered as due to an inde- 
 finite period of life. 
 
 Luther, however, did not enter into the cloister of 
 the Franciscans, but preferred that of the Augustin- 
 ian eremites. Undoubtedly a regard for the literary 
 and more elevated character of that order decided 
 his choice. This took place, as Luther himself once 
 eaid, on the 17th of July, 1505. On the evening 
 preceding, he invited his university friends to a so- 
 cial party. The hours passed away in lively conver- 
 sation and song. Until near the close of that even- 
 ing, according to Melancthon, the guests had no 
 intimation of what was to follow. When Luther 
 announced his purpose to them, they endeavoured to 
 dissuade him from it. But it was all in vain. "To- 
 day," said he, " you see me ; after this, you will see 
 me no more." 
 
 The very same night, or early the following morn- 
 ing, he presented himself at the door of the con- 
 vent, according to previous arrangement, and was 
 admitted. His scholastic, classical and law books 
 he gave to the booksellers; his master's ring, 
 given when he took that degree, and his secular 
 attire, he sent to his parents. The only books which 
 he retained were the two Roman poets, Virgil and 
 Plautus, a circumstance that throws light upon the 
 peculiarly susceptible and almost romantic character 
 of his mind, no less than does the festive hour with 
 which he had the resolution to close his secular 
 career. He informed his other friends and his pa- 
 rents, by letter, of the important step he had taken.
 
 72 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1505-1508. 
 
 The former, lamenting that such a man should be 
 buried alive, as it were, almost besieged the cloister, 
 seeking for two successive days an interview with their 
 friend. But the cloister door was bolted against 
 them, and he was not to be seen by them for a month. 
 Luther's father probably did not come immediately 
 to the cloister, (as some writers have asserted, con- 
 founding this occasion with that of his ordination as 
 priest,) but replied to his son's letter in a manner 
 which showed the highest displeasure, and withheld 
 the respectful form of address (Ihr) which, from the 
 time the degree of master of arts was conferred, he 
 had ever given him, and employed one (du) which was 
 ordinarily given to children and servants. 
 
 To human view, the course of Luther, in leaving 
 the university and the study of the law and in entering 
 a cloister, seems a most unfortunate one. The best 
 years of his life, one would think, were thrown away 
 upon solemn trifles. But, if we consider that, after 
 a public education, a secluded life often contributes 
 most to true greatness, by holding a man long at the 
 very fountain-head of thought and reflection, (as was 
 the case with Chrysostom, Augustine and many 
 others,) and if, moreover, we consider that the false 
 foundations of a system of error are often best under- 
 stood by him who has made the most perfect trial of 
 them, we shall conclude with Luther, " God ordered 
 that I should become monk not without good reason, 
 that, being taught by experience, I might take up 
 my pen against the pope."
 
 M. 21-25.] THE NOVITIATE. 73 
 
 SECTION II. The Novitiate 1505. 
 
 THE first act was that of assuming the vestments 
 of the novitiate. The solemn ceremonies of that 
 occasion were settled by the rules of the order. The 
 transaction was to take place in the presence of the 
 , whole assembly. The prior proposed to the candidate 
 the question,whether he thought his strength was suf- 
 ficient to bear the burdens about to be imposed upon 
 him; at the same time reminding him of the strict- 
 ness of their discipline, and the renunciation which 
 one must make of his own will, subjecting it to that 
 of the order. He referred to the plain living and cloth- 
 ing, the nightly vigils and daily toils, the mortifica- 
 tions of the flesh, the reproach attached to a state 
 of poverty and mendicancy, the languor produced by 
 fasting, and the tedium of solitude, and other similar 
 things which awaited him. The candidate replied, 
 that with the help of God he would make trial there- 
 of. The prior said, " We receive you then on proba- 
 tion for one year; and may God, who hath begun a 
 good work in you, carry it on unto perfection." The 
 whole assembly then cried "Amen," and struck up 
 the Magne pater Augustine, (Great Father Augus- 
 tine.) Meanwhile the head was shorn, the secular 
 robes laid aside, and the spiritual robes put on. The 
 prior intimated to the individual that with these last 
 he was also to put on the new man. He now kneeled 
 down before the prior, antiphonies were sung, and 
 the divine blessing invoked, thus : " May God, who 
 hath converted this young man from the world and 
 prepared for him a mansion in heaven, grant that his 
 daily walk may be as becometh his calling, and that 
 he may have cause to be thankful for this day's do- 
 ings," &c. Then the procession moved on, singing
 
 74 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1505-1508. 
 
 responses again, till they reached the choir, where 
 they all prostrated themselves in prayer. The can- 
 didate was next conducted to the common hall of 
 the cloister, where he received from the prior and all 
 the brethren the fraternal kiss. He then bowed 
 the knee again before the prior, who, after reminding 
 him that he who persevereth to the end shall be* 
 saved, gave him over to the preceptor, whose duty it 
 was to instruct him during his novitiate. 
 
 The order of Augustinian eremites, which origin- 
 ated about the middle of the thirteenth century, was 
 said to have nearly two thousand cloisters, besides 
 three hundred nunneries, and more than thirty thou- 
 sand monks. It was reformed and organized anew 
 at the Council of Basle, in the fifteenth century. The 
 celebrated Proles, who was at Magdeburg when Lu- 
 ther was there at school, was the second vicar after 
 the re-organization, and in 1503 Staupitz was the 
 fourth, who, in the following year, that is, the year 
 before Luther entered the cloister at Erfurt, gave to 
 the order a new constitution. The abler and better 
 men of this order, such as Proles and Staupitz, were 
 led, by the study of the writings of Augustine, to 
 entertain his views of the doctrine of divine grace and 
 of justification by faith. The Augustinian friars were 
 generally more retiring, studious and contemplative 
 than the ambitious, gross and bigoted Dominicans and 
 Franciscans. Hence Luther's preference of the order. 
 
 According to the new rules laid down by Staupitz, 
 the prior was to give to each novice a preceptor and 
 guide, who should be learned, experienced and zeal- 
 ous for the interests of the order. It was the duty 
 of this preceptor to initiate the novice into a know- 
 ledge of all the rules and regulations that had been 
 established} to explain to him the system of worship
 
 M. 21-25.] THE NOVITIATE. 75 
 
 to be observed, and the signs by which directions 
 were silently given ; to see that he was awakened by 
 night to attend to all the vigils ; that he observed, 
 at their proper times and places, the prescribed in- 
 clinations, genuflections and prostrations; that he 
 did not neglect the silent prayers and private con- 
 fessions; and that he made a proper use of the books, 
 sacred utensils and garments. The novice was to 
 converse with no one except in the presence of the 
 preceptor or prior ; never to dispute respecting the 
 regulations; to take no notice of visiters; to drink 
 only in a sitting posture and holding the cup with 
 both hands ; to walk with downcast eye ; to bow low 
 in receiving every gift, and to say, "The Lord be 
 praised in his gifts;" to love poverty, avoid pleasure 
 and subdue his own will; to read the Scriptures 
 diligently, and to listen to others eagerly and learn 
 with avidity. Luther was so thoroughly drilled in 
 all these practices that he retained some of them, as 
 a matter of habit, through life. " The young monks," 
 says he, in referring to one of these practices, "were 
 taught, when they received any gift, if it were but a 
 feather, to bow low and say, 'God be praised for 
 every gift he bestoweth.' " 
 
 Trespasses were classified under the heads of small, 
 great, greater, greatest. To the smaller belong the 
 failing to go to church as soon as the sign is given, 
 or forgetting to touch the ground instantly with the 
 hand and to smite the breast, if in reading in the 
 choir or in singing the least error is committed ; 
 looking about the house in time of service ; making any 
 disturbance in the dormitory or in the cell; desiring 
 to sing or read otherwise than in the prescribed 
 order; omitting prostration when giving thanks at 
 the Annunciation or Christmas; forgetting the bene-
 
 76 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1505-1508. 
 
 diction in going out or coming in; neglecting to 
 return books or garments to their proper places; 
 dropping one's food, or spilling one's drink, or eating 
 without saying grace, &c. &c. To great trespasses 
 were reckoned contending with any one, reminding 
 one of a former fault, breaking the prescribed silence 
 or fasts, looking at women, or talking with them, 
 except at the confessional or in brief replies, &c. 
 
 Luther was at once put into subjection to all these 
 trivial and often senseless laws. The good monks 
 seemed to delight in teaching lessons of humility. 
 With his studies, in which he was already too much 
 distinguished for them, they were not at all pleased. 
 He himself says, "As I came into the cloister, they 
 said to me, ' It shall be with you as it was with us 
 sack on the neck/ " Again he says, " In Italy there 
 is an order of Ignorants, who vow sacred ignorance. 
 All orders might lay claim to that title, for that they 
 give heed only to the words, but not to the sense, of 
 what they read or repeat. They say, if thou under- 
 standest not the meaning of the Scriptures and the 
 prayers, Satan doeth and fleeth. The alpha and 
 omega of the monks is to hate knowledge and study. 
 If a brother is given to study, they straightway sur- 
 mise that he wishes to bear rule over them." 
 
 The Erfurt monks were not all of the most spi- 
 ritual character. Luther says of the monks in gene- 
 ral, that " For one fast they had three feasts. At 
 the evening collation two cans of good beer and a 
 . little can of wine were given to each monk, besides 
 spiced cakes and salted bread to quicken their thirst. 
 The poor brethren appeared like fiery angels." That 
 Luther had in mind the monks at Erfurt is pretty 
 evident, from his saying that he had, in the papacy, 
 never seen a proper fast; that "abstinence from
 
 M. 21-25.] THE NOVITIATE. 77 
 
 meat" signified only to have the best of fish, with 
 the nicest seasoning and good wine ; besides, " They 
 taught," says he, " that we should despise riches, 
 vineyards and fields ; and yet they seek after them, 
 most of all, and eat and drink the very best. One 
 brother in the cloister could consume five biscuits, 
 when one was enough for me." One doctor, in the 
 cloister, had omitted the canonical hours for three 
 months, so that he could not now make them all up. 
 He therefore gave a few guldens to two brethren to 
 help him pray, that he might get through the sooner. 
 Of the treatment which Luther received after en- 
 tering upon his novitiate, it is not easy to judge. 
 Was it according to the spirit of the order, and con- 
 sequently a mode of treatment to which all without 
 distinction were at first subject ? or was the deport- 
 ment of the monks toward Luther particularly harsh 
 and severe ? Some considerations may be urged in 
 favour of the former view. Luther himself repre- 
 sents it as the vice of the system. " True obedience, 
 that alone of which they boast, the monks seek to 
 prove by requiring unreasonable, childish and foolish 
 things, all which were to be cheerfully submitted to." 
 He never complains of faring worse than others : but 
 he does complain that no distinctions were made ac- 
 cording to the physical constitution and mental state 
 of individuals; that "every man's shoes were made 
 on one and the same last, and that all were governed 
 by one inflexible rule." " Augustine," he says, 
 " acted more wisely, teaching that all men were not 
 to be measured by the same rule." So much, how- 
 ever, seems to be true in regard to the members of 
 the cloister of Erfurt, that they looked with jea- 
 lousy upon the distinguished and learned novitiate, 
 and felt a satisfaction in seeing him performing the
 
 78 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1505-1508. 
 
 menial offices of doorkeeper, sweep, and street-beg- 
 gar in the very city where he had so many literary 
 acquaintances to witness his humiliation. 
 
 With what patience and acquiescence he submitted 
 to all the duties and tasks imposed upon him by his 
 order, we learn from his own declarations. These 
 are his words : " I was a monk without ever com- 
 plaining; of that I can justly boast." " When I 
 first became a monk, I stormed the very heavens." 
 He speaks of having exposed himself in watchings, 
 " till he nearly perished in the cold ;" of having 
 afflicted and tortured his body, " so that he could 
 not have endured it long;" and of having prayed, 
 fasted, watched, and inflicted bodily pains, and so 
 seriously " injured his head, that he had not reco- 
 vered, and never should so long as he lived." 
 
 For the sake of the connection, we will introduce 
 here a passage that probably relates, in part at least, to 
 a somewhat later period : " I verily kept the rules of 
 my order with great diligence and zeal. I often 
 fasted till I was sick and well-nigh dead. Not only 
 did I observe the rules straitly, but I took upon my- 
 self other tasks, and had a peculiar way by myself. 
 My seniors strove against this my singularity, and 
 with good reason. I was a shameful persecutor 
 and destroyer of my own body ; for I fasted, prayed, 
 watched, and made myself weary and languid beyond 
 what I could endure." 
 
 Connected with such a state of mind and such 
 religious severities, we should naturally expect to 
 see the greatest reverence for the papal hierarchy. 
 It cannot be surprising, therefore, to hear him say, 
 " I can with truth affirm, if there ever was one who 
 held the papal laws and the traditions of the fathers 
 in reverence, I was such." " I had an unfeigned
 
 JE. 21-25.] THE NOVITIATE. 79 
 
 veneration for the pope, not seeking after livings, or 
 places, and such like, but whatsoever I did, I did with 
 singleness of heart, with upright zeal and for the 
 glory of God." "So great was the pope in my 
 esteem that I accounted the least deviation from him 
 a sin, deserving damnation ; and this ungodly opi- 
 nion made me to hold Huss as an accursed heretic, 
 BO much so that I esteemed it a sin only to think 
 of him ; and, to defend the pope's authority, I would 
 have kindled the flames to burn the heretic, and 
 should have believed that I was thereby showing the 
 truest obedience to God." 
 
 We have learned that Luther was driven to the 
 cloister by a disquieted conscience and superstitious 
 fears and hopes. It is natural to inquire how far 
 his conscience was quieted, his fears allayed, and his 
 hopes realized. Let him answer for himself: " When 
 I was a monk, I was outwardly much holier than now. 
 I kept the vow I had taken with the greatest zeal 
 and diligence by day and by night, and yet I found 
 no rest, for all the consolations which I drew from 
 my own righteousness and works were ineffectual." 
 " Doubts all the while cleaved to my conscience, and 
 I thought within myself, Who knoweth whether this 
 is pleasing and acceptable to God, or not." " Even 
 when I was the most devout, I went as a doubter to 
 the altar, and as a doubter I came away again. If 
 I had made my confession, I was still in doubt ; if, 
 upon that, I left off prayer, I was again in doubt j 
 for we were wrapt in the conceit that we could not 
 pray and should not be heard, unless we were wholly 
 pure and without sin, like the saints in heaven." It 
 is difficult for us to conceive of the anguish which a 
 tender^and delicate conscience would feel under the 
 influence of the doctrines which were then taught in
 
 80 LIFE OF LTJTHER. [1505-1508. 
 
 respect to confession. Who could be certain that he 
 knew the nature and extent of all the sins he had 
 committed ? What infallible rule had he by which 
 he could judge rightly of all the acts and circum- 
 stances connected with sin ? Of his motives and in- 
 tentions he might have a tolerably accurate know- 
 ledge, but how was it with acts in themselves con- 
 sidered, which were the main thing in the ethics of 
 the confessional? Even of those sins which were 
 defined and measured by the rules of the order, since 
 they related to a thousand trifling acts recurring al- 
 most every moment, few persons could retain a dis- 
 tinct consciousness or recollection so as to be per- 
 fectly sure at each confession that nothing was omitted 
 or forgotten ; and yet one such omission vitiated 
 the whole confession and rendered prayer useless. 
 This was the scorpion-sting which Luther so keenly 
 felt. He always doubted the completeness of his 
 confession. If he prayed, it might be of no use; 
 if he neglected prayer, his doubts -were increased. 
 " The confession was an intolerable burden laid upon 
 the church. For there was no sorer trouble, as we 
 all know by experience, than that every one should 
 be compelled to make confession, or be guilty of a 
 mortal sin. Moreover, confession was beset with so 
 many difficulties, and the conscience distressed with 
 the reckoning up of so many different classes of sins, 
 that no one could make his confession complete 
 enough." " If the confession was not perfect, and 
 done with exceeding particularity, the absolution was 
 of none effect, nor were the sins forgiven. There- 
 with were the people so hard pressed, that there was 
 no one but must despair of confessing so perfectly, 
 (it was in very deed impossible ;) and no conscience
 
 JB. 21-25.] THE NOVITIATE. 81 
 
 could abide the trial, nor have confidence in the ab- 
 solution." 
 
 " When I was a monk, I used oft-times to be very 
 contrite for my sins, and to confess them all as much 
 as was possible ; and I performed the penance that was 
 enjoined unto me as straitly and as rigorously as I 
 could. Yet for all this, my conscience could never be 
 tranquil and assured, but I was always in doubt, and 
 said to myself, This or that hast thou not done 
 rightly; thou wast not sorrowful enough for thy sins; 
 this and that sin thou didst forget in thy confession." 
 Though he "confessed every day, it was all in vain." 
 "The smart and anguish of conscience," he else- 
 where says, "were as great in the cowl as they were 
 before out of it." These declarations may easily be 
 reconciled with others which represent him as feel- 
 ing happy when he could say, " To-day I have done 
 no wrong ; I have been obedient to my prior, have 
 fasted and prayed, and God is gracious toward me." 
 These occasions were of rare occurrence, and were 
 the results of that superficial feeling which the 
 strongest and profoundest minds are liable -to have 
 in those passive moments when they surrender them- 
 selves to the influence of popular belief. But the 
 chief current of Luther's feelings, in spite of all the 
 violence he did to himself to prevent it, ran counter 
 to that belief, so that in after-life, when reverting to 
 these scenes, he could speak of the predominant state 
 of his mind as though there had been no other. The 
 effect of such a view of religion as he then enter- 
 tained, and of such an experience as he had of a 
 daily deviation from its precepts, is truthfully de- 
 scribed in the following words, undoubtedly the ut- 
 terance of his own heart : " He who thinketh that 
 a Christian ought to be without any fault, and yet
 
 82 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1505-1508. 
 
 seeth many faults in himself, must needs be con- 
 sumed at length with melancholy and despair." 
 
 Not only did Luther suffer from the unexpected 
 discovery of the real sinfulness of his heart, but he 
 was scarcely less tormented with imaginary sins and 
 false scruples of conscience. " The devil," says he, 
 " seizeth upon some trifling sin, and by that casteth 
 into the shade all the good works which thou hast 
 thy life long done, so that thou dost see nothing but 
 this one sin." "I speak from experience; I know 
 his wiles and subtleties, how of one little mote he 
 maketh many great beams, that is to say, of that 
 which is the least sin, or no sin at all, he maketh a 
 very hell, so that the wide world is too strait for 
 one." 
 
 The fiery imagination of Luther, which solitude 
 served but to kindle into an intenser flame, the 
 strength and depth of his religious passions, which 
 found no such vent as they needed, and the bewil- 
 dered state of his mind in respect to the elementary 
 principles of Christianity, all conspired to give him 
 an air of peculiarity which the monks could not com- 
 prehend. Too much of original character lay con- 
 cealed beneath that demure yet singular deportment 
 to be controlled even by the iron forms which the 
 order laid upon all alike. Luther's mind had an in- 
 dividuality which separated him from the mass and 
 heightened his solitude. In the mental processes 
 through which he passed, he was alone and without 
 sympathy. He was driven, at last, almost to 
 phrensy. Often was his bodily frame overpowered 
 by the intensity of his excited feelings, and there was 
 no skilful physician of the soul at hand to prescribe 
 for his case. Speaking on this point, he observes, 
 " In my huge temptations, which consumed my body
 
 3.21-25.] THE NOVITIATE. 83 
 
 so that I well-nigh lost my breath, and hardly knew 
 whether I had still any brain left or not, there was 
 no one to comfort me." If he opened his heart to 
 any one, the only reply he received was, " I know 
 nothing about such temptations," and he was left to 
 the gloomy conclusion, that he " was to be alone in 
 this disconsolate state." But as the melancholy 
 mood here described only commenced during his no- 
 vitiate and extended through the second year of his 
 life in the cloister, we must break off the narration for 
 the present, and direct our attention to his other em- 
 ployments during the first year. 
 
 " When I was received into the cloister," he said 
 once to his friends, according to the Grotha manu- 
 script, " I called for a Bible, and the brethren gave 
 me one. It was bound in red morocco. I made my- 
 self so familiar with it that I knew on what page and 
 in what place every passage stood. Had I kept it, I 
 should have been an excellent textual theologian. 
 No other study than that of the Holy Scriptures 
 pleased me. I read therein zealously, and imprinted 
 them on my memory. Many a time a single preg- 
 nant passage would abide the whole day long in my 
 mind. On weighty words of the prophets, which 
 even now I remember well, I cogitated again and 
 again, although I could not apprehend the meaning 
 thereof; as, for example, we read in Ezekiel, 'I 
 desire not the death of the sinner.' " Again he 
 says, " Not till after I had made myself acquaint- 
 ed with the Bible, did I study the writers/' By 
 " the writers," he must mean the scholastic theolo- 
 gians. For he himself says, in a preface to Bugen- 
 hageu's edition of Athanasius, that he " read the 
 colloquy between Athanasius and Arius with great 
 interest, in the first year of his monastic life, at Er-
 
 84 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1505-1508. 
 
 furt." No doubt he also read at that time the 
 legends of the saints, the Lives of the Fathers, (a 
 favourite book with him,) and other works of a simi- 
 lar tendency. The new rules of the order prescribed, 
 however, the diligent study of the Scriptures, and 
 the probationary year appears to have been designated 
 for biblical study. But we must guard against being 
 misled by the fact that there was such a rule, and 
 by the name that was given to the study. Neither 
 the sentiments nor the practice of the Erfurt monks 
 coincided with the rule. Though they could not 
 refuse to give a Bible to the novice who requested it, 
 they discouraged the study of it. Besides, Luther's 
 time was so much occupied with other useless and 
 menial services that his progress in the study of the 
 Scriptures must have been much impeded. He was, 
 furthermore, destitute of suitable helps for studying 
 them critically. He did not see the Bible in the 
 original, nor had he then any knowledge of the 
 Greek or Hebrew. He had only the Latin Vulgate, 
 with a most miserable commentary, called the Glossa 
 Ordinaria, or Common Gloss. And, what is more 
 than all, he brought to the study of the Bible a mind 
 overborne with monastic and papal prejudices. The 
 method of what was called biblical studies, as then 
 pursued in the monasteries and universities, was en- 
 tirely different from that to which we, in the present 
 age, are accustomed. The Bible was not studied as 
 a whole, nor any of the sacred writers in a connected 
 manner, so as to learn the scope and general design 
 of the book. Of course, the author was not made 
 his own interpreter, nor were any sound rules of in- 
 terpretation observed. A text was, in the first place, 
 taken out of its connection, and interpreted meta- 
 physically, as if it were a scholastic maxim, and
 
 ^E- 21-25.] THE NOVITIATE. 85 
 
 forced at once into an unnatural connection with dia- 
 lectics, or used as a secondary and subsidiary sup- 
 port of a doctrine which rested mainly on a meta- 
 physical basis. In the next place, the literal sense 
 was deserted at pleasure, and an allegorical one in- 
 troduced to suit the object of the interpreter. The 
 absurd conceits of Origen, Jerome, and other early 
 fathers of the church, were handed down by tradition, 
 and the study of such traditionary interpretation, 
 collected in compends, was called biblical study. 
 The false interpretations to be found in the papal 
 bulls and decretals, and in the approved works of the 
 scholastic writers, would furnish a large chapter in 
 the book of human follies. Luther was not only 
 under these influences, but yielded to them. In a 
 letter to Spalatin, June 29, 1518, he says, " I my- 
 self followed the doctrines and rules of the scholastic 
 theology, and according to them did I desire to handle 
 the Scriptures." In his Commentary on Genesis ix. 
 he says, " I have often told you of what sort theo- 
 logy was when I first began the study thereof. The 
 letter, said they, killeth. For this cause I was 
 especially opposed to Lyra more than to all other 
 teachers, because he cleaved so diligently to the text 
 and abode by it. But now, for this selfsame reason, 
 I prefer him before all other interpreters of Scrip- 
 ture." Again, he says, "When I was young, I 
 loved allegories to such a degree that I thought 
 every thing must be turned into allegories. To this 
 Origen and Jerome gave occasion, whom I esteemed 
 as being the greatest theologians." Well, indeed, 
 might he afterwards say, " I did not learn all my 
 theology at once." The beginning with him was 
 feeble, and, the sincerity of his heart excepted, was 
 of a very unpromising character. 
 
 8
 
 86 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1506-1508. 
 
 SECTION III. Taking the Vow Second year in the Cloister, 
 1506. 
 
 SUCH was Luther's year of probation, a year in 
 which he experienced some gratification in the study, 
 however defective, of the Scriptures which he loved ; 
 but, on the other hand, was disappointed in respect 
 to what was of the highest- concern to him, namely, 
 obtaining peace within himself. If it excite our 
 wonder that he did not, at this time, while it was in 
 his power, and before taking the irrevocable vow, 
 determine to abandon the monastic life, and return 
 to the university or seek some other occupation, 
 there are other considerations which may remove 
 our surprise. Luther's mind was of too determined 
 a character to be turned from its course by any slight 
 considerations. He had been trained in the school 
 of adversity, and could courageously bear the priva- 
 tions and sufferings attendant on his present mode 
 of life. The subject of religion interested him more 
 than all others, and to this he could give his undi- 
 vided attention here more easily than elsewhere. 
 Here, too, he found a few friends, such as Usingen, 
 his former teacher, Lange, whom he assisted in study, 
 and the excellent Susse, who is said to have been 
 his room-mate. If his mind had as yet found no 
 rest, possibly a longer trial, after actually taking 
 the vow, might prove more effectual. Certainly a 
 return to the world would imply a want of firmness, 
 and would, besides, promise no better results. Even 
 if there had been no disgrace attached to leaving the 
 cloister at the close of the novitiate, this would pro- 
 bably have made no difference with Luther, who 
 seems to have made up his mind from the beginning.
 
 JE. 21-25.] TAKING THE VOW. 87 
 
 Speaking of the unsuccessful attempt of the friends 
 who endeavoured to keep him from entering the 
 monastery, he says, " Thus did I abide by my pur- 
 pose, thinking never again to come out of the clois- 
 ter." 
 
 The rules of the order prescribed that the prior 
 should, at the close of the year of probation, exa- 
 mine the novice as to his being worthy of admission. 
 If the result was favourable, the bell was to be rung 
 and the monks to assemble, and the prior to take 
 his place before the steps at the altar and to address 
 the kneeling novice in the following words : " You 
 have become acquainted with the severe life of our 
 order, and must now decide whether you will return 
 to the world, or be consecrated to the order." If the 
 answer was in favour of the latter, the individual 
 was directed to put off the garb of the novice, and 
 the part of the service beginning with the words, 
 "Our help is in the name of the Lord," was re- 
 peated, whereupon the prior laid the monk's apparel 
 upon him, and then the ceremonies were very simi- 
 lar to those of entering the novitiate, described 
 above. The vow was taken, in connection with the 
 imposition of the hands of the prior, in these words, 
 as reported by Cochlaeus : " I, brother Martin, do 
 make profession and promise obedience unto Al- 
 mighty God, unto Mary always a virgin, and unto 
 thee, my brother, the prior of this cloister in the 
 name and in the stead of the general prior of the 
 order of the Eremites of St. Augustine, the bishop 
 and of his regular successors, to live in poverty and 
 chastity, after the rule of the said St. Augustine, 
 until death." Then a burning taper was put into 
 his hand, prayer was offered for him by the prior, 
 and the brethren sung the hymn, Veni Sancte Spi-
 
 88 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1505-1508. 
 
 ritus, " Come, Holy Spirit," after which the new 
 brother was conducted by them to the choir of the 
 church, and received of them the fraternal kiss. 
 
 The most extravagant ideas were entertained of the 
 effect of such a formal consecration to a monastic life. 
 As baptism was supposed to take away all sin, so this 
 monastic baptism, (as the initiation was called,) was 
 said to be equally efficacious, and to have even a 
 greater sanctity. Hence Luther was congratulated 
 on the present occasion as being, by his own act, 
 freed from sin and introduced into a state of prim- 
 eval innocence. With this he felt nattered and 
 pleased for the moment, but upon experiencing its 
 utter futility, he came at length to regard it as 
 " a pill of infernal poison, sugared over on the out- 
 side." In his brief reply to George, Duke of Sax- 
 ony, he said : " That the monks likened their mo- 
 nastic life to Christian baptism, they cannot deny; 
 for thus have they taught and practised, throughout, 
 in all the world. When I made my profession, I 
 was congratulated by the prior, the convent and the 
 confessor,- that I was now innocent as a child which 
 had just come forth pure from its baptism. And 
 verily I could heartily rejoice over such a glorious 
 deed, that I was such an excellent one, who could, 
 by his own works, without the blood of Christ, make 
 himself so good and holy, and that too so easily and 
 so quickly. But though I could hear with satisfac- 
 tion such sweet praise and shining words concerning 
 my own doings, and let myself pass for a wonder- 
 worker, who could, in such a wanton manner, make 
 himself holy and devour both death and the devil, 
 yet would it fail when it came to the trial. For 
 when only a small temptation of death or of sin 
 came upon me, I fell away, and found no succour
 
 ^E. 21-25.] IN THE CLOISTER. 89 
 
 either in baptism or in the monastic state. Then 
 was I the most miserable man on earth ; day and 
 night there was nothing but lamentation and de- 
 spair, from which no one could deliver me. So I 
 was bathed and baptized in my monasticism, and 
 verily had the sweating sickness." 
 
 Luther was three years in the cloister at Erfurt. 
 Of his employments and of his state of mind during 
 the first year, or the year of his novitiate, we have 
 already had an account. During the second year, 
 with which we are now concerned, he was devoted 
 to the study of the scholastic theology and to his 
 preparation for the priesthood. His religious feel- 
 ings continued of the same character substantially 
 as in the first year, except that his anxieties and his 
 sorrows increased. It was not till the third year, 
 the year of his priesthood, that new views on the 
 subject of works and of justification shed light upon 
 his mind and joy upon his path, and not till after 
 that change did he take up the study of the early 
 Christian fathers. Here then we have the means 
 of deciding, in most cases, to which of these three 
 periods his numerous allusions to his monastic life 
 in Erfurt refer. If, in any passage, there be a re- 
 ference to the duties of the priestly office, saying 
 mass, for example, or to the study of Augustine and 
 other church fathers, or to more cheerful and con- 
 fiding feelings in respect to God, as a loving father 
 rather than as a stern revenger, and to Christ, as a 
 compassionate Saviour rather than as a dreaded 
 judge, we may safely apply the passage to the last 
 year of Luther's residence in Erfurt. If a state 
 of bodily and mental suffering be alone referred to, 
 it is doubtful whether Luther had the first or second 
 year in mind. But if harsh treatment or the regu- 
 8
 
 90 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1505-1508. 
 
 lar study of the Scriptures be mentioned in the same 
 connection, the first year is thereby indicated; 
 whereas if occupation with the scholastic theolo- 
 gians and with works which treat of the duties of the 
 priesthood be alluded to, the second year only can be 
 meant. 
 
 Of the personal appearance of Luther about the 
 time of this second year, probably near its close, 
 (this being the time of his most intense mental an- 
 guish,) we have a representation in a portrait taken 
 in 1572, preserved in a church at Weimar, when the 
 artist had the means of ascertaining how Luther ap- 
 peared at the time referred. to. This is furthermore 
 supported by a letter of Luther's, in which he de- 
 scribes his features as they then were. The youth- 
 ful flush had disappeared from his countenance. 
 His black, piercing and fiery eye was now sunken. 
 His small and plump face had become thin and 
 spare. With all his sadness and dejection there 
 was a solemn earnestness in his mien, and his look 
 bespoke a mind in conflict and yet determined. 
 
 It was, no doubt, either during the latter part of 
 the preceding year, or near the beginning of this, 
 that Staupitz, general vicar or provincial of the order 
 in Germany, on one of his visitations to examine 
 into the state of the several cloisters under his care, 
 first had his attention attracted to Luther. By the 
 rules of the order, drawn up by himself, it was made 
 his duty, as general vicar, to visit the convents for 
 the purpose of seeing that a paternal discipline was 
 maintained, and particularly to inquire in respect to 
 the care taken of the sick, the instruction given to 
 novices, and the observance of the fasts and other 
 prescribed duties. Staupitz was a model which all 
 provincials might well imitate. He made it his con-
 
 JE. 21-25.] IN THE CLOISTER. 91 
 
 cern to promote the study of the Bible, though hia 
 efforts were not always seconded by others, and to 
 seek out and encourage young men of talent and 
 of elevated religious character, and to inspire them, 
 as far as possible, with a sincere love of God and 
 of man. Such a person as Luther, learned, able, 
 ardent, perplexed, abused, and sinking both in health 
 and in spirits, could not escape his notice. His 
 singular attachment to the Bible was no less gratify- 
 ing than it was surprising to Staupitz. " The monks," 
 says Luther, " did not study the Scriptures, save here 
 and there one, who like myself took singular delight 
 therein. Often did I read them in the cloister, to 
 the great astonishment of Doctor Staupitz." 
 
 Here commenced the most important acquaintance 
 which Luther ever formed. Staupitz, at once, after 
 knowing the character of the young monk, directed 
 the prior to have more regard to his standing and 
 previous habits, and to release him from those humi- 
 liating and onerous tasks which had been imposed 
 upon him. He, at the same time, encouraged Luther 
 to prosecute the study of the Scriptures with unabated 
 zeal, till he should be able to turn readily to any 
 passage that should be named. Luther now, for the 
 first time, found a spiritual guide who was, in every 
 essential respect, qualified to treat such critical cases 
 as his, one who, in his comprehensive view, re- 
 cognised as well the laws of the physical and the 
 mental constitution as the fundamental principles 
 of the gospel. A varied order of living and new 
 trains of thought, originating in suggestions respect- 
 ing the true nature of Christianity, which were 
 then as strange as those which were once made to 
 the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, were the 
 beginnings of a healthful process, which ultimately
 
 92 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1505-1508. 
 
 wrought a complete religious revolution in Luther's 
 mind, and laid, in his personal experience, the foun- 
 dation for the Reformation. In a letter to Staupitz 
 in 1523, he says, "I ought not to be unmindful or 
 forgetful of you, through whom the light of the gospel 
 first began to shine out of darkness into our hearts." 
 
 John von Staupitz was descended from an ancient 
 noble family of Meissen or Misnia in the kingdom 
 of Saxony. In order to gratify his love of study 
 and pious meditation, he became an Augustinian 
 monk, and in various universities went through an 
 extended course of scholastic philosophy and theology. 
 In 1497, he was made master of arts, lector or pub- 
 lic reader of his order, and connected himself with 
 the university of Tubingen, in the south of Germany. 
 He rose rapidly to distinction ; for in the following 
 year he was appointed prior of the convent of Tu- 
 bingen ; in the next, he took the degree of biblical 
 bachelor, or the first degree in theology, that of sen- 
 tentiary, or the second degree, and in 1500, that of 
 doctor of divinity 
 
 Early disgusted with the dry and unprofitable specu- 
 lations of the scholastic theologians, he turned his 
 attention to what are called the mystical theologians, 
 or the spiritual and experimental Christians of that 
 age. Bernard and Gerson were his favourite authors, 
 men in whom a spirit not unlike that of the pious 
 Thomas a, Kempis prevailed. The influence of some 
 of the professors at Tubingen, especially of Sommer- 
 hard, united to that of the writers above named, led 
 him to appreciate the Bible more highly than any 
 other book, and to look to that as his only safe 
 guide in religion and the only sure foundation of 
 Christian theology. " It is needful for us," says 
 Staupitz, "to study the Holy Scriptures with the
 
 JE. 21-25.] IN THE CLOISTER. 93 
 
 greatest diligence and with all humility, and earnest- 
 ly to pray that we fail not of the truth of the gos- 
 pel." He regarded that principle of love which 
 the Holy Spirit originates in us, and which produces 
 a union with Christ by faith, as constituting the es- 
 sence of religion. This is not produced by any 
 good works of ours, but is itself the producer of all 
 good works. Our piety, therefore, does not depend 
 on the performance of rites and ceremonies prescribed 
 by the church, nor can it be estimated by such a 
 standard ; but it depends on the state of the heart 
 and on the exercise of the spiritual affections. Our 
 union with the church is not the cause of our union 
 with Christ, but vice versa. "First, God giveth 
 unto all the faithful one heart and one soul in him, 
 and on this wise uniteth them together, and of this 
 cometh the unity of the church." 
 
 These are some of the characteristic features of 
 the piety and faith of Staupitz ; and in them we 
 cannot fail to recognise the undeveloped germs of 
 salvation by grace and justification by faith in Christ, 
 as afterward maintained by his greater disciple. 
 Such a spirit was the very opposite of that which 
 animated Tetzel in the sale of indulgences. 
 
 When, in 1502, the Elector Frederic of Saxony 
 founded the university of Wittenberg, he employed 
 Staupitz first as a counsellor and negotiator, and then 
 as a dean or superintendent of the theological faculty. 
 In the next year, the chapter of the order chose 
 him general vicar ; and it was in this capacity that 
 he was brought into connection with Luther. His 
 influence upon the cloisters under his charge was of 
 the happiest kind ; and his efforts to promote biblical 
 studies, and to revive the spirituality of his brethren, 
 no doubt prepared, in part, the way for multitudes
 
 94 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1505-1508. 
 
 of them to embrace the doctrines of Luther. The 
 testimony of the latter to his worth may properly 
 have place here : " He was an estimable man ; not 
 only worthy to be listened to with reverence, as a 
 scholar, in seats of learning and in the church, but 
 also at the court of princes and in the society of 
 the great, he was held in much estimation for his 
 knowledge of the world/' 
 
 From the nature of the case, we could not suppose 
 that the first interview of Staupitz with Luther could 
 produce any great and sudden change in the latter. 
 At that time, they were attached to opposite systems 
 of theology, the mystic and the scholastic; and 
 Luther's views were so interwoven with his entire 
 character and previous training, that they could not 
 be surrendered without many an inward struggle 
 Now we are expressly informed by Melancthon that 
 Luther's mind did not find relief till after he com- 
 menced the study of the Christian fathers; -and we 
 learn elsewhere that this did not take place till the 
 third year of his residence in the cloister of Erfurt. 
 Consequently, there was an interval of nearly a year 
 at least, and, according to the common view, (namely, 
 that Staupitz saw Luther during his novitiate,) an 
 interval of nearly two years between their first ac- 
 quaintance and the conversion of Luther to the 
 evangelical faith. 
 
 From all the circumstances of the case, we are not 
 allowed to suppose that Staupitz, at the first inter- 
 view, did more than to gain some general information 
 in respect to Luther's character and condition, and 
 to make a few suggestions and leave them to their 
 effect. But though the general vicar was well 
 grounded in the truth, and the young monk almost 
 equally fortified in error, there was one point of
 
 M. 21-25.] IN THE CLOISTER. 95 
 
 strong sympathy between them, and that was, the 
 love of the Bible. But at this time, the Bible was 
 to Luther a very dark book. It came to him in his 
 spiritual ignorance, almost buried under the rubbish 
 of the papal glosses. The gospel itself was turned 
 into law ; Christ was but a second Moses, a stern 
 legislator and judge, from whom the oppressed sinner 
 fled in terror, because he had not a sufficient righteous- 
 ness of his own, and knew nothing of the justifying 
 righteousness of Christ. Such was the state in which 
 Staupitz found Luther. 
 
 Instead of proceeding from a consciousness of the 
 necessity of redemption and gratuitous justification 
 to the ascertainment of its reality and available- 
 ness, the benighted though learned young monk 
 went back, in a contrary direction, to speculate upon 
 the origin and nature of evil, and upon the myste- 
 ries of Providence, over which lay a pall of still 
 denser darkness. Thus he was sometimes subject 
 to the keenest despair, and sometimes to the most 
 distressing thoughts. "Why," said Staupitz to 
 him, " do you vex yourself with these speculations 
 and high thoughts ? Look upon the wounds of Christ 
 and upon the blood which he shed for you. From 
 these will the counsels of God shine forth." That 
 is, in the cross of Christ is the best solution of the 
 mysteries of Providence in respect to the eternal 
 destinies of men. This undoubtedly took place at 
 the first confession which Luther made to Staupitz 
 as the general vicar. The scene, according to Luther, 
 was equally surprising to both parties. Such a con- 
 fession, going so deeply into the nature of sin as 
 consisting not so much in single acts as in a moral 
 state, a confession of the doubts and daring specula- 
 tions of a great mind abused in its religious training,
 
 96 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1505-1508. 
 
 and consequently in a perfectly chaotic state, Staupitz 
 had never before heard. Luther knew no better 
 what to make of the unexpected and strange direc- 
 tions given him by Staupitz. No name was more 
 terrific to him than that of Christ, an avenger and a 
 judge, to whom he did not dare to approach without 
 first preparing the way by engaging in his behalf the 
 more tender sympathies of the virgin mother, to soften 
 the severities of her Divine Son. In a sermon of 
 his, first published in 1847, Luther says, " Under 
 the papacy I fled from Christ, and trembled at his 
 name ; ... for I looked upon him as a judge only ; 
 and in this grievously erred. St. Bernard, otherwise 
 a godly man, said : ' Behold, in all the gospel, how 
 sharply Christ often rebuketh, upbraideth and con- 
 demneth the Pharisees, and flieth at them, while the 
 virgin Mary is ever gentle and kind, and never spoke 
 or uttered one hard word.' From hence arose the 
 opinion that Christ reproacheth and rebuketh, while 
 Mary is all sweetness and love." 
 
 The first confession only created mutual surprise, 
 and Luther was still left in his sadness. This we 
 learn from an occurrence that seems to have taken 
 place soon after. At table, Staupitz, seeing Luther 
 still downcast and clouded with gloom, said to 
 him, "Why are you in such heaviness, brother 
 Martin?" "Alas!" replied Luther, "what then 
 am I to do ?" Staupitz rejoined, " I have never 
 had knowledge nor experience of such temptations ; 
 but so far forth as I can perceive, they are more 
 needful for you than your food and drink. You 
 know not how salutary and necessary they are for 
 you. God bringeth them not upon you without 
 a purpose. Without them, nothing good would come 
 of you. You will yet see that God hath great things
 
 JE. 21-25.] STUDIES THEOLOGY. 97 
 
 to accomplish through you." Numerous passages 
 in Luther's later writings were evidently suggested 
 by his own experience as here described. One will 
 here suffice as a specimen. " When the heart of 
 man is in great anguish, either the Spirit of God 
 must needs give him gracious assurance, or there 
 must be a godly friend to comfort him and take froiy. 
 him his doubts by the word of God." But as we 
 afterward find Luther in his former state of mind, 
 and devoting himself with more zeal than ever to 
 the study of the scholastic writers, we must conclude 
 that no great and permanent change was effected in 
 his religious views during Staupitz's first visit. 
 
 SECTION IV. Luther studies the Scholastic Theology. 
 
 THE effect of Staupitz's influence was delayed by 
 the fact that, according to the usages of the order, 
 which he could not think of setting aside, the monk 
 who had finished his biblical studies, as they were 
 improperly called, was to direct his chief attention 
 next to the scholastic theology. Staupitz was not 
 the man for energetic or violent reform ; and Usin- 
 gen, whose influence in the Erfurt convent was now 
 great and who was probably Luther's preceptor at 
 this time, was a zealous scholastic. Luther himself 
 says, "When I had taken the vow, they took the 
 Bible from me again and gave me the sophistical 
 books. But as often as I could, I would hide my- 
 self in the library, and give my mind to the Bible." 
 
 Luther, who never shrank from a task because it 
 was hard or disagreeable, but, on the contrary, with 
 a consciousness of his power, took pleasure in its 
 full exercise, now studied with iron diligence the 
 sentences of the Fathers, as collected into digests by
 
 98 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1505-1508. 
 
 the schoolmen. Biel and D'Ailly he is said to 
 have learned by heart. With the writings of 
 Occam, Aquinas and Scotus, he made himself very 
 familiar. 
 
 Here we find Luther in a new conflict his own 
 inclination and religious wants, together with the 
 influence of Staupitz, leading him to the Bible ; the 
 influence of the convent and his occupation with the 
 scholastic writers, on the other hand, strengthening 
 the false impressions under which he had grown up. 
 Both of these contending elements were having 
 their effect upon Luther, and he was to be prepared 
 for his great work by feeling the full power and 
 coming to a complete knowledge of each. 
 
 SECTION V. Luther's Preparation for the Priesthood. 
 
 THIS also constituted a part of Luther's occupa- 
 tion during his second year in the monastery. Biel, 
 the last of the scholastics, his favourite author, was 
 the writer most studied on this subject. In what 
 follows, it will be made to appear that such employT 
 ment, no less than the study of the scholastic writers 
 in general, was adapted to carry him further and 
 further from the Bible and the spiritualism of Stau- 
 pitz, and to involve him more deeply than ever in 
 the labyrinth of papal error. We find here a strik- 
 ing analogy to the mazes of error through which the 
 great Augustine passed, when, half in despair and 
 half in docile submission, he was conducted step by 
 step through the hollow and deceitful system of the 
 Manicheans. The church service with which the 
 priest was concerned, was a complicated system of 
 symbolical acts, at the same time exercising the in- 
 genuity and furnishing ample materials for exciting
 
 JE. 21-25.] THE PRIESTHOOD. 
 
 the imagination of the students. The central point 
 in the system was the service of mass. To this the 
 selected passages of Scripture, their arrangement, 
 the prayers and the hymns all referred. The anti- 
 phonies and the priestly ornaments both relate to 
 the sacrificial offering in the mass. The rites them- 
 selves were sacred mysteries, and the officiating 
 priest a sacred person. Luther never lost the im- 
 pression which these imposing and solemn, though 
 false, forms of worship made upon him. Christ was 
 considered as daily repeating the offering up of him- 
 self. 
 
 Biel had written an extended work on the mass- 
 service, which was adopted as a text-book in the 
 monasteries. He there teaches, that men must 
 repair to the saints, through whose intercessions we 
 are to be saved; that the Father has given over 
 pne-half of his kingdom to the Virgin, the queen of 
 heaven; that of the two attributes of justice and 
 mercy, he has surrendered the latter to her, while 
 he retains the former. The priest is intercessor be- 
 tween God and man. He offers the sacrifice of 
 Christ in the supper, and can extend its efficacy to 
 others. This neither the Virgin Mary nor the 
 angels can do. 
 
 In another part of the work, Biel has several nice 
 disquisitions on such questions as, whether the bread 
 must always be made of wheat; how much ought 
 to be consecrated at a time; what would be the 
 effect of a grammatical blunder on the part of the 
 priest in repeating the words. Thus Luther was 
 trained by daily study to a system of practical reli- 
 gion which subsequently, when he was more enlight- 
 ened, became abhorrent to all the feelings of his 
 heart. " Let any one," he says, " read Biel on the
 
 100 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1505-1508. 
 
 Canonical Constitutions concerning the mass, which 
 is nevertheless the best book of the Papists on that 
 matter, and see what execrable things are therein 
 contained. That was once my book." Again; 
 " Gabriel Biel wrote a book on the Canonical Con- 
 stitutions which was looked upon as the best in 
 these times; . . . when I read it, my heart did 
 bleed," that is, was in anguish from the scruples 
 which it caused in respect to the duties of the priest- 
 hood. 
 
 The rules laid down were carried to an aston- 
 ishing minuteness of detail, and the least deviation 
 from them was represented as highly sinful. Lu- 
 ther was so conscious of his sinfulness that he often 
 despaired of ever being able to officiate worthily 
 as a priest. We, in this age, cannot appreciate his 
 feelings in this respect, unless we place ourselves, in 
 imagination, precisely in his circumstances, and learn 
 with him to feel a creeping horror at the ghostly 
 superstitions of the times. His own language will 
 best transport us to the gloomy cell and its spiritual 
 terrors, and to the chapel with its over-awing mys- 
 teries. "Those priests," he remarks, "who were 
 right earnest in religion, were so terrified in pro- 
 nouncing the words of Christ, delivered at the insti- 
 tution of the supper, that they trembled and quaked 
 when they came to the clause, l This is my body ;' 
 for they must repeat every word without the least 
 error. He who stammered, or omitted a word, was 
 guilty of a great sin. He was, moreover, to pro- 
 nounce the words without any wandering thoughts." 
 Again he says, " It was declared a mortal sin to 
 leave out the word enim, (for,) or aeterni, (eternal.) 
 If one had forgotten whether he had pronounced a 
 certain word or not, he could not make the matter
 
 JE. 21-25.] THE PRIESTHOOD. 101 
 
 sure by repetition. . . . Here was distress and an- 
 guish. . . . How sorely were we vexed with the 
 mass, especially with the signs of the cross I" About 
 fifty of these and some hundreds of other prescribed 
 motions of the body were to be punctiliously ob- 
 served in the mass-service. Special rules were given 
 as to what was to be done if a little of the wine were 
 spilled. Nothing can give us a better impression of 
 the awe which the idea of Christ's real presence in- 
 spired than an incident which occurred but four 
 years before Luther's death. In the year 1542, 
 during the celebration of the Eucharist, some drops 
 of the wine were accidentally spilled. Luther, Bu- 
 genhagen and the officiating minister sprang in- 
 stantly and licked it up with their tongues ! If such 
 were the feelings with which the reformer noticed 
 any little irregularity in this service in his old age, 
 what must they have been when he was timidly 
 preparing himself to become a Catholic priest ? 
 
 In the mass itself, every thing is Jewish and legal. 
 Christ's original sacrifice is regarded as atoning only 
 for' original sin ; all other sins were to be atoned for 
 in the mass. Through the intercession of the saints, 
 the sacrament effects an ablution from all actuaLsin, 
 a defence against all dangers, against all the evils 
 incident to the body or the mind, against the assaults 
 of Satan, and a remission of the sins of the dead as 
 well as of the living. How strangely is Christ here 
 thrown into the back-ground, and saints and priests 
 raised to an impious eminence ! How is the cross 
 of Christ obscured, and an empty rite, a human in- 
 vention, covered with the halo of a divine glory !
 
 102 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1505-1508. 
 
 SECTION VI. Luther's Consecration as Priest in 1507. 
 
 THE day appointed for his ordination as priest, the 
 2d of May, 1507, at length arrived. Such a day 
 was of too solemn interest, as it was observed at that 
 time, to be allowed to pass without the presence of 
 Luther's father, who had continued during nearly the 
 whole period of two years to be alienated from the 
 son in consequence of his entering the monastery. 
 It is a mistake committed by several biographers of 
 Luther, to represent the reconciliation, and even the 
 visit of John Luther at the convent, as having taken 
 place in 1505, a short time after Luther entered his 
 novitiate. Martin was his father's favourite son. 
 He had been sent to the university and supported 
 there by the father's hard earnings, in order that he 
 might become a learned jurist and rise to distinction. 
 His brilliant career as a student, and then as a 
 teacher, and his entrance, under favourable circum- 
 stances, upon the study of the law, served only to 
 give poignancy to a father's grief, when he saw that 
 all his high hopes were to be disappointed. He was 
 so chagrined that he refused to see his son. On the 
 death of two other sons, who were carried off by the 
 plague, and on the intelligence that Martin had also 
 died of the same, his heart began to relent. His 
 friends took that opportunity to reason with him, and 
 to convince him that he ought to be willing to make 
 an offering to the Lord of whatever was dearest to 
 him, even though it were his favourite child. To 
 this reasoning he never assented, entertaining, as he 
 always did, unfavourable views of monastic life ; but 
 he became so far reconciled as to accept the invita- 
 tion to be present at the ordination. He came in
 
 M. 21-25.] CONSECRATION AS PRIEST. 103 
 
 the pomp required by the occasion, mounted on 
 horseback with attendants, twenty in all, and ho- 
 noured his son with a present of twenty guldens. It 
 was " with a sad, reluctant will," as Luther says, 
 that his father finally consented to his permanent 
 connection with a religious order. " Well, be it so," 
 1 was his language, " God grant that it may turn out 
 for good." When they were all seated at table, at 
 the time of the ordination, Luther, trusting to the 
 favourable impressions produced by the occasion, and 
 to the influence of the company around him, ven- 
 tured to touch upon the delicate subject with his 
 father, in the following language : " Dear father, 
 what was the reason of thy objecting to my desire to 
 become a monk? Why wast thou then so displeased; 
 and perhaps not reconciled yet ? It is such a peace- 
 ful and godly life to live." He went on to recount 
 the alarming events which he construed as indica- 
 tions of the divine will, and was warmly supported 
 in all he said by the monks at his side. The plain- 
 spoken and honest miner, notwithstanding the place 
 and the occasion, boldly and tersely replied, "Didst 
 thou never hear that a son must be obedient to his 
 parents ? And you learned men, Did you never read 
 in the Scriptures, ' Thou shalt honour thy father and 
 thy mother ?' . . . God grant that those signs may 
 not prove to be lying wonders of Satan." " Never," 
 said Luther afterward, " did words sink deeper into 
 a man's heart than did these of my father into 
 mine." 
 
 The sentiments of the age, in respect to the ordi- 
 nation of a priest, must be kept in view, if we would 
 understand Luther's history at this period. He him- 
 self informs us that "a consecrated priest was as 
 much above an ordinary Christian as the morning
 
 104 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1505-1508. 
 
 star was above a smoking taper." " It was a glo- 
 rious thing to be a new priest, and to hold the first 
 mass. Blessed the mother who had borne a priest. 
 Father and mother and friends were filled with joy." 
 " The first mass was thought much of, and brought 
 no little money, for the gifts and offerings came like 
 drops of rain. The canonical hours were then ob- 
 served with torch-lights. The young priest danced 
 with his mother, if she was still living, and the by- 
 standers, who looked on, wept for joy. If she was 
 dead, he delivered her from purgatory." 
 
 We learn from Luther, that the bishop at his or- 
 dination gave him the cup, and said to him, " Re- 
 ceive power to offer sacrifice for the living and the 
 dead," and Luther adds, " it is a wonder that the 
 ground did not open and swallow us both up." The 
 words which Luther was then to employ in the mass 
 service, which immediately followed, were, "Accept, 
 holy Father, this unblemished sacrifice, which I, 
 thine unworthy servant, offer unto thee, the true and 
 living God, for my innumerable sins, offences and 
 omissions, and for all who are here present, and for 
 all believers living, and also for the dead, that it may 
 be for our salvation." Luther was filled with trepi- 
 dation and fear, and faltered in the service, and 
 would have left the altar, which would have occa- 
 sioned his excommunication, if his preceptor, who 
 was standing by, had not stopped him. It was the 
 idea of " standing before God without a mediator," 
 as he had been taught to interpret the act, and other 
 superstitious fears with which Biel's book had filled 
 his head, it was this that made him pause in terror 
 when he came to the words, " the sacrifice which I 
 offer unto thee." "From that time forth," says 
 Luther, "I read mass with great fear."
 
 ,33.21-25.] CONSECRATION AS PRIEST. 105 
 
 Still he became a very zealous and fanatical priest, 
 as the following passages from his writings clearly 
 show. We now find him going from village to vil- 
 lage " begging cheese," and " saying mass" for the 
 peasants, and sometimes " with difficulty refraining 
 from laughter" at the blunders of the awkward 
 country organists, who, as he says, would introduce 
 the wrong piece in the midst of the service. How 
 false the principles were upon which he then acted 
 he himself afterward strongly testifies. "I was an 
 unblushing Pharisee. When I had read mass and 
 said my prayers, I put my trust and rested therein. 
 I did not behold the sinner that lay hidden under 
 that cloak, in my not trusting in the righteousness 
 of God, but in my own; in not giving God thanks 
 for the sacrament, but in thinking he must be thank- 
 ful and well pleased that I offered up his Son to him, 
 that is, reproached and blasphemed him. When we 
 were about to hold mass, we were wont to say, ' Now 
 I will go and be midwife to the Virgin.' Did we 
 not know that the worst of abuses can be practised 
 without remorse when false principles in religion 
 are adopted, we could scarcely believe that such re- 
 presentations as the following could be made in sober 
 earnest by Luther. " Some had mass in order to 
 become rich, and to be prosperous in their worldly 
 business. Some, because they thought if they heard 
 mass in the morning, then would they be secure 
 through all the day against every suffering and peril. 
 Some, by reason of sickness, and some for yet more 
 foolish and sinful causes ; and they could find abject 
 priests, who, for money, would let them have their 
 way. Furthermore, they have put a difference in 
 the mass, making one better for this, another better 
 for that occasion, by inventing the seven-gulden
 
 106 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1505-1508. 
 
 mass.* The mass of the holy cross has a different 
 virtue from the mass of the virgin. And everybody 
 keeps still and lets the people go on, for the sake of 
 the accursed lucre, flowing abundantly through the 
 mass which has so many names and virtues." " Here, 
 you yourselves know, my dear sirs," says Luther to 
 his opponents in 1520, u what a scandalous traffick- 
 ing and marketing you have made with your sacra- 
 ment. This hath been the regular and every-day 
 business of you all, buving and selling throughout 
 all the world so many thousands of masses for mo- 
 ney, some for a groschen, (three cents,) some for 
 eight pfennigs, (two cents,) and some for six. There 
 is no excusing nor denying it." " I also, when I 
 was a monk, was wont daily to confess, to fast, to 
 read, to pray, and to offer sacrifice, to the end that, 
 from the vigils, mass and other works, I could im- 
 part and sell something (merit) to the laity. The 
 monks bartered their merits away for corn and wine, 
 as well as for money, and gave formal receipts, as is 
 shown by many copies still extant, which ran thus : 
 ' In consideration of one bushel of wheat, we by this 
 writing and contract make over to you the benefit of 
 our fastings, watchings, mortifications, mass-services 
 and such like.' I, an arrant Papist, and much fiercer 
 mass-monger than all the rest, could not distinguish 
 between the mass and the sacrament any more than 
 the common people. To me the mass and the sacra- 
 ment upon the altar were one and the same thing, 
 as they were to all of us at that time. ... I have 
 lain sick in the infirmary, and viewed Christ in no 
 other light than that of a severe judge, whom I must 
 appease with my monastic works. . . . Therefore, 
 
 * A Saxon gulden, in the 16th century, was about sixty- 
 two and a half cents.
 
 JE. 21-25.] CONSECRATION AS PRIEST. 107 
 
 my way and custom was, when I had finished my 
 prayers or mass, always to conclude with such words 
 as these : ' My dear Jesus, I come unto thee and 
 entreat thee to be pleased with whatsoever I do and 
 suffer in my order, and to accept it as a composition 
 for my sins ? Twenty years ago, if any one desired 
 mass, he should have come and purchased it of me ; 
 I cleaved to it with all my heart and worshipped it. 
 ... I held mass every day, and knew not but that 
 I was going straight to heaven. ... I chose for my- 
 self twenty-one saints, read mass every day, calling 
 on three of them each day, so as to complete the 
 circuit every week. Especially did I invoke the 
 holy Virgin, as her womanly heart was more easily 
 touched, that she might appease her Son." Again, 
 he says, " I verily thought that by invoking three 
 saints daily, and by letting my body waste away with 
 fasting and watchings, I should satisfy the law, and 
 shield my conscience against the goad of the driver. 
 But it all availed me nothing. The further I went 
 on in this way, the more was I terrified, so that I 
 should have given over in despair, had not Christ 
 graciously regarded me, and enlightened me with the 
 light of his gospel." 
 
 Need we any further proof that a long period in- 
 tervened between his first conversations with Staupitz 
 and the time that the true light of the gospel broke 
 in upon his soul ? Here he represent* himself as in 
 the grossest darkness and in the most wretched con- 
 dition, long after he had entered upon the duties 
 of the priesthood ; and yet he was not ordained till 
 May 2, 1507. So much is certain ; Staupitz was only 
 occasionally at Erfurt, probably not more than twice 
 or three times during Luther's residence in the clois- 
 ter there. His first visit brought him in contact with
 
 108 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1505-1508. 
 
 Luther, but had not the effect to extricate the latter 
 from the scholastic errors in which he was completely 
 entangled. It was at a later period, and probably after 
 the second visit of Staupitz at Erfurt, that Luther 
 wrote to him frequently on the subject of his 
 wretchedness. "When I was a monk," said Luther 
 once to his friends, " I wrote oft-times to Dr. Staupitz ; 
 and once I wrote to him, exclaiming, 'Oh, my sins, 
 my sins !' Then Staupitz gave me this reply : ' You 
 would be without sin, and yet you have no proper 
 sins. Christ forgives true sins, such as parricide, blas- 
 phemy, contempt of God, adultery, and such like. 
 These are sins indeed. You must have a register, 
 in which stand veritable sins, if Christ is to help 
 you.' " This paradoxical language is explained in 
 a letter of Luther to Spalatin, written in 1544. 
 "Staupitz once comforted me in my sorrow, on this 
 wise : You would be a painted sinner and have a 
 painted Christ as a Saviour. You must make up 
 your mind that Christ is a very Saviour, and you a 
 very sinner." The importance of these words to 
 Luther, and their influence upon the character of 
 Luther's subsequent religious views, as seen in all 
 his writings, it will not be easy for the casual reader 
 to apprehend. Luther was in serious error, and had 
 great and incessant anguish on two points. He 
 looked upon unintentional negligence or forgetful- 
 ness of the arbitrary rules of his order, which were 
 as countless as they were foolish, as being a heinous 
 sin against God ; and then he supposed great sin- 
 fulness was a bar to forgiveness. On the former 
 point, Staupitz used a little raillery; and on the latter, 
 he furnished Luther the cardinal doctrine of the Re- 
 formation, that forgiveness did not depend at all 
 upon the number -or magnitude of one's sins, but
 
 JE. 21-25.] CONSECRATION AS PRIEST. 109 
 
 simply and solely on penitence for them. This is 
 what Luther means, where, hundreds of times in 
 his sermons and other writings, he says that the 
 Papists did not preach the gospel, which is the for- 
 giveness of sins; but the law, which is only the 
 knowledge of sin, without a Saviour. We might fill 
 the remainder of this chapter with passages from 
 his works, which do nothing but re-echo the senti- 
 ment which he learned first from the lips of his 
 spiritual counsellor, and then by an uncommonly 
 deep and protracted experience. We must, there- 
 fore, not fail to notice, that in these very suggestions 
 of Staupitz lie the true seeds of the Reformation. 
 In proof of the above assertion, we will adduce but 
 one passage. We will take it from the same letter 
 to Spalatin just mentioned. "You have thus far 
 been but a slender sinner ; you reproach yourself 
 with very trifling sins. Come and join yourself to 
 us, real, great and daring sinners, that you may not 
 make Christ of no account to us, who is a deliverer 
 not from pretending and trifling sins, but from true r 
 great, nay the greatest of sins. Let me put you in 
 mind of my own case, when I was tempted and tried 
 like as you now are, albeit I am now strong in Christ. 
 Believe the Scripture, that Christ is come to destroy 
 the works of the devil, of which this despondency is 
 one." This joyful and confident view of the infinite 
 fulness of a Saviour's love, instead of that terrifying 
 conception of him as a merciless judge and execu- 
 tioner, which he had hitherto entertained, constitutes 
 the radical difference between the Catholic and the 
 Protestant religion as a matter of experience. In 
 the one, good works are sought as a recommendation 
 to Christ, and these, though imperfect, are graciously 
 accepted and rewarded, so that faith itself is nothing 
 10
 
 110 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1505-1508. 
 
 but a work of righteousness, beginning in the intel- 
 lect and the outward act, and gradually becoming 
 spiritual ; in the other, Christ meets the sinner as a 
 sinner, and takes the load himself, shows his adap- 
 tedness to just such cases ; gives, of his own accord, 
 a penitent and believing heart, and forgives gratu- 
 itously, and unites the soul to himself by faith, which 
 is justifying only by virtue of this union. 
 
 It was a long time before Luther's mind was clear 
 on this subject. The theory of the scholastic divines 
 and the practice of the church had grown up with 
 him. The new tendency, which began to make its 
 appearance, was suppressed and hemmed in on every 
 side. No expression in the Bible was more terrific 
 to him than that of " the righteousness of God." 
 The Fathers had explained it as that attribute of jus- 
 tice by which God executes judgment. " This in- 
 terpretation," says Luther, " caused me distress and 
 terror when I was a young theologian. For when 
 I heard God called righteous, I ran back in my 
 thoughts to that interpretation which had become 
 fixed and rooted in me by long habit. ... So pow- 
 erful and pestilent a thing is false and corrupt doc- 
 trine, when the heart has been polluted with it from 
 youth up." Staupitz and an aged confessor, whose 
 name is not given, taught him that " the righteous- 
 ness of God," in Paul's epistles, had a very differ- 
 ent meaning, namely, that righteousness which be- 
 comes the sinner's the moment he believes in Christ. 
 Referring to this new explanation, he said : " Then 
 I came to understand the matter, and learned to dis- 
 tinguish between the righteousness of the law and 
 the righteousness of the gospel." "When I began," 
 says he again, " to meditate more diligently upon 
 the words ' righteous,' and ' righteousness of God,'
 
 JE. 21-25.] CONSECRATION AS PRIEST. Ill 
 
 which once made me fear when I heard them : and 
 when I considered the passage in the second chapter 
 of Habakkuk, ( The just shall live by faith/ and 
 began to learn that the righteousness which is ac- 
 ceptable to God is revealed without the deeds of the 
 law, from that very time how my feelings were 
 changed ! and I said to myself, If we are made 
 righteous by faith ; if the righteousness which availv 
 eth before God is saving to all who believe therein, 
 then such declarations ought not to alarm the poor 
 sinner and his timid conscience, but rather be to 
 them a consolation." In another place he says, " I 
 had the greatest longing to understand rightly the 
 Epistle of Paul to the Romans, but was always 
 stopped by the word 'righteousness/ in the 1st 
 chapter and 19th verse, where Paul says, ' the right- 
 eousness of God is revealed in the gospel.' I felt 
 very angry at the term, ' the righteousness of God ; ' 
 for, after the manner of all the teachers, I was taught 
 to understand it, in a philosophic sense, of that right- 
 eousness by which God is just and punisheth the 
 guilty. Though I had lived without reproach, I 
 felt myself a great sinner before God, and was of a 
 very quick conscience, and had not confidence in a 
 reconciliation with God, to be produced by any work 
 of satisfaction or merit of my own. For this cause 
 I had in me no love of a righteous and angry God, 
 but secretly hated him, and thought within myself, 
 Is it not enough that God hath condemned us to 
 everlasting death by Adam's sin, and that we must 
 suffer so much trouble and misery in this life ? Over 
 and above the terror and threatening of the law, must 
 he needs increase, by the gospel, our misery and 
 anguish j and, by the preachirig of the same, thunder 
 against us his justice and fierce wrath ? My con-
 
 112 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1505-1508. 
 
 fused conscience oft-times did cast me into fits of 
 anger, and I sought, day and night, to make out the 
 meaning of Paul ; and, at last, I came to apprehend 
 it thus : Through the gospel is revealed the righteous- 
 ness which availeth with God, a righteousness by 
 which God, in his mercy and compassion, justifieth 
 us, as it is written, 'The just shall live by faith.' 
 Straightway I felt as if I were born anew ; it was 
 as if I had found the door of Paradise thrown wide 
 open. Now I saw the Scriptures in altogether a new 
 light, ran through their whole contents, as far as 
 my memory would serve, and compared them, and 
 found that the righteousness was the more surely 
 that by which he makes us righteous, because every- 
 thing agreed thereunto so well. . . . The expression, 
 ' the righteousness of God," which I so much hated 
 before, became now dear and precious, my darling 
 and most comforting word ; and that passage of Paul 
 was, to me, the true door of Paradise." 
 
 This long passage is one of the most interesting 
 to be found in all Luther's writings. Though we 
 are rarely able to state positively the moment of 
 one's conversion, we may confidently affirm that this 
 paragraph refers us distinctly to the time when the 
 scales fell from Luther's eyes, and when he broke 
 through that complicated and strong net-work of 
 papal error which had hitherto held him captive. 
 From this time Luther is a new man. He had a 
 footing of his own, and felt the strength of his foun- 
 dation. Although he had almost every thing to 
 learn in respect to this new land of promise, he 
 knew that he was in it. 
 
 Again, we learn to a certainty here, that Luther's 
 own mind laboured long and hard upon this point. 
 Nothing can be more erroneous than the impression
 
 j. 21-25.] CONSECRATION AS PRIEST. 113 
 
 received by many from the meagre accounts com- 
 monly given of this struggle, that a few short and 
 simple words of Staupitz speedily set him right. The 
 process was very protracted and complicated, and 
 the fierce contention between two opposite elements 
 was carried on long and extended through a\\ the 
 domain of monasticism, its habits and usages, its 
 Scripture interpretations, its dialectics, and the whole 
 mass of its cumbrous theology. A gigantic effort 
 of intellect was requisite in order that Luther should 
 feel his way out, in opposition to all the scholastic 
 and monastic influences, not only without the aid of 
 the original Scriptures, but with a version (the 
 Vulgate) in which the key word to this doctrine of 
 justification was rendered ojjuatitia, justice, which, 
 with its false glosses, greatly increased the difficulty. 
 But we should err, if we were to dilute this great 
 change down to a mere intellectual process. Luther 
 himself viewed it very differently, and always repre- 
 sented it as a spiritual transformation, effected by the 
 grace of God. He remarks on this subject, "Stau- 
 pitz assisted me, or rather God through him. ... I 
 lay wretchedly entangled in the papal net. . . I 
 must have perished in the den of murderers, if God 
 had not delivered me. . . . His grace transformed 
 me, and kept me from going with the enemies of the 
 gospel, and from joining them now in shedding in- 
 nocent blood." Who can doubt that he spoke from 
 his own experience, when he said, "As soon as you 
 receive the knowledge of Christ with sure faith, all 
 anger, fear and trembling vanish in the twinkling 
 of an eye, and nothing but pure compassion is seen 
 in God! Such knowledge quickeneth the heart and 
 maketh it joyful, and assured that God is not angry 
 with us, but tenderly loveth us." 
 10*
 
 114 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1505-1508. 
 
 The remainder of the time that Luther spent in 
 Erfurt, was employed in the study of the Christian 
 Fathers, and especially the writings of Augustine, 
 in connection with the Scriptures and the doctrine 
 of justification. That it is a mistake to place the 
 study of Augustine and others of the church Fathers, 
 except the casual reading of them, at an earlier period, 
 is evident from the account given by Melancthon, 
 who says it took place after he had ascertained the 
 doctrine of justification by faith. With the works 
 of Augustine he became very familiar, and after- 
 ward he edited one of his treatises. In the preface, 
 he remarks, " I can safely affirm, from my own ex- 
 perience, that next to the Holy Scriptures there is 
 no writer of the church who can be compared with 
 Augustine in Christian learning." Another favour- 
 ite author with Luther at this time was Gerson, with 
 whose moral writings he was particularly pleased, 
 " because he alone, of all the writers of the church, 
 treated of spiritual trials and temptations."
 
 . 25.] REMOVAL TO WITTENBERG. 115 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 LUTHER AS PROFESSOR IN WITTENBERG, TILL THE BEGIN- 
 NING OF THE REFORMATION IN 1517. 
 
 SECTION I. Luther's Removal to Wittenberg. 
 
 E now come to 
 the close of 
 an important 
 period of Lu- 
 ther's life. 
 During a resi- 
 dence of a lit- 
 tle more than 
 seven years in 
 Erfurt, from 
 July 17, 1501, 
 to the autumn 
 of 1508, in 
 which he had 
 passed from 
 youth to the state of manhood, both his intellec- 
 tual and religious character underwent a great 
 transformation. Four years of time, devoted with 
 signal success to secular learning in the university; 
 and nearly three and a half to experimental religion 
 and to theology in the monastery, changed the boy, 
 who knew nothing of learning beyond the catechism 
 and Latin grammar, and nothing of religion beyond 
 a gloomy apprehension of it, and a crude mass of 
 superstitions, into a mature scholar and theologian, 
 to whom the young university of Wittenberg looked
 
 116 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1508. 
 
 as to one likely to increase its usefulness and its 
 fame. The appointment was very peculiar. Such 
 was his modesty and his reluctance to appearing 
 abroad in any public capacity, that Staupitz, as 
 provincial of the order, peremptorily required him 
 to repair to the monastery at Wittenberg, and to 
 lecture there on philosophy. The conscientious 
 monk, who had learned nothing more perfectly than 
 he had the duty of obedience, and who, no doubt, 
 would have resisted any entreaty and declined any 
 appointment, hastened to comply with the order, not 
 waiting even to take leave of his friends, and hardly 
 providing hiiuself with a change of apparel. Inas- 
 much as this event opens a new period in his life, in 
 which an extraordinary development of character was 
 wrought, and a transition made from the passive 
 submission of the monk to the activity and control 
 of one born to rule, it becomes necessary, at this 
 point, to pause and take a survey of the new thea- 
 tre of action upon which he was now entering, and 
 of the widely different relations which he was hence- 
 forth to sustain. 
 
 WITTENBERG. 
 
 Probably Luther never saw this place till he went to 
 take his station there for life. And what a station was 
 that ! and how did he fill it ! Passing beyond Wei- 
 mar, Naumburg and Leipsic, and directing his course 
 toward Diiben, which is about midway between Leip- 
 sic and Wittenberg, he would see spread out before 
 him a rich arable tract of country, dotted with count- 
 less small villages. Only Eilenburg on the right, 
 and Delitsch on the left, several miles distant, rise to 
 the dignity of towns. Near Diiben, pleasant wood- 
 lands and fine meadows begin to appear, and extend
 
 JE. 25.] WITTENBERG. 117 
 
 far in both directions along the banks of the Mulde. 
 A mile beyond that town, Luther, of course, entered 
 the Diiben Heath, a desolate, sandy region, seven 
 or eight miles in extent, covered with stunted trees, 
 where an equally stunted race of wood-cutters, col- 
 liers and manufacturers of wooden-ware, led a boor- 
 ish life. Near the entrance of the heath is a rock, 
 called Dr. Luther's Rock, with the letters D. M. L. 
 inscribed upon it, because he is said to have made a 
 pause here once when on a journey, and to have taken 
 a repast upon it. To the right of the heath, near the 
 Elbe, is Schmiedeberg, whither the university was 
 sometimes temporarily removed in seasons of peril. 
 Beyond the river is the castle of Lichtenburg, where 
 Luther held an anxious interview with Spalatin, in 
 1518, to determine whether he should retire from 
 Wittenberg or not. North of this are Annaburg, 
 the occasional residence of the electors, and the Clois- 
 ter Lochau, so often mentioned by Luther. Directly 
 on his route, lay Kemberg, which was also connected 
 variously with the university. The last place he 
 passed through was Prata, whose distance from Wit- 
 tenberg, he once said, would give an idea of the width 
 of the Po. To the left lay Sagrena, Carlstadt's 
 resort, when he retired from the university, and 
 lived as a peasant. Beyond this were seen the 
 Elbe and the white sand hills, which gave to Wit- 
 tenberg its name. The town itself, containing then 
 three hundred and fifty-six houses, and about two 
 thousand inhabitants, lay before him on the north 
 side of the Elbe, and two hundred rods distant from 
 it, in a long oval form, with the electoral church 
 and palace at the western extremity, the city church 
 in the centre, and the Augusteum or university to- 
 ward the Elster gate, at the eastern extremity.
 
 118 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1508. 
 
 Though Wittenberg was the capital of the old elec- 
 torate, its appearance was far from being splendid. 
 On the north side are seen plains broken by sand- 
 hills and copses of wood ; on the south, a low flat 
 heath, behind which flowed the broad Elbe, fringed 
 here and there with willow and oak shrubs. Many 
 wretched hamlets were seen in the distance, and the 
 city itself, if we except the public buildings, was but 
 little more than a cluster of mean dwellings. The 
 people were warlike, but so sensual that it was 
 thought necessary to limit their convivialities by 
 law. At betrothals, for example, nothing was al- 
 lowed to be given to the guests, except cakes, bread, 
 cheese, fruit and beer. The last article so abounded 
 at Wittenberg, that it was said, " The cuckoo could 
 be heard there in winter evenings;" speaking, of 
 course, through the throats of the bottles. There 
 were one hundred and seventy-two breweries in the 
 city in 1513. Among the expenditures of the city, 
 recorded in the treasurer's books, for the ten years 
 preceding Luther's arrival, are moneys paid for fire- 
 arms ; for race-grounds, where oxen were the prize 
 won in the race ; for paintings and masks used in 
 plays ; for garments, masks, rings, scaffolding, linen, 
 dresses for Satan and his companions ; for Judas and 
 the two thieves, all to be used in the amusements of 
 Passion-week. Luther rarely speaks in praise of the 
 inhabitants in and about Wittenberg. At one time, 
 he says, "The Saxons are neither agreeable nor 
 civil;" at another time, " The Wittenbergers trouble 
 themselves neither about honour, courtesy, nor reli- 
 gion ; they do not send their sons to school, though 
 so many come here from abroad." There seems to 
 have been an almost entire destitution of lower 
 schools here, at that time, and there was no Latin
 
 JE. 25.] WITTENBERG. 119 
 
 school till 1519. The first press at Wittenberg, for 
 printing learned works, that is, in the Latin lan- 
 guage with the Roman type, was established in the 
 Augustinian cloister, the year after Luther became 
 an inmate there; and a German press had existed 
 there only five years before his arrival. 
 
 What has just been said will find a sufficient ex- 
 planation in the fact that Wittenberg was situated 
 on the north-eastern verge of German civilization, 
 being a border-town, between the Wends on the east 
 and the Saxons on the west, and being as yet but 
 feebly influenced by the refinements of learning, 
 which came from the south and the west, from Italy 
 and France. Cologne, Heidelberg and Erfurt were 
 the principal seats of learning, until Wittenberg, ten 
 years from this time, came to eclipse them all, and 
 to fix the source and centre of illumination far to 
 the north. 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY. 
 
 WITTENBERG UNIVERSITY had been in existence 
 six years when Luther was appointed professor. 
 Until 1507, it was supported chiefly from the funds 
 of the Elector Frederic, who now incorporated with 
 it the collegiate church, with all its sources of in- 
 come, and the provostships of Kemberg and Clbden, 
 the parish of Orlamiinde, &c., the canons of the for- 
 mer becoming lecturers without cost or trouble, and 
 the incumbents of the latter providing vicars in their 
 churches, and removing to the university, where they 
 lived upon their incomes. The university was or- 
 ganized after the model of Tubingen, and bore re- 
 semblance to the university of Erfurt. All these 
 were less under ecclesiastical control than the univer- 
 sities of Louvain, Cologne, Ingoldstadt and Leipsic.
 
 120 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1508. 
 
 The rector, who must be unmarried, and maintain 
 his dignity by studied seclusion, and appear in pub- 
 lic only in great pomp, assisted by three reformers, 
 whose duty it was to superintend the instruction, 
 and the deans of the four faculties, constituted the 
 Academic Senate. The university, contrary to the 
 usual custom, was under the protection of the elector, 
 and not of the pope, or a cardinal, or an archbishop, 
 a circumstance which greatly favoured the Reforma- 
 tion. None, therefore, but the elector could control 
 the university from without, and none but the rector 
 and his assistants, the reformers, could do it from 
 within. These, however, had enough to do. In the 
 very year that Luther came there, the students had 
 so insulted some of the court of the Bishop of Bran- 
 denburg, that he put the whole city under the inter- 
 dict, which was removed only on the payment of two 
 thousand gulden. The year before, when Scheurl, 
 a very energetic man, was rector, he checked the pre- 
 vailing vice of intoxication among the students, and 
 prohibited the practice of going armed with gun, 
 sword and knife. Still, in 1512, another rector was 
 assassinated by an expelled student; and Melanc- 
 thon once barely escaped with his life. 
 
 Paul and Augustine were the patron saints of the 
 theological faculty, a clear intimation on the part of 
 Staupitz, the organizer and first dean of this faculty, 
 that the theological system which he had always 
 taught was to be favoured here. Thus a place was 
 from the beginning prepared for Luther, who had 
 studied Paul most of all the sacred writers, and 
 Augustine most of all the ecclesiastical. The whole 
 university was to observe the festivals of the saints 
 of each faculty. The faculties were the theological, 
 in which there were four professors : the law, in
 
 JE. 25.] WITTENBERG. 
 
 121 
 
 which there were five : the medical, in which there 
 were three : and the philosophical, including science 
 and literature, in which there were ten. In the the- 
 ological faculty were Staupitz, Pollich, (one of the 
 founders of the university,) Truttvetter, Luther's 
 teacher in Erfurt, and Henning. Amsdorf and Carl- 
 stadt were teachers of the scholastic philosophy. 
 There was as yet no teacher in Greek, Hebrew, or 
 mathematics. The number of students who entered 
 that year (1508) was one hundred and seventy-nine, 
 and the whole number in the university could not 
 have been more than four or five hundred, though it 
 amounted in a few years to two thousand. As Lu- 
 ther passed rapidly through all the degrees conferred 
 in tneology, it becomes necessary to explain their 
 nature. The first was that of biblicw, though the 
 candidate ordinarily knew little of the Bible beyond 
 a few papal glosses on favourite proof-texts : the 
 second was that of sententiarius, who could lecture 
 on the first two books of the Sentences of Peter 
 Lombardus : the third was that of formatus, who 
 could lecture on the last two books of the same 
 author : the fourth was that of licentiatus, one 
 licensed to teach theology in general : the fifth was 
 that of doctor of divinity. 
 
 THE CHUECHES AND ECCLESIASTICAL EELATIONS OF WIT- 
 TENBERG. 
 
 WITTENBERG belonged to the diocese of Branden- 
 burg, of which Scultet was bishop, subject to the 
 Archbishop of Magdeburg, who at that time and till 
 1513 was Ernest, brother of the Elector Frederic. 
 He was succeeded by Albert, of the Brandenburg 
 family, who retained the see of Magdeburg after he 
 became Archbishop of Mainz, and, of course, primate 
 11
 
 122 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1508. 
 
 of Germany. These, next after Staupitz, were Lu- 
 ther's ecclesiastical superiors. 
 
 The Electoral Church (called also the Church of 
 Ursula and her eleven thousand virgins, or All 
 Saints') gave, on account of its innumerable relics 
 and unprecedented indulgences, a very superstitious 
 air to the religious character of Wittenberg. In 
 1353, the elector, who had been rewarded for his 
 faithful services to the King of France by a thorn 
 from the crown worn by Christ, erected a chapel for 
 the relic, and appointed seven chaplains. This grew 
 by degrees into an important collegiate church, being 
 exempted from the bishop's jurisdiction, and exer- 
 cising the right of patronage over the other churches 
 of the city. When vacancies occurred in the chap^ 
 ter, the canons, the number of whom were increased 
 to eighty, were presented by the elector. All 
 who worshipped here had forty days' indulgence. 
 Every week occurred the anniversary of some saint, 
 which was announced every Sunday, together with 
 the relics to be shown. The electoral church, 
 which occupied the place of that old chapel, was 
 erected by the Elector Frederic, and finished nine 
 years previous to Luther's removal to this place. 
 Relics were now, at great expense, collected from 
 every quarter, the pope and foreign ecclesiastics aid- 
 ing those who were engaged in the work. They 
 were divided into eight classes, and shown in as 
 many courses to superstitious worshippers. The 
 number of the relics amounted to five thousand 
 and five, which were enclosed in cases of wood, stone, 
 glass, silver and gold, embossed with pearls. Most 
 of them belonged to holy virgins, widows, confessors, 
 martyrs, apostles and prophets ; but the eighth 
 class, containing three hundred and thirty-one, re-
 
 2E. 25.] FREDERIC THE WISE. 
 
 latcd to Christ, such as garments, teeth, hair in 
 abundance, relics of the children slain by Herod, 
 milk from the holy Virgin, thread spun by her, 
 straw from the manger in Bethlehem, and fragments 
 from the cross, and from Mount Sinai. Every per- 
 son, to whom all these, and another collection of 
 seventeen hundred relics should be shown, was en- 
 titled to fourteen hundred and forty-three years of 
 indulgence ! equalled by no other place in Christen- 
 dom except Assisi, the native place of St. Franciscus. 
 In this single church, 9901 masses were said, and 
 85,570 pounds of wax consumed every year ! One 
 of the first books printed at Wittenburg after Luther 
 arrived there, was a " Description of the Venerable 
 Relics," with one hundred and nineteen wood-cuts. 
 This was the church where Luther sometimes preached, 
 where the higher degrees were conferred, and on 
 whose doors the ninety-five theses were posted up. 
 The city or parish church where most of Luther's 
 sermons were delivered, and of which Pontanus and 
 Bugenhagen were successive pastors, was in another 
 part of the town. 
 
 FREDERIC THE WISE BORN 1463 DIED 1525. 
 
 THE reigning Saxon family was divided into two 
 branches, the Albertine and the Ernestine. From 
 Albert, (whose ordinary residence was Dresden,) de- 
 scended Duke George, Luther's bitter enemy, and to 
 him succeeded first Henry and then Maurice. To 
 Ernest, who resided sometimes at Torgau and some- 
 times at Wittenberg, were born four distinguished 
 sons, the Elector Frederic the Wise, who in his 
 birth preceded Luther twenty years, and in his death 
 twenty-one ; Albert, who at the age of eighteen was 
 Archbishop of Mainz, in 1482, but died in the same
 
 124 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1508. 
 
 year ; Ernest, who, after being Administrator of 
 Magdeburg for several years, was archbishop from 
 1489 to 1513 ; and John the Constant, now asso- 
 ciated with Frederic in the government, and in 1525 
 his successor. 
 
 If we bear in mind that the Archbishops of 
 Magdeburg and Mainz had large territories under 
 their civil government, and actually had more of 
 the character of princes than of ecclesiastics, we shall 
 not fail to perceive the great extent of the Saxon 
 dominion at the time that the family occupied all 
 the places above-named. Hence the jealousy be- 
 tween that house and the house of Brandenburg, 
 when Albert, belonging to the latter, was at the same 
 time Archbishop both in Magdeburg and in Mainz. 
 This explains the circumstance that Tetzel, Albert's 
 agent in selling indulgences, was coolly received in 
 Saxony, but was favourably received in all the ter- 
 ritories of the Brandenburg family. 
 
 Frederic, like all his brothers, was well educated, 
 and could write and speak the Latin and French, be- 
 sides the German. In the absence of the Emperor 
 Maximilian, in 1507, he administered the affairs of 
 the empire in the character of vicar. He had done 
 the same before, and was called to do it once again at 
 the important crisis in respect to the Reformation, 
 during the interval between the death of Maximilian 
 and the election of Charles V., in 1519. He at- 
 tended thirty diets in all, in which he took frequently 
 the most important, and never a subordinate part. 
 He was, for those times, an admirable ruler in his own 
 territories; increasing steadily the power of the elec- 
 torate, and commanding universal respect at home 
 and abroad. 
 
 Though surnamed the Wise, he was rather virtuous
 
 2E. 25.] FREDERIC THE WISE. 125 
 
 and prudent than great. If he did not regard the 
 interests of Saxony too much, he regarded those of 
 Germany too little. He undoubtedly contributed his 
 share towards weakening and dividing the empire, by 
 uniting with other electors and princes in raising the 
 states to sovereignty and independence. His patriot- 
 ism was narrower than that of Ulrich von Hutten, 
 Francis von Sickingen, or even Philip of Hesse. 
 
 As he was a liberal patron of letters, those who 
 have written his history were so much indebted to 
 him that their praises are to be received with some 
 little caution. He was a great lover of peace ; and it is 
 said, that during his reign blood never flowed in his 
 dominions. His private virtue was not quite spot- 
 less. Luther complains that intoxication was too 
 much indulged in at his court; that taxes were some- 
 times oppressive; and that the administration of 
 justice and of other public affairs was often too long 
 delayed. But he was remarkably upright and firm. 
 When the imperial throne became vacant, he refused 
 all presents offered him as elector by the competitors; 
 declined the imperial crown when offered to him; 
 and though he favoured the election of Charles, he 
 was active in limiting his authority by a capitulation 
 to be previously signed. 
 
 His cautious and hesitating course towards Luther 
 and the Reformation was undoubtedly favourable; 
 inasmuch as it left the work to depend on spiritual 
 resources, and thereby kept it from assuming the 
 character of a political revolution. He was origi- 
 nally a superstitious but not bigoted papist. He 
 expended no less than two hundred thousand gulden 
 on his favourite collegiate church and its relics. He 
 made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, accompanied by the 
 painter Cranach and others. Of course there could. 
 11*
 
 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1508. 
 
 at first, be but little sympathy between him and 
 Luther. 
 
 SECTION II. Luther's early Labours in Wittenberg. 
 
 WE are now prepared to follow Luther in the new 
 scene of his labours. The precise time of his jour- 
 ney thither is not known, but as we find his name 
 entered as teacher in the winter semester, or half- 
 year term, of 1508-1509, we may infer that he was 
 probably on the ground by November, to commence 
 the term. Luther, who had so long resided in the 
 large and beautiful city of Erfurt, and, before that, 
 in Eisenach and Magdeburg, sensibly felt the change 
 when he came to a little, unattractive town, consist- 
 ing mostly of a cluster of low houses, with mud walls 
 and thatched roofs. " I wondered," said he, " that 
 a university should be placed here." As monk, he 
 found his new home in the Augustinian cloister, which 
 the elector was then rebuilding. How little did 
 Frederic, while preparing that apartment, which is 
 still preserved, or brother Martin, when taking up his 
 residence there, which he never afterwards changed, 
 think that in this obscure place should be forged 
 the weapons, and from it -the missiles be showered 
 forth which, in connection with other agencies, should 
 put to flight the ranks of the enemy, and change the 
 destinies of nearly all the north of Europe ! Parts 
 of the building it was necessary to take down during 
 Luther's lifetime, at which it was natural that he 
 should feel sad. " If I should live another year," 
 he remarked with emotion, " I must behold the re- 
 moval of my poor little room, from whence I have 
 stormed the pope, for which cause it deserves to stand 
 for ever."
 
 M. 25.] IN WITTENBERG. 127 
 
 He commenced his labours by lecturing on the 
 dialectics and physics of Aristotle, without salary or 
 tuition fees. It is remarkable that he never received 
 any thing from students for his labours, nor from 
 booksellers for his writings.* After he laid aside 
 the cowl, the elector gave him an allowance of two 
 hundred gulden a year. 
 
 From the change through which Luther's mind 
 had recently passed, and from the fresh interest he 
 now took in the study of the Bible and of theology, 
 we might infer that the Aristotelian philosophy 
 would have few attractions for him. It was indeed 
 with reluctance that he turned away from his favour- 
 ite studies, and laid out all his strength in preparing 
 for his philosophical lectures. So entirely was he 
 obliged to surrender himself to his new occupation 
 that he could not find time to write to his most inti- 
 mate friends. A letter which he wrote to his old 
 acquaintance, Braun, in Eisenach, a week after he 
 was transferred to the department of theology, un- 
 bossoms to us his feelings during the first few months 
 of his residence at Wittenberg. " That I came off," 
 he writes, March 17, 1509, "without saying a word 
 unto you, you must not marvel. For so sudden 
 was my departure that my closest friends there 
 hardly knew it. I would fain have written unto you, 
 but could not then for lack of time, and could only 
 but grieve that I was constrained to fly away in such 
 haste, without bidding you farewell. But now, at 
 God's command, or by his permission, I am here in 
 
 * The publishers of his works offered him four hundred 
 florins a year, if he would give them his manuscripts ; 
 but he refused " to make merchandise of the gifts with 
 which God had endowed him."
 
 128 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1509. 
 
 Wittenberg. Would you know my state and con- 
 dition, I would say it is, by God's favour, very good, 
 saving that I must force myself unto my studies, espe- 
 cially philosophy, before which I preferred theology 
 from the beginning. I mean that theology which 
 Beeketh for the inside of the nut, for the kernel of 
 the wheat beneath the husk, for the marrow within 
 the bone. But G-od is God, and man often, nay, 
 always, erreth in his judgment. This is our God, 
 and he shall guide us in his loving-kindness for ever." 
 The circumstance that within about four months 
 he became lecturer, or elementary teacher, in theo- 
 logy, renders it highly probable that Staupitz, and 
 perhaps himself, considered his first appointment as 
 merely preparatory to the second. At any rate, the 
 ninth of March was a joyful day to him. In the 
 university book, where his name is registered, we find 
 the amusing remark : " On the ninth of March, mas- 
 ter (i. e., A. M.) Martin was admitted to the Bible, 
 (i. e., made biblicus,} but being called away to Er- 
 furt hath not unto this time paid his fee." In the 
 margin is added, in Luther's own hand, " And neveij 
 will. I was then poor, and under the rule of monas- 
 tic obedience, and had nothing to give. Let Erfurt 
 
 pay." 
 
 The biblical bachelors knew nothing of the original 
 languages of the Bible, nor did they in any respect 
 resemble the modern professors of biblical literature. 
 They merely studied the interpretations, or select 
 passages of Scripture, given by the fathers, the popes 
 and the councils. The study was but a superficial 
 and hasty preparation for reading the books of sen- 
 tences. According to the laws of the Wittenberg 
 university, the biblical teacher must promise to teach 
 the Scriptures one year, or, if he was a monk ; half
 
 JE. 25.] IN WITTENBERG. 129 
 
 a-year. In the programme of lectures for the year 
 1507, the only one extant of that period, no lecturer 
 of this kind is mentioned, and but little account was 
 generally made of that office. Though Luther could 
 not now read the Scriptures in the original languages, 
 nor the Greek fathers except through Latin transla- 
 tions, his present views of theology, and his love of 
 the Bible led him to enter upon his official duties 
 with an unprecedented earnestness and zeal. To 
 this and the following period he refers in a work pub- 
 lished in 1539, in which, speaking of the assurance 
 and yet the ignorance of his opponents, he says, " I 
 have also read the Fathers, and that, too, before I 
 set myself in such stiff opposition to the pope. I 
 read them, too, with much more diligence than they 
 have done who now bring them arrogantly and vaunt- 
 ingly against me. For I know that not one of them 
 hath ever undertaken to lecture in the schools on a 
 single book of the Bible, and make use of the writ- 
 ings of the Fathers as helps, as I have done. Let 
 them take up a book of the Bible, and look for the 
 glosses to be found in the Fathers, and it then will 
 be with them as it was with me when I took up the 
 epistle to the Hebrews, with the aid of Chrysostom's 
 commentary ; Titus and Galatians, with the aid of 
 Jerome; Genesis, with the help of Ambrose and 
 Augustine; and the Psalms with all the helps that 
 could be found, and so of other books." 
 
 The impression, therefore, which his biblical lec- 
 tures at first made, must have depended more on his 
 having thrown his heart into it, and exhibited boldly 
 and clearly some long forgotten doctrinal truths 
 than upon his mastery of biblical studies.
 
 130 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1500. 
 
 HIS RELUCTANCE TO PKEACH. 
 
 THE monastic shyness and timidity which he had 
 before manifested adhered to him still. Being 
 called upon about this time, probably in the sum- 
 mer of 1509, by Staupitz to preach, he manifested 
 extreme reluctance. " It is no little matter," said 
 he, " to appear in place of God before the people, 
 and to preach to them." As they were one day sit- 
 ting in the cloister-garden, refreshing themselves in 
 the shade of a certain pear-tree, which was a place 
 of frequent resort, the case was long argued between 
 them, and Luther at length yielded. His own ac- 
 count of the interview is thus given in the Table- 
 Talk. " I had fifteen arguments with which I pur- 
 posed, under this pear-tree, to refuse my vocation ; 
 but they could nothing avail. At the last I said, 
 Dr. Staupitz, you will be the death of me, for I can- 
 not live under it three months. Very well, in God's 
 name, go on ! Our Lord God hath many great things 
 to do : he hath need of wise folks in heaven, too." 
 He was, at the time he made this remark, sitting 
 in the same place with his friend Antony Lauterbach, 
 who was telling how much difficulty, trial and weak- 
 ness, he experienced in preaching. " My dear sir," 
 said Luther, " it hath gone even so with me. I had 
 as great a dread and terror of the pulpit as you 
 have ; yet was I compelled to go right onward. I 
 was constrained to preach, and to make a beginning 
 in the refectory with the brethren. Oh, what a 
 horror I had of the pulpit !" The spot where Lu- 
 ther first preached, is thus described by Myconius. 
 " In the new Augustinian cloister at Wittenberg, the 
 foundations of a chapel had indeed been laid, but 
 the walls were raised no higher than to a level with
 
 M. 26.] RELUCTANCE TO PREACH. 131 
 
 the ground. Within them was yet standing a little 
 old wooden chapel, about thirty feet long and twenty 
 wide, the timbers thereof being laid in mortar, very 
 much leaning, and propped up on all sides. By the 
 wall on the south side was to be seen a pulpit of old 
 rough-hewn planks, raised about an ell and a half 
 from the floor. ... In this poor little chapel did 
 God cause his holy gospel, and his dear child Jesus 
 to be born anew. It was no minster or great cathe- 
 dral, though there were many thousands of them, 
 that God chose for this purpose. But soon this 
 chapel was too strait, and Luther was called to preach 
 in the parish church." 
 
 How Luther overcame his timidity in preaching, 
 he himself informs us. " When a preacher for the 
 first time goeth into the pulpit, no one would believe 
 how fearful he is, he seeth so many heads before him. 
 When I go up into the pulpit, I do not look upon 
 any one. I think them to be only so many blocks 
 before me, and I speak out the words of my God." 
 
 Creuziger once said to Melancthon, "I do not 
 like to see you at my lectures." " Nor do I," said 
 Luther, " at mine, or at my pulpit discourses ; but 
 I bring the cross right before me, think Melancthon, 
 Jonas, Pomeranus, &c., are not present, and count 
 no one to be wiser in the pulpit than myself."
 
 132 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1510. 
 
 SECTION III. Journey to Rome. 
 
 LUTHER'S visit to Home was of such consequence 
 to him, that it demands our special attention. He 
 travelled on foot with a brother, whose name is not 
 mentioned, and, according to general usage, passed 
 the nights in the various convents of his order that 
 lay in his route. Travelling as a pilgrim to the 
 holy apostolical see, with little intercourse, except 
 with sequestered monks, he would not be likely to 
 make all the observations upon the countries through 
 which he passed, and their inhabitants, which would 
 be expected of the curious traveller. 
 
 The first resting-place, of which any account is pre- 
 served on this journey, was at Heidelberg, whither he 
 was accompanied by Staupitz. The chronicle of that 
 city speaks of his visiting it "in 1510, when he was 
 sent by the convent of the Augustinians to Rome." 
 While there, he preached and engaged, as was usual, 
 with the learned monks, in public disputations. His 
 journey now took a south-easterly direction through 
 Suabia into Bavaria. Tradition mentions Munich 
 as one of the places at which he called as he pro- 
 ceeded on his way. The last point mentioned in 
 Germany is Ftissen, at the Tyrol pass, and the first 
 in Italy is Milan. He consequently took a south- 
 westerly direction in crossing the Alps, and passed 
 near to Lake Como. 
 
 Some of his remarks on the character of the 
 people, and of the countries, which fell under his 
 observation, are not a little amusing. We will 
 quote his own words. " Were I to travel much, 
 I would go nowhere of a readier will than into 
 Suabia and Bavaria ; for there the people are kind
 
 JE. 26.] IN ROME. 133 
 
 hearted and hospitable, and are forward to treat 
 strangers and pilgrims charitably, and give them full 
 their money's worth." "When, in 1510, I was 
 journeying to Rome through Milan, I perceived that 
 a different mass-service was used there, and was told 
 I conld not join in the celebration, because they 
 were Ambrosians." He speaks of Lombardy, as 
 " a goodly and pleasant country," as "a valley a hun- 
 dred miles wide, on both sides of the Po, (which is 
 as wide as from Wittenberg to Prata,) extending 
 from the Alps to the Apennines." He adds, " In 
 Lombardy, on the Po, is a very rich Benedictine 
 cloister, with a yearly income of thirty-six thousand 
 florins. Of eating and feasting, there is no lack, 
 for that twelve thousand florins are consumed upon 
 guests, and as large a sum upon building. The re- 
 sidue goeth to the convent and the brethren. I was 
 in that cloister, and was received and treated with 
 honour." The air of Italy was so pestilential that 
 it was necessary to exclude it entirely during the 
 night by closing the windows. " That," said he, 
 " did I and my brother experience. When we were 
 in Italy, (near Padua,) on our way to Rome, we 
 slept at one time till six in the morning, with our 
 windows open, and when we rfwoke, we found our 
 heads so stopped with catarrh, and so heavy and 
 void of sense, that we could travel that day but 
 only five miles." At Bologna, he was taken so ill 
 that he despaired of recovery. His mind reverted 
 in its anxiety to the cardinal doctrine of his newly 
 adopted creed, the only point on which a clear light 
 had begun to shine, and he drew consolation from 
 those words, which three years before gave new life 
 to his soul, " The just shall live by faith." During 
 all his journey, this memorable passage would ever 
 12
 
 134 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1510. 
 
 and anon occur to his memory. He speaks with 
 admiration of the foundling and other excellent hos- 
 pitals which he saw at Florence, and gives evident 
 signs of satisfaction at the honourable mention of 
 the name of the Emperor Frederic, of Germany, 
 whose sayings were still preserved among the people. 
 At length he came in sight of Rome, whereupon, 
 with the feelings of a pilgrim who has reached the 
 hallowed spot of his most earnest longings, he fell 
 prostrate to the ground, and raised his hands, and 
 said, "Hail, sacred Rome, thrice sacred for the 
 blood of the martyrs here shed I" 
 
 LUTHER IN ROME. 
 
 CICERO and Julius Caesar would hardly have 
 recognised the ecclesiastical city which Luther has 
 just greeted, and with scarcely less difficulty would 
 he recognise the Rome of the present day. Its hills, 
 indeed, are the same, and the same Tiber flows there 
 still. But Alaric, Genseric, Ricimer, and Totila 
 had been there, and desolation reigned on many 
 of the seven hills. Another priesthood, and a people 
 of another faith were there ; and instead of the 
 temples of Jupiter Capitolinus, of Esculapius and 
 of Apollo, were to be seen St. Peter's, the Lateran 
 and Santa Maria Maggiore. Modern Rome was not 
 yet in full existence. The residences of the great 
 were still chiefly within the angle made by the 
 curve of the Tiber, in the vicinity of the Campus 
 Martius and the Circus. 
 
 Luther entered the Porta del Popolo, its north- 
 ern gate. Near it was the Augustinian monas- 
 tery, where he is said to have taken his lodg- 
 ings and to have held mass as soon as he entered 
 the city. On his right, across the river, and be-
 
 JE 26.] IN ROME. 135 
 
 yond the castle of St. Angelo, was seen the half- 
 finished St. Peter's, which had been begun and was 
 now carried on by Pope Julius, that lover of war 
 and of architecture. It was finished at a later period 
 by Leo, who was equally fond of splendour, and 
 who in the arts of peace was as heathenish as his 
 predecessor was in the arts of war. As one enters 
 the gate above mentioned, he finds himself in a 
 square, from which diverge three long streets, in 
 nearly direct* lines, the one on the right running to 
 the Campus Martius and near to the Pantheon ; the 
 one in front passing directly to the old Capitol and 
 Forum ; the one on the left passing in a south-east- 
 erly direction across the Quirinal and Viminal hills, 
 leaving the Diocletian Baths to the left, and extend- 
 ing to the Santa Maria Maggiore, which, with the 
 Lateran, are next in splendour to St. Peter's. The 
 Lateran, the proper parish church of the pope, and 
 " the mother and head of all the churches of the 
 world," is about half as much farther, and near the 
 walls of the city. Directly south of this, and two 
 miles beyond the walls is St. Sebastian's church, 
 built directly over the catacombs. West from the 
 latter, near the bank of the Tiber and a mile below 
 the city, is St. Paul's, next in magnitude to St. 
 Peters. 
 
 This introductory view Will enable us to follow 
 Luther in his frequent visits to the sacred places in 
 Home, and to perceive the full import of his casual 
 observations. Fortunately, a guide-book for pilgrims, 
 Mirabilia Romve, the Wonders of Rome had been 
 prepared and was reprinted the very year of Luther's 
 pilgrimage. Of the general appearance of the city, 
 he remarks, " Rome, as it now appeareth, is but a 
 dead carcase compared with its ancient splendour.
 
 136 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1510. 
 
 The houses now rest on ground as high as the roofs 
 once stood, so deep are the ruins. This do we per- 
 ceive at the banks of the Tiber, where the ruins 
 reacli perpendicularly to the length of two spears, 
 such as are used by our troops." " Rome, where the 
 most magnificent buildings once stood was razed to the 
 ground by the Goths. On the hill, and the Capitol, 
 stands a Franciscan convent." " Rome, as I saw it, 
 is full five miles in circumference. The vestiges 
 where ancient Rome stood can scarcely be traced. 
 The theatre and the Baths of Diocletian are still to 
 be seen. . . . The erection of St. Peter's has lasted 
 more than thirteen hundred years, (including the 
 old building,) and upon it a huge sum of money has 
 been expended." " In the Pantheon at Rome, now 
 converted into a church, are representations in paint- 
 ings of all the gods. . . . When I was there, I saw 
 this church. It had no windows, but was one high 
 vault, with an opening above to admit the light. It 
 had large marble pillars, which could hardly be com- 
 passed by two men with their arms extended." 
 
 Luther visited Rome as a pilgrim. Twice while 
 in Erfurt had he vowed to make a pilgrimage to 
 Rome; and he himself affirms that he made the 
 journey in consequence of his vows. This state- 
 ment does not, however, stand in the way of his 
 having other objects to accomplish at the same time. 
 Rome was then regarded as second only to Jerusalem 
 in sacredness. The soil was supposed to be hal- 
 lowed, not only by the graves of thousands of martyrs, 
 and many Roman bishops, but of the apostles Peter 
 and Paul. Pilgrims came in multitudes, sometimes 
 two hundred thousand at a time, to visit this sacred 
 city. 
 
 "The "Wonders of Rome," the guide-book al-
 
 2E. 26.] IN ROME. 137 
 
 ready mentioned, describes the stations, tke relics, 
 and the indulgences, especially those connected with 
 the seven principal churches. The Lateran church 
 had power to give as many days of indulgence as 
 the drops of rain which would fall in three days and 
 nights. Each chapel belonging to the group of the 
 Lateran buildings, each altar and relic, had, more- 
 over, its particular number of indulgences. Instruc- 
 tions are given how to deliver souls from purgatory 
 by means of Pater nosters and Ave Marias. When 
 Luther was there paying his devotions, with fran- 
 tic zeal like the rest of the infatuated multitude, he 
 regretted, as he says, that his father and mother 
 were both living, so desirous was he to release their 
 souls from purgatory. He afterwards alludes to this 
 insane passion with bitter scorn and contempt, say- 
 ing, " How gladly would I then have made my 
 mother happy, but was denied the opportunity, and 
 must content myself with a good dried herring !" 
 " Such a foolish saint was I, running to all the 
 churches and sepulchres, and believing all the piti- 
 able stories that were told me." 
 
 According to the same book, one may obtain every 
 day at the high altar of St. Peter's eighteen years 
 indulgence and eighteen carenas, each carena being 
 equal to seven years and forty days' fasting. All 
 the past sins of every visitor who comes with good 
 intention can be forgiven. He who devoutly goes 
 up and down the stair-way to St. Peter's, has a 
 thousand years' indulgence in respect to penance im- 
 posed; and seven times as much if he look at the 
 handkerchief of St. Veronica containing the like- 
 ness of the Saviour. Luther went up those stairs 
 on his knees to obtain the large indulgence pro- 
 mised ; but while he was so doing a voice like thun- 
 12*
 
 138 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1610. 
 
 der seemed to say to him, "The just shall live by 
 faith." No wonder that his former experience should 
 come up like a spectre before him, and rebuke his 
 idolatrous worship. His mind was then like a field 
 overgrown with briars and thorns, in which, how- 
 ever, one good germ had taken root, that was soon 
 to produce a great fruit-bearing tree one which 
 should overshadow all the rest and take up the 
 strength of the soil. 
 
 In regard to the pretended handkerchief which 
 St. Veronica is said to have given to Christ in his 
 agony to wipe off his sweat, and upon which, when 
 applied to his face, his likeness was miraculously 
 impressed, Luther remarks, evidently from personal 
 observation : " It is nothing but a black square 
 board, with a cloth hung before it, and before that 
 another which is raised when the Veronica is shown. 
 The poor besotted pilgrim can see nothing but a 
 cloth before a black tablet. That is what they call 
 seeing the Veronica ; and with such low falsehoods 
 are connected great devotion and large indulgences." 
 There was never such a person as Veronica; and 
 the name was unknown till the Middle Ages. It 
 is the corruption, as Mabillon and others have shown, 
 of the two words vcra and icon, a true image, which 
 were inscribed beneath paintings of Christ's counte- 
 nance upon cloth. 
 
 Luther, while credulously gazing at such sacred 
 relics in St. Peter's church, saw also the heads of 
 the apostles Peter and Paul in the court before the 
 church. " They boast at Rome of having the heads 
 of Peter and Paul, and show them as sacred relics, 
 though they are nothing but wooden heads, made 
 by a bungling artist. I can boldly affirm, according 
 to what I myself have seen and heard at Rome, that
 
 JE. 26.] IN ROME. 139 
 
 no one there knows where the bodies of St. Paul 
 and Peter lie. . . The popes show every year (on 
 St. Peter and Paul's day) to the blind and silly 
 populace two heads of Peter and Paul, carved in 
 wood, and would fain make them believe that these 
 are the veritable skulls of Peter and Paul ; and on 
 the altar where these heads are preserved, the pal- 
 liums of the bishops are consecrated." 
 
 Of the catacombs of Rome, which extended all 
 along the eastern part of the city and the adjacent 
 country, from the church of St. Sebastian or St. Ca- 
 lixtus to that of St. Agnes without the walls, Lu- 
 ther speaks more than once. They evidently filled 
 his imagination, as well they might, more completely 
 than any thing else he saw at Rome. In early 
 times, great excavations were made under the city 
 to furnish stone and sand for building. In this 
 complete net-work of subterranean passages, the 
 Christians secreted themselves during the persecu- 
 tions, buried all their dead there for two or three 
 centuries, placing them in niches at the sides of the 
 passages; and built small chapels near the bodies of 
 the martyrs, where they resorted for prayer and 
 the communion service. 
 
 Thus, while pagan Rome was in the light of 
 day above, living in splendour and luxury, and 
 putting the Christians to death, or driving them 
 from the abodes of men, Christian Rome, beneath 
 the surface of the earth, "the church in the ca- 
 tacombs" as Maitland calls it, was preparing to 
 come forth from her caverns and take possession 
 of the city above. "At Rome," says Luther, "by 
 the church of St. Calixtua (or St. Sebastian) lie 
 in one vault, as is said, more than eight thousand 
 martyrs, and that is a most sacred spot. Under the
 
 140 LIFE OP LUTHER. ['lolO. 
 
 church, enclosed in sarcophagi, lie one hundred and 
 seventy-six thousand holy bodies, and forty -five popes 
 who were martyrs. The place is called the Crypt. 
 For full three hundred years did the persecutions 
 rage ; and they rose to such a pitch of fury that, as 
 we learn from history, seventy thousand martyrs 
 were slain in the empire in one day. There is still 
 to he seen at Rome a burial-place, where, as it is said, 
 eighty thousand martyrs and forty-six hishops lie." 
 The exaggeration in these accounts which were given 
 to Luther ? consists not so much in the numbers of 
 the dead, as in pronouncing them, on fallacious 
 grounds, martyrs. These catacombs, which were 
 closed in Luther's time, as they had been during 
 all the Middle Ages, have since been opened, and 
 their contents, containing a wonderful history in 
 the inscriptions, placed in the Vatican. 
 
 But Luther saw other things which shocked his 
 feelings, though they did not then shake his faith. 
 Afterwards, when he came to understand the true 
 character of the papacy, the recollections of what he 
 had seen at Rome were constantly springing up in 
 his mind as illustrations of the most shocking cor- 
 ruption of the church. " The pope," he observes, 
 " moves as if making a triumphal entry, with beau- 
 tiful and richly caparisoned horses before him, and 
 he himself bears the sacrament upon a splendid 
 white palfrey." "At Rome, when they pronounce 
 the ban of excommunication, about twenty cardinals 
 sit and throw from them burning torches, extinguish- 
 ing them by the cast, thereby showing that the well- 
 being and salvation of the persons so excommunicated 
 will be extinguished in like manner. And (as a little 
 bell was rung at the same time) this ceremony was 
 called lighting and tinkling a man." Little did
 
 M. 26.] IN ROME. 141 
 
 Luther think while learning such things at Rome 
 that he was one day to be thus "lighted and tinkled." 
 In another place he says, "I have been in Rome, 
 have held many mass-services there, and- have seen 
 others hold many in a way that filleth me with 
 horror when I think thereupon." In the following, 
 he seems to speak as one who had been an eye-wit- 
 ness. "What Christian can, without pain, observe 
 that the pope, when he is to partake of the com- 
 munion, sitteth still like a gracious lord, and niaketh 
 a cardinal, with bended knee, reach to him the sacra- 
 ment in a golden tube !" He speaks of the revolt- 
 ing licentiousness which, prevailed even among the 
 cardinals whom he saw, and pronounces the Roman 
 court a brothel. He adds, " I myself have heard 
 people say openly, in the streets of Roine, if there 
 be a hell, Rome is built upon it." He once said he 
 would not take one hundred thousand florins for 
 what he had seen at Rome ; " we speak of what we 
 have seen." Still all these abominations did not 
 alienate Luther from the Roman church. He 
 revered her, in spite of the sins of pope and cardinal, 
 monk and priest. As late as 1519, he could say, 
 " The Roman church is honoured of God above all 
 others. . . There St. Peter and St. Paul, and forty- 
 six popes and many thousand martyrs did shed their 
 blood. . . Though, alas ! it is not as it should be 
 at Rome, notwithstanding there is, and can be, no 
 reason for separating from it."
 
 142 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1512. 
 
 SECTION IV. Luther at Wittenberg again. 
 
 OF his return from Rome, and of his studies and 
 occupations for the next succeeding year or two but 
 little is known. The first important event after that 
 period is his promotion in theology, in 1512. He 
 had taken the second degree, or that of sententiarius, 
 during the interval, probably in 1511, both at Wit- 
 tenberg and at Erfurt. Of the singular dispute 
 which afterwards arose between him and the monks 
 of Erfurt on this subject, mention will be made 
 elsewhere. 
 
 Staupitz, who had interested himself so deeply in 
 Luther's welfare ever since his first acquaintance 
 with him, and who, for the benefit of the church, 
 had undertaken to guide his steps, was not disap- 
 pointed in the hopes he had entertained of his young 
 friend. He had already made him reader at table 
 in the monastery, substituting the Scriptures in the 
 place of Augustine's writings, which had hitherto 
 been read to the monks during meal times. He 
 was raised to the rank of licentiate in theology, (the 
 next degree above sententiarius,) the 4th of October, 
 1512, and finally to the degree of doctor of divinity, 
 on the 19th of the same month. His reluctance to 
 receive this honour, (or rather office as it then was,) 
 appears to have been not less than that which he 
 felt when it was proposed to make him preacher. 
 It was manifested in a similar way, and overcome 
 by similar arguments. In his letter of invitation to 
 the Erfurt convent to attend the ceremony, he says, 
 he is to receive the degree "out of obedience to the 
 fathers and the vicar." In a dedicatory epistle to 
 the Elector Frederic, written several years after he
 
 M. 28.] IN WITTENBERG. 143 
 
 says, "At your expense was the doctor's hat placed 
 upon my witless head, an honour at which I blush, 
 but which I am constrained to bear, because those 
 whom it is my duty to obey would have it so." 
 Among the letters of Luther is found the receipt 
 which he signed for the fifty florins furnished him 
 by the elector for paying the costs of the degree. 
 A doctor's ring of massive gold was presented to 
 him by the elector at the same time, which is still 
 to be seen in the library of \Volfenbtittel. On the 
 19th of October the ceremony was performed with 
 great pomp, with solemn procession and the ringing 
 of the great bell. This appointment for it was not 
 a mere honour given him by the united voice of 
 his religious superiors, his sovereign, and the uni- 
 versity, he construed, and ever after regarded, as a 
 Divine call to teach religion in the most public man- 
 ner. " I was called," says he, " and forced to the 
 office, and was obliged, from the duty of obedience, 
 to be doctor contrary to my will, . . . and to pro- 
 mise with an oath to teach purely and sincerely 
 according to the Scriptures." Tubingen and Wit- 
 tenberg were the only universities where such an 
 oath was required. Under this oath, administered 
 to him by Carlstadt, Luther claimed the right to 
 appeal to the Bible as the only ultimate authority, 
 and thus formally did he plant himself upon the 
 fundamental principle of Protestantism. 
 
 At the time, both he and the highest authorities, 
 secular and ecclesiastical, supposed there was a sub- 
 stantial agreement between the teachings of the 
 church and those of the Bible. When he became 
 thoroughly convinced of the contrary, he adhered to 
 the letter of the oath, and turned it against the very 
 power that had exacted it. He even burnt the papal
 
 144 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1512. 
 
 bull, as he says, "because his title, office, station and 
 oath required him to overthrow or ward off false, 
 dangerous, and unchristian doctrines !" Thus when 
 his enemies assailed him as a disobedient son of the 
 church, he availed himself of this defence. When 
 Satan sorely pressed him with doubts and tempta- 
 tions in respect to the great commotion which he 
 was the means of exciting in the Christian world, his 
 heart found assurance and his conscience relief, in 
 recurring to his public and formal call. In reference 
 to this matter he remarks : " At the command of the 
 pope and of the emperor, (both of whom had given 
 to the university authority to confer degrees,) and in 
 a regular and free university, (its freedom, too, had 
 been conceded to the elector,) I began, as became a 
 doctor who had taken an oath to that effect, to ex- 
 plain the Scriptures before all the world, . . and 
 having begun thus to do, I had cause to continue, 
 and cannot now with a good conscience go back or 
 break off, even though pope and emperor should put 
 me under the ban." Whether all his reasoning on 
 the subject was strictly correct or not, he was evi- 
 dently very conscientious about it. He affirms that 
 he had times of distress in relation to this point, 
 when he felt the perspiration start all over him. 
 
 The period of about two years immediately follow- 
 ing the date above-mentioned, appears to have been 
 chiefly taken up in preparing for his lectures, and in 
 acquiring the original languages of the Bible. The 
 only events mentioned in connection with him during 
 that time, are a disputation, in 1512, by a candidate 
 for the first degree in theology, and another in 1513, 
 for the second degree, at both of which he was the 
 presiding officer. Such things were of frequent oc- 
 currence with him at a later period. Inasmuch as
 
 IE. 30.] IN WITTENBERG. 145 
 
 it is evident that Luther knew little of Greek or He- 
 brew before the year 1513, whereas we find him 
 making use of both with some facility the next year, 
 the inference is plain, that he must have studied 
 them zealously about this time. Mathesius repre- 
 sents Luther as " spelling out the words of the Bible" 
 after he commenced lecturing upon it. The first 
 books on which he lectured were the Epistle to the 
 Romans and the Psalms, which the same biographer 
 informs us, took place immediately after he was made 
 doctor. How admirably wouJ 1 lecturing on that 
 epistle agree with the long and hard struggle through 
 which his mind had passed on the subject of justifi- 
 cation; and how well was such an exercise adapted 
 to prepare him for his great work as Reformer ! In 
 the Psalms, too, so peculiarly a book of the heart, 
 how much would a man of Luther's ardent, devout, 
 and poetical mind, discover to be just what his re- 
 ligious necessities called for ! Here we find in part the 
 secret of his great success as a university lecturer. 
 He not only brought to light treasures of spiritual 
 knowledge from an almost forgotten book, but treated 
 of those subjects in which his whole soul felt a vital 
 interest, and that, too, in the ardour of acquisition 
 both as a scholar and as a Christian. 
 
 " These writings," (the Epistle to the Romans and 
 the Psalms,) says Melancthon, "he explained after 
 such a sort that, in the estimation of all pious and 
 intelligent persons, a new day, succeeding a long 
 night of darkness, was dawning upon the Christian 
 doctrines." His earnest discussions, in which he 
 clearly distinguished between law and gospel, justi- 
 fication by works and justification by faith, opened a 
 
 new world of ideas to the student. Still his inter- 
 is
 
 146 LIFE OP LUTHEE. [1513-14. 
 
 pretations, judged by a modern standard, must often 
 appear imperfect. 
 
 Let us here pause a moment and contemplate the 
 position he now held. He had fully adopted the 
 two great Protestant principles of justification by 
 faith in Christ, and the right of private judgment in 
 interpreting the Scriptures ; but he was by no means 
 aware that these were the germs of a new order of 
 things which could not be developed without sepa- 
 rating him from the church. Meantime he was be- 
 coming a bold, strong, and independent thinker, and 
 beginning already, without directly intending it, to 
 wield a commanding and renovating influence over 
 his pupils and friends. Others, who had opposed 
 the church, had fixed their eye primarily on certain 
 evils, and begun, of set purpose, to operate against 
 them, using religion as a means only to that end, 
 and thereby became but negative reformers. Such 
 were the promoters of classical learning, who were 
 offended at the ignorance and stupidity of the clergy, 
 and many of the actors at the councils of Constance 
 and Basle, who were more anxious to crush the 
 power of the pope and correct public abuses than 
 to revive a spirit of primitive piety. But Luther 
 first fed, for a long time, the flame of experimental 
 religion in his own heart, and then spread the fire 
 by his conversations and lectures, and thus became 
 the instrument of a regenerating movement by merely 
 unfolding and expounding the religious elements 
 which he brought with him from the convent of Er- 
 furt. 
 
 In the Wolfenbuttel library is preserved Luther's 
 copy of the Psalms in Hebrew, printed on a quarto 
 page, in the centre of which stands the Hebrew text,
 
 JE. 30.] IN WITTENBERG. 
 
 with wide spaces between the lines. On the broad 
 margin and between the lines are to be seen the 
 notes, in Latin, of his first lectures on this book, de- 
 livered probably in 1513. It is believed that he 
 caused copies to be printed in this form for the 
 greater convenience of the students in taking notes 
 and connecting them with the words of the text. 
 The great value of this singular book consists in the 
 record it contains of Luther's religious and theolo- 
 gical views at that period. Jiirgens, who has care- 
 fully examined this earliest of Luther's Scripture ex- 
 positions which have been preserved it exists only 
 in manuscript, and in Luther's hand-writing re- 
 marks : " It contains the clearest indications how 
 little Luther had advanced in biblical interpretation ; 
 and yet it occasionally points to the way in which he 
 afterwards became so eminent as an expositor of 
 Scripture. We refer particularly to his disposition 
 to go back to the original sources. But he appears 
 still to be without a competent knowledge of the 
 Hebrew. He makes use of a defective Latin trans- 
 lation, agreeing with the Vulgate, and adheres closely 
 to it, though he knows the Hebrew text, and con- 
 stantly refers to it as well as to the Greek version." 
 We find him, as he is represented by these notes, 
 still a perfect monk, filled with all the monastic 
 notions and superstitions ; in his interpretation, given 
 to allegory and conceits, except on two or three 
 points where he becomes luminous, which circum- 
 stance gives to the whole the appearance of a morning 
 twilight with its attendant indications of approaching 
 day. We must constantly keep this in mind j for 
 with him, the dawning light approached slowly, and 
 for ten years it was dark in the west after the east 
 was streaked with red.
 
 148 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1514. 
 
 It is now time to notice more particularly his 
 misunderstanding with the university at Erfurt. It 
 seems that after he had taken his second degree in 
 theology in Wittenberg, complaints were made 
 from Erfurt, where he had received his education, 
 and that he consequently postponed lecturing on those 
 subjects for which that degree was regarded as a 
 license, and went to Erfurt, and with some difficulty 
 obtained the degree there. Three or four years 
 afterwards, some monks of that city, who envied his 
 growing reputation, attempted to humble him by 
 circulating reports unfavourable to his integrity, and 
 by going back to that old difficulty to rake up evi- 
 dence against him. 
 
 As the correspondence contains some of the ear- 
 liest indications of the slumbering lion that was 
 in him, it will be a matter of interest to glance 
 at its character. The affair itself remains in great 
 obscurity. Only two letters of Luther's are ex- 
 tant to give us any light on the subject; and of 
 these but one is published. The new complaint was, 
 that Luther, in taking the degree of doctor in divi- 
 nity at Wittenberg instead of Erfurt, had violated 
 an oath he had taken when he received the degree of 
 master in theology, or sententiarius at the latter place. 
 The accusation was made by a certain master Nathin, 
 who was both inmate of the convent and teacher in 
 the university. 
 
 Luther's first letter on the subject is dated June 
 16, 1514, and is directed to the prior and se- 
 'niors of the Erfurt convent. In this he refers to 
 two preceding letters, now lost, in which he had 
 refuted the charges falsely brought against him. 
 There was, indeed, a law in the Erfurt university 
 requiring that he who should receive the first degree
 
 JE. 30.] IN WITTENBERG. 149 
 
 in theology there, should take an oath to receive the 
 second there also; and he who received the second 
 was to do the same in regard to the degree of doctor of 
 divinity. He exculpated himself by saying that he 
 never took the first degree at Erfurt, but at Witten- 
 berg; and that, in taking the -second, nothing was 
 said or done about the oath. The irregularity, there- 
 fore, was on the part of his accusers, and not on his. 
 But let us hear his own words : 
 
 "Although I have heard and read sundry evil reports 
 spread by some of your convent which make against 
 you, and more particularly against myself; yet, by the 
 late letters of master John Nathin, written in the 
 name of you all, by his falsehoods, his biting words, his 
 bitter provocations and reproaches, I was so disturbed 
 that I came near pouring out, after the example of mas- 
 ter Paltz, both upon him and upon the whole convent, 
 the full vials of my wrath and indignation. For this 
 cause I wrote unto you two foolish letters. I know 
 not whether they came into your hands, and should 
 soon have sent you the hidden mystery thereof, had 
 not that slanderous tongue been silenced by your 
 convocation. I am, therefore, constrained to excuse 
 many of you, nay, most of you. If, then, you were 
 in any degree offended, or if some of you find your- 
 selves mentioned by name in those letters, take in 
 good part what I have done, and reckon it all to the 
 account of the bitter things which master Nathin did 
 write. For my vehement indignation was just. But 
 now do I hear what is yet worse, that this same man 
 everywhere proclaimeth, I know not on what grounds, 
 that I am a perjured and infamous person. 1 request 
 you, since I fear you cannot stop his mouth, to avoid 
 him, and warn others not to regard his speeches. I 
 have violated no oath, for I was promoted in another 
 
 13*
 
 150 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1515. 
 
 place. Both the universities and you all know that 
 I did not receive my biblical degree, wherein the 
 oath is taken, at Erfurt. Nor am I conscious of ever 
 having taken any oath in my whole course. My 
 degree of sententiarius I did, in truth, take at Erfurt; 
 but no one, I trow, will affirm that I took any oath. 
 But what master Nathin hath yet to hear from me, 
 concerning the authority given unto me to teach and 
 to govern, (when the degree was conferred,) will per- 
 haps be seen at the proper time. I write these things, 
 most excellent fathers, to the end that the Erfurt 
 theologians may not look upon me as a despiser of 
 their university; to which, as to a mother, I attri- 
 bute all that I have. I have not contemned them, 
 nor will I ever, although my abode and promotion 
 elsewhere have separated me from them. The con- 
 vent could then, with a word, have prevented both 
 of these events, if it had desired. But what it could 
 then do, but would not. it cannot now do, if it would. 
 Thus, it hath pleased God to bring to nought the 
 dissensions and threatenings of them that were ask- 
 ing for vengeance. But let them go on. I am at 
 peace and reconciled unto you all, though I was of- 
 fended. God hath singularly blessed me, unworthy 
 as I am, so that I have cause only to rejoice, to love, 
 and to do good to them that deserve the contrary of me, 
 just as I receive of the Lord the contrary of what I 
 deserve. I therefore pray you to be resigned, and 
 lay aside bitterness, if any remains, and not to be 
 disturbed by my connection with another university, 
 for so God would have it, and we cannot resist him." 
 The other letter was written in January of 1515, 
 and directed to the theological faculty of the univer- 
 sity. It enters more into particulars, which we must 
 pass over with the single remark that it states the
 
 M. 31.] IN WITTENBERG. 151 
 
 fact of his having been called to Erfurt to be exa- 
 mined in respect to the degree of sententiarius, which 
 he had received at Wittenberg, and which, after 
 much difficulty, was confirmed at Erfurt. Nathin, 
 of course, had continued his opposition, till the uni- 
 versity was so far affected by his representations that 
 it was necessary for Luther to exculpate himself be- 
 fore them. 
 
 In the tone of these letters, we look in vain for the 
 spirit of the once timid and submissive monk. He 
 conies forward, single-handed, against a host, with a 
 sense of his rights ; and a consciousness not only of 
 his innocence, but of his power. With a desire for 
 peace, and the olive leaf in his hand, he, at the same 
 time, gives no doubtful indications that he is prepared 
 for war. Here we see the same Luther that could 
 stand up alone at the diet of Worms, and speak with- 
 out fear, before emperor and princes and cardinals! 
 
 Something more than the mere habit of lecturing 
 had contributed to this result, in respect to his pre- 
 sent boldness of character. His biographers state 
 that he had held frequent public disputations with his 
 colleagues, and that in these he always came off tri- 
 umphant. The reason of his meeting so much oppo- 
 sition was, that he advocated new and strange views; 
 and the reason of his being victorious was, as well that 
 he was in the right, as that he knew how to main- 
 tain his ground. He openly assailed the authority 
 of Aristotle in theology, on whom the sententiarists 
 mainly relied. Carlstadt and Truttvetter, in parti- 
 cular, disputed him. 
 
 The point in debate was fundamental. It re- 
 lated, as Luther says, to first principles, namely, 
 whether the doctrines of the schoolmen, who fol- 
 lowed Aristotle, were to be received on the assump-
 
 152 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1515. 
 
 tion that they were true, and argument to proceed 
 from them as from well-settled principles; or, whe- 
 ther these doctrines were themselves to be called 
 in question, and examined anew in the light of 
 Scripture and of reason. Both parties were well 
 aware that on this hinge turned all the questions 
 between the old and the new, the scholastic and the 
 biblical views of theology. Luther fought out the 
 battle with gigantic strength. He completely con- 
 verted Carlstadt and the other young theologians to 
 his biblical doctrines. Truttvetter, his old teacher, not 
 being able to maintain his position, and not being 
 willing to succumb to his own pupil, retired from the 
 conflict, and went back to Erfurt in 1513. Luther af- 
 terwards supposed he was the innocent cause of hasten- 
 ing the death of that sturdy old scholastic divine. 
 
 In all this, it is easy to find an explanation of 
 the perfectly independent and decided tone with 
 which Luther stood up and declared that he could 
 but just refrain from "pouring out the full vials of his 
 wrath against the whole convent;" and, perhaps, 
 the return of Truttvetter, under such circumstances, 
 to the university of Erfurt, will suggest at least one 
 reason why the calumny of Nathin should be listened 
 to there, after it had been put down at the convent. 
 
 The little information we have respecting Luther 
 from the beginning of 1515, to the beginning of 
 1516, may be regarded as indirect evidence that he 
 was going steadily and prosperously on in the course 
 he had begun, constantly accumulating that power 
 and influence which was so soon to be put in requi- 
 sition. The interest he felt in the controversy which 
 was then raging between Reuchlin and the stupid 
 Dominicans at Cologne, in respect to the utility of 
 the study of the Hebrew and Greek languages, and
 
 JE. 32.] IN WITTENBERG. 153 
 
 the advancement which he himself made in the 
 knowledge of these languages about this time, put 
 it beyond doubt that the lectures which he delivered 
 on the various books of the Bible were founded, 
 more and more, on the original Hebrew and Greek 
 Scriptures. He also continued earnestly engaged in 
 academic disputations, for, from some of the older 
 professors, he still met with opposition. During this 
 year, he was made dean of the theological faculty, 
 and under him, according to the university records, 
 a large number of Augustinian eremites received 
 their degrees in theology. Odelkop, who heard his 
 lectures, particularly those on the Epistle to the 
 Romans, at this time, says Luther diligently prose- 
 cuted his studies and preached, and delivered lec- 
 tures and held debates. In this year were preached 
 the first three discourses of his which have been pre- 
 served. In these he manifests decided progress in 
 the clearness and solidity of his religious views. In 
 the first of those discourses, he strongly urges the 
 doctrine, that piety consists not in outward works, 
 but in an inward principle ; that an act, in itself good, 
 becomes even sinful if the motive be sinful. No- 
 thing could more clearly indicate that Luther was 
 outgrowing the discipline and tuition of that church, 
 whose religion consisted chiefly in outward forms 
 and ceremonies, and whose theology was as void of 
 vitality as was its piety. 
 
 1516. 
 
 Not only is this an important year in the life of 
 Luther, as a period of transition from a condition 
 of comparative retirement to one of great publicity, 
 as forming the boundary line between Luther the 
 learned and somewhat disputatious monk, and Lu-
 
 154 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1516. 
 
 ther the Reformer; but here, for the first time, the 
 mist of obscurity which has hitherto mantled his 
 personal history is cleared away, and, from this period 
 on, all the principal events of his life are so fully 
 chronicled that we can follow his course with com- 
 parative ease. Of his published letters, only seven 
 precede this date : one in 1507, inviting his friend 
 Brown to his ordination as priest ; one in 1509, to 
 the same, excusing himself for having come away 
 from Erfurt without taking leave of him ; one in 
 1510, to Spalatin, expressing a favourable opinion 
 of Reuchlin, and censuring his opponents; two in 
 1512, the former being an invitation to the convent 
 at Erfurt to be present at his promotion to the rank 
 of doctor of divinity, the latter being his receipt for 
 fifty florins to defray the expenses of the ceremony ; 
 and two in 1514, the one, the bold letter already 
 mentioned, relating to his difficulties with Erfurt ; 
 the other a second letter to Spalatin, condemning 
 the course of Ortuin, one of Reuchlin's opponents 
 at Cologne. In this last, we perceive that vein of 
 drollery and sarcasm with which his subsequent 
 writings abound. He speaks of that "poetaster/' 
 as he calls him, in terms of derision and scorn, and 
 allows himself to use language always objectionable, 
 but less noticed then than at the present day. After 
 applying to him several opprobrious epithets, he 
 adds : " I think that he himself, instructed by 
 our Reuchlin, did feel his asinity, so to express my- 
 self, to such a degree that he meditated laying aside 
 the ass and putting on the majesty of the lion, but 
 unluckily, undertaking a metamorphosis beyond his 
 strength, he took too short a leap, and fell into a 
 wolf or crocodile." 
 
 Though up to this period we have in all only
 
 M 32.] IN WITTENBERG. 155 
 
 seven or eight of his letters preserved, in the single 
 year 1516 we have twenty, in the following year 
 twenty -three, in 1518, fifty -six, and so on, to the 
 amount of five large octavo volumes. From these 
 letters alone a tolerably full biography of Luther 
 might be written. 
 
 February 2, 1516, he writes to his intimate friend, 
 John Lange, prior of the cloister at Erfurt, a letter 
 which strikingly illustrates the state of his mind in 
 respect to the Aristotelian philosophy, and the scho- 
 lastic theology founded upon it; and also the rela- 
 tions of his old teachers, Truttvetter, or Jodocus 
 of Eisenach, as he generally calls him, and Usingen, 
 both to scholasticism and to himself. He writes : 
 " I send the accompanying letter, reverend father, 
 to the excellent Jodocus of Eisenach, full of posi- 
 tions against [the Aristotelian] logic, philosophy 
 and theology, that is, full of blasphemies and male- 
 dictions against Aristotle, Porphyry, and the sen- 
 tentiarists, the pernicious study of this our age. . . . 
 See that these be put into his hands, and take pains 
 to find out what he and all the rest think of me in 
 this matter, and let me know. I have no other 
 more eager desire than to make known to many, 
 and, if I have time, to show to all, how ignomini- 
 ously that old actor, under his Greek mask, playeth 
 and maketh pastime with the church. . . . My 
 greatest sorrow is, that I am constrained to see 
 brethren of good parts and of gifts qualifying them 
 for study, spend their time and waste their lives in 
 such vain pursuits, while the universities cease not 
 to burn and to condemn good books, and then make, 
 or rather dream out new ones in their room. I wish 
 Usingen as well as Truttvetter would leave off these 
 studies, or at least be more moderate therein. My
 
 156 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1516. 
 
 shelves are stored with weapons against their writ- 
 ings, which I perceive to be utterly useless ; and all 
 others would see the same, were they not bound to 
 a more than Pythagorean silence." 
 
 Thus we see Luther hating Aristotle, because the 
 scholastic theologians perversely put him in the place 
 of the prophets and apostles; entertaining a feeling of 
 respect for his two principal university teachers, and 
 yet doubtful whether what he wrote to them would 
 not rather offend than enlighten them ; impatient to 
 expose the monstrous abuse, pitying the hapless 
 youth who must be perplexed with these tedious stu- 
 dies only to be misled ; indignant at those birds of 
 night at Cologne, who scream out, "Heresy!" at 
 what they have not sense enough to comprehend; 
 confident that he possesses the means of exploding 
 the whole system ; but sighing over the timidity of 
 those who would easily be convinced but for their 
 fear of giving offence. Nothing but time and cir- 
 cumstances were wanting to call him out, even at 
 this early period. 
 
 But there was another element of character com- 
 bined with this, that gave depth and a regenerating 
 power to Luther's influence. In a letter dated 
 April, 1516, we learn that his mind was, in refer- 
 ence to that particular feature, undergoing a most 
 favourable development. 
 
 Our meaning will be apparent by the language of 
 the letter itself. After a few words relating to a cer- 
 tain economical transaction, he writes to Spenlein, a 
 monk of Memmingen, a little south of Ulm : " But I 
 desire to know how it is with your soul ; whether, 
 weary of your own righteousness, you have learned to 
 refresh yourself with, and put your trust in, the right- 
 eousness of Christ. For in our times presuming of
 
 JE. 32.] IN WITTENBERG. 157 
 
 ourselves is the chief temptation, especially in them 
 that are striving with all their might to be righteous 
 and good. Being ignorant of the righteousness of 
 God, which is abundantly and freely given to us in 
 Christ, they seek continually to perform good works 
 of themselves until they can have confidence to 
 stand before God, adorned in their own good works 
 and merits, which is impossible. When you were 
 with us [in the cloister at Erfurt ?] you were of 
 this opinion, or rather in this error, and so was I. 
 I still have to fight against this error in myself, and 
 have not yet altogether overcome it. Therefore, my 
 dear brother, acquaint yourself with Christ and him 
 crucified ; learn to praise him ; despairing of your- 
 self, say to him, ' Lord Jesus, thou art my right- 
 eousness, and I am thy sin : thou hast taken to thy- 
 self what is mine, and given me what is thine : thou 
 hast assumed what thou wast not, and given to me 
 what I was not.' Beware of aspiring to such purity 
 as to be unwilling to appear, and also to be in very 
 deed, a sinner. For Christ dwelleth only in sinners. 
 For this cause Christ descended from heaven, where 
 he dwelleth in the righteous, to the end that he 
 might dwell also in sinners. Meditate upon this 
 love of his, and you will find therein his most sweet 
 consolations. For if by our toils and conflicts we 
 could obtain peace of conscience, why should he 
 die? Therefore you will not find peace save in 
 him, by utterly despairing of yourself and of your 
 own works. Learn then of him, as he received 
 you and made your sins his own, so to make his 
 righteousness yours. 
 
 "If you steadfastly believe this as you ought, 
 (and cursed is he who believeth it not,) then re- 
 ceive your brethren, who have been refractory and 
 
 14
 
 158 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1516. 
 
 gone astray, and patiently carry them along and 
 make their sins yours; and if you have any thing 
 good, let it be theirs, as the apostle saith, 'Receive 
 one another even as Christ hath received you to 
 the glory of God/ and again, 'Let the same mind 
 be in you which was in Christ Jesus, who when he 
 was in the form of God, emptied himself/ &c. So 
 you, if you seem to yourself to be better, do not 
 look upon it as a plunder, as if it were yours alone ; 
 but empty yourself, and forget what you are, and 
 be as one of them, and bear them in your arms. 
 His is an unhappy righteousness which maketh 
 him unwilling to support others who appear worse 
 in comparison, and maketh him flee and retreat 
 when he ought to be present and succour them by 
 his patience and prayers and example. This is 
 burying the Lord's talent, and not giving to his 
 fellow-servants what is their due. If then you will 
 be a lily and a rose of Christ, know that you must 
 be among thorns. Only be careful that by impa- 
 tience, hasty judgment, or secret pride, you do not 
 yourself become a thorn. The kingdom of Christ 
 is in the midst of his enemies, as the Psalm saith. 
 Why then do you think of it as in the midst of his 
 friends ? In whatsoever therefore you are deficient, 
 seek the supply, prostrate before the Lord Jesus. 
 He will teach you all things. Only consider what 
 he hath done for you and for all, that you may 
 learn what you ought to do for others. If he had 
 wished to live only among the good and to die for 
 his friends alone, for whom, I ask, would he have 
 died, or with whom would he ever have lived ? 
 Thus do, my brother, and pray for me, and the 
 Lord be with you." 
 
 We have presented the whole of this letter, ex-
 
 M. 32.] IN WITTENBERG. 159 
 
 cept the introductory paragraph, in order that the 
 reader may see into the heart of Luther as he was 
 at this period, and form some conception of the 
 power of his religious influence, as exerted upon 
 numerous brethren by a mass of letters of similar 
 import, which have not been preserved. Mathesius 
 informs us that he wrote many such during the 
 first four years of his doctorate. 
 
 One other letter of similar tendency, and written 
 in the same month, is still extant. A brother Leiffer 
 in Erfurt "was agitated by the tempests and bil- 
 lows of temptation." After affirming, "from his 
 own experience as well as that of his brother, nay, 
 from the experience of all, that our worldly wisdom 
 is the cause of all our disquiet," and that his own 
 exceedingly depraved reason, or "vicious eye," as 
 he terms it, had vexed him with extreme wretched- 
 ness, and continued to do so still, he proceeds : 
 "The cross of Christ is distributed throughout all the 
 world, and to each one is always given his portion. 
 Do not you, therefore, cast it away, but rather re- 
 ceive it as a most sacred relic, and place it away, 
 not in a gold or silver casket, but in a golden heart, 
 that is, a heart imbued with gentle charity. For 
 if the wood of the cross was consecrated by contact 
 with the flesh and blood of Christ, so that fragments 
 of it should be treasured up as the choicest relics, 
 how much more should the injuries, persecutions, 
 passions and hatred of men, whether of the right- 
 eous or of the wicked, be regarded as most sacred 
 relics, which, not indeed by contact with Christ's 
 flesh, but by the love of his most anguished heart 
 and of his Divine will, have been embraced, kissed 
 and blessed, and more than consecrated, inasmuch 
 as cursing is turned into blessing, injury into equity,
 
 160 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1516. 
 
 suffering into glory, and the cross into rejoicing. 
 Farewell, dear father and brother, and pray for 
 me." How characteristic ! Written in the very 
 midst of the sumptuous collection of sacred relics in 
 the Electoral church, which to his spiritual mind 
 served no other purpose than to furnish imagery for 
 deeper truths, this letter leads us back to Erfurt, to 
 those scenes where Luther first found the true cross 
 of Christ, and then along the path of his subsequent 
 experience, where, like Bunyan's pilgrim, he is seen 
 as a sort of religious mirror reflecting the whole in- 
 terior of the Christian life. 
 
 In both these letters we see the intensity and 
 fervour of his religious feeling, showing a depth 
 and maturity of character as great as in those 
 vigorous assaults made by him upon the scholastic 
 theology spiritual health within, and a bold ac- 
 tivity without. 
 
 Not far from the date of the foregoing letters, 
 Staupitz was sent into the Netherlands to collect 
 relics for the Elector Frederic. What strange in- 
 congruities meet us just at the moment that the 
 night of superstition is passing away ! In conse- 
 quence of this singular embassy, Luther was made 
 vicar of the order in Saxony and Thuringia, in 
 place of Staupitz, for about a year and a half, or 
 from April, 1516, to about November of 1517. 
 "This," as Jiirgens well remarks, "was a sign of 
 great confidence on the part of Staupitz, a sign of 
 Luther's high standing already in the order. Stau- 
 pitz could not have committed his own office to so 
 young a man, unless the intellectual superiority of 
 the latter was universally acknowledged, or at least 
 felt. Otherwise, how could Luther venture to ap- 
 pear as overseer of the very cloister where not many
 
 M. 32.] IN WITTENBERG. 161 
 
 years before he had been misused in his novitiate, 
 where his singularities had been witnessed, but 
 hardly approved, and where until very recently an 
 unfriendly feeling had been cherished against him 
 in respect to his degree, or whatever else was the 
 cause of the misunderstanding? There were distin- 
 guished and celebrated men there, such as Lange, 
 Link and Usingen." 
 
 It is remarkable that, in his accepting this office, 
 we find no traces of that shrinking timidity which 
 he manifested in 1509, when he was appointed 
 preacher, and in 1512, when he was made doctor 
 of divinity. In a religious point of view, he had 
 passed to a joyful and confident state of mind. In 
 his theology, he had come to feel strong in the 
 Bible, and anxious to open to others, as widely as 
 possible, those living fountains of truth by which 
 he himself had been so refreshed. In practical life, 
 he had, as lecturer and debater and principal pro- 
 fessor, acquired great skill and power, and seemed 
 to feel like a young hero panting to engage in some 
 worthy enterprise. He entered upon his duties with 
 eagerness, and with a firm hand. To the decorous 
 but unhesitating tone of authority which he as- 
 sumed, the cloister of Erfurt never uttered a mur- 
 mur. On the contrary, his correspondence with 
 Lange, the prior, implies the highest degree of con- 
 fidence and cordiality. 
 
 Luther, immediately after his appointment, set 
 out upon a journey of visitation, and passed the 
 las,t of April, all of May and the beginning of June 
 in going from cloister to cloister in his province, 
 regulating discipline, encouraging education and 
 the study of the Bible in particular, dismissing un- 
 ekilful priors and appointing others in their place. 
 
 14*
 
 162 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1516. 
 
 The faithful discharge of the duties of this office 
 made him intimately acquainted with the moral 
 condition of the monks of his order, and the know- 
 ledge thus acquired was invaluable to him at a 
 future period. 
 
 The first monastery he visited was that of Grim- 
 ma, near Leipsic, and still nearer the nunnery of 
 Nimptschen, where Catharine von Bora, Luther's 
 future wife, then a girl of sixteen, was nun. As 
 Staupitz and Link accompanied Luther to this place, 
 and as the former performed in this instance the 
 duties of visitation, it would seem that Luther was 
 here practically initiated into his new calling. 
 While they were thus engaged at Grimma, Tetzel 
 made his appearance in the adjacent town of Wurt- 
 zen, and practised his arts in selling indulgences so 
 shamelessly as to arouse the indignation of both 
 Luther and Staupitz. This is the time when the 
 former resolved to expose the traffic, and threatened 
 "to make a hole in Tetzel's drum." 
 
 We next find him in Dresden, examining the 
 state of the monastery of the Augustinians in that 
 place. Here he writes a letter, May 1, to the prior 
 in Mainz, requesting him to send back to Dresden 
 a runaway monk, "For," says he, "that lost sheep 
 belongeth to me. It is my duty to find him and 
 bring him back from his wanderings, if so it please 
 the Lord Jesus. I entreat you therefore, reverend 
 father, by our common faith in Christ, and by our 
 profession, to send him unto me, if in your kindness 
 you can, either at Dresden or Wittenberg, or rather 
 persuade him, and affectionately and kindly move 
 him to come of his own accord. I will meet him 
 with open arms, if he will but return. He need 
 not fear that he has offended me. I know full well
 
 M. 32.] IN WITTENBERG. 163 
 
 that offences must come ; nor is it strange that a 
 man should fall. It is rather strange that he should 
 rise again and stand. Peter fell, that he might 
 know he was but a man. At the present day also, 
 the cedars of Lebanon, whose summits reach the 
 skies, fall. The angels fell in heaven, and Adam 
 in paradise. Is it then strange that a reed should 
 quiver in the breeze, and the smoking lamp be put 
 out ?" This is the first letter in which he signs his 
 name as " Vicar of the Augustinian Eremites in 
 Misnia and Thuringia." 
 
 His next letter, (and we give all in their order 
 which are written in 1516,) is dated May 29, after 
 he had nearly finished his tour. He had been in 
 Erfurt and was then in Gotha, which he was un- 
 willing to leave without paying his respects in some 
 way to Mutianus, a great classical and belles-lettres 
 scholar, who, as long ago as when Luther was a 
 student at Erfurt, was at the head of a literary club, 
 to which many of the university friends of Luther 
 belonged. Luther addresses him thus : " That I 
 have not visited you, most learned and accomplished 
 Mutianus, nor invited you to visit me, is owing 
 first to my haste and the stress of my business, 
 and secondly, to my high opinion and true venera- 
 tion of you. Our friendship is of too short a stand- 
 ing to justify me in humbling your excellence so 
 far as to request you to visit me. I must now go 
 where my duty calleth me, but not without first 
 saluting you, though, from a sense of my ignorance 
 and uncouth style, I shrink from it. But my affec- 
 tion for you overcometh my modesty; and that 
 rustic Corydon, Martin, barbarous and accustomed 
 only to cackle among the geese, saluteth you, the 
 scholar, the man of the most polished erudition.
 
 164 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1516. 
 
 Yet I am sure, or certainly presume that Mutianus 
 valueth the heart above tongue or pen; and my 
 heart is sufficiently erudite, for it is sufficiently de- 
 voted to you. Farewell, most excellent father in 
 the Lord Jesus, and be not forgetful of me." Post- 
 script. " One thing I wish you to know : father 
 John Lange, whom you have known as a Greek 
 and Latin scholar, and what is more, as a man of a 
 pure heart, hath now lately been made prior of the 
 Erfurt convent by me. Unto man commend him 
 by a friendly word, and unto God by your pray- 
 ers." 
 
 The same day he wrote another letter from Lan- 
 gensalza, a little north of Gotha, to Lange him- 
 self, instructing him how to proceed in his official 
 station. He says at the close : " I have not found 
 in this district any convents in so good a state as here 
 and in Gottern," [between Langensalza and Miihl- 
 hausen.] " I have despatched my business here in 
 one hour, and think I shall do the same there in two. 
 By the blessing of God, I hope to proceed toward 
 Nordhausen to-morrow, trusting that in these two 
 places God will work without me both in spiritual 
 and temporal things, though the devil is unwill- 
 ing." 
 
 On the 8th of June, he is again in "Wittenberg, 
 and writes to Spalatin, Frederic's secretary, dissuad- 
 ing the elector from his purpose of making Stau- 
 pitz bishop. " These are not times to be happy, or 
 even comfortable in ruling as bishop, i. e. in being 
 given up to carousals, sodomy and Roman corrup- 
 tion." Though he is "free from such vices," he 
 ought not to be involved " in the whirlpools and 
 violent tempests of the bishops' courts." 
 
 On the 22d ; he writes to Dressel, prior of the
 
 ^3. 32.] IN WITTENBERG. 165 
 
 monastery at Neustadt, a little south of Jena, who 
 had some difficulty with the monks, endeavouring 
 to comfort him in his afflictions. He was obliged 
 afterward to depose him, for want of skill rather 
 than of good intention, and to permit the convent 
 to choose another. In the former letter, he says : 
 " You seek and strive for peace, but in a wrong 
 way. You seek it as the world giveth it, not as 
 Christ giveth. . . . You cry with Israel, ' Peace, 
 peace,' and yet there is no peace. Cry rather with 
 Christ, l The cross, the cross/ and yet there is no 
 cross. The cross ceaseth to be such as soon as you 
 can say, ' Blessed cross ; among all the kinds of 
 wood, there is nothing like unto it.' Behold, then, 
 how kindly the Lord inviteth you unto true peace, 
 when he besetteth you all around with such crosses." 
 In the latter, he addresses Dressel and the chapter 
 thus : "I hear with grief, as I well deserve, excel- 
 lent fathers and brethren, that you are living void 
 of peace and unity, and though you are in one house, 
 you are not of one way ; neither are you, according 
 to the rule, of one heart and one mind. This misera- 
 ble and unprofitable kind of life cometh either from 
 your lack of humility for where humility is there 
 is peace or from my negligence, or at least from 
 your fault and mine, in not beseeching the Lord 
 that made us, and praying that he would direct our 
 way in his sight, and lead us in his righteousness. 
 He erreth, he erreth, he erreth, who presumeth to 
 direct himself, not to say others, by his own coun- 
 sel." He then lays the blame chiefly on the brethren 
 for not submitting to the prior, but, with kind 
 words, requires the prior to resign, at the same time 
 pronouncing him a well-meaning, upright man. But 
 there must be peace and concord. The brethren
 
 166 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1516 
 
 are to choose their own prior, and then pray and 
 strive for union. 
 
 The remaining letters of this year are those written 
 to his particular friends Lange and Spalatin. They 
 give an interesting view of his occupations and cares. 
 To the former, under date of June 30, he says : " I 
 wrote to you from Sangerhausen, [north of Erfurt 
 and near Eisleben,] most excellent father, that if you 
 had any insubordinate brother, you might send him 
 thither by way of correction. I now write unto 
 you again from Wittenberg, not only desiring, but 
 beseeching you, to send George of Schleusingen 
 or William Fischer to the brethren at Eisleben, or 
 at least allow them to go, till the reverend father 
 [Staupitz] shall return. Rigorous necessity requir- 
 eth it. Say to that brother, and to all, that this is 
 done by me not from violence, but because we are 
 all bound, and I especially, to maintain the honour 
 of the vicariate everywhere and particularly that of 
 our reverend vicar. These same fathers [at Eisleben] 
 sent me a brother who came near introducing the 
 plague into that young conventual house. Brother 
 Caspar, a senior there, lieth dead. Reader Antony 
 is dead. Father Bacalaureus is in Leipsic. Two 
 others are abroad, as you know, begging money 
 for the building. The brother before-mentioned 
 is now here with me. You yourself see how we 
 need succour. Neither you nor others need be afraid, 
 the plague doth not prevail there. Farewell, and 
 say farewell to the fathers, masters, the reader and 
 others, not in my name, but the Lord's." The 
 reader here mentioned is his friend George Leiffer, 
 to whom the letter of April 15th was addressed. 
 The next letter, written August 30th, to Lange, is 
 accompanied with Luther's oration delivered to the
 
 JE. 32.] IN WITTENBERG. 167 
 
 convent at Gottern wishing him to show it or send 
 it to Braun of Eisenach, Wigand of Walthershausen, 
 and reader George Leiffer, or any who should wish 
 to see it. The remainder of the letter relates to 
 difficulties experienced in maintaining study in the 
 cloisters. " You need not send brethren who are 
 students to me, first for that we have too many [in 
 the cloister] already; and secondly because the 
 plague hath broken out vehemently here." October 
 5th, he writes again to the same ; " Just as if we 
 [at Wittenberg] were in such abundance here, that 
 those which you [at Erfurt,] who are rich, cannot 
 maintain, we in our poverty could. We shall have 
 
 a the cloister] thirty-six here this winter, unless 
 e plague prevent, and forty, if all whose names 
 are entered should come. You seem to have 
 drunken in the Erfurt spirit of distrust, as though 
 God could not feed even the ungrateful, and pre- 
 serve even those that do not desire it. Then you 
 make this monastery so much your own, that you 
 call other monks strangers, and ask me to come to 
 the aid of my mother [the Erfurt monastery.] Take 
 care that you continue to walk according to your 
 Tauler, and remain free [from all particular inte- 
 rests,] and common for all things, as becometh the 
 son of a common God and of a common church. 
 Brother John Metzel I will send you as soon as I 
 learn that he can be spared from Eisleben. 
 
 "Touching my theses, or rather Bartholomew 
 Feldkirk's, there is no cause why your Gabrielists 
 [followers of Gabriel Biel] should marvel, albeit 
 ours here continually do the same. The theses were 
 not written by me, but were gotten up by Feldkirk, 
 because of the cackling of my enemies against my 
 lectures. This he did, to the end that these things
 
 168 LIFE OP WTHER. [1516. 
 
 might be publicly debated, under my presiding, 
 in order to stop the mouths of the garrulous, or to 
 learn the opinions of others.* .... I will 
 keep a few days the brethren which you sent unto 
 me, and see what I can do, or how it shall turn out 
 with the plague, which has begun. I should be 
 sorry to send them back again, for they are apt for 
 study. And yet I am urged by want; but the 
 Lord liveth and reigneth." The large number of 
 these inmates of the Augustinian cloisters who were 
 sent to Wittenberg to study in the university and 
 live in the monastery, without expense, will account 
 for the fact that so many of the students who took 
 their degrees in theology at Wittenberg about this 
 time, and of those monks who first embraced the 
 doctrines of the Reformation, were Augustinians. 
 How admirably was Luther, all this time, sowing 
 the seed for a future harvest; as well by directing 
 the studies of nearly all the promising young men 
 of his order, as by securing, through his diligence 
 and energy an entire ascendency in the monasteries 
 of his province ! 
 
 During the month of August he made several 
 journeys on business connected with the duties 
 of his office. After a letter on matters of local 
 interest, written from Kemberg, whither the pro- 
 fessors and students often fled in the time of the 
 plague, we find another, in which there is an amus- 
 ing account of Luther's accumulated labours. " I 
 have need, almost," he writes again to Lange, "of 
 
 * It is these theses on the freedom of the will, written 
 and defended by Feldkirk, but in reality emanating from 
 Luther, that were the occasion of the sparring between 
 Carlstadt and Eck, which terminated in the Leipsic dis- 
 putation.
 
 JE. 32.] IN WITTENBERG. 169 
 
 two scribes or secretaries. I do hardly any thing 
 through the whole day, but write letters. I there- 
 fore cannot tell whether I do always write the same 
 things or no. See for yourself. I am the preacher 
 of the cloister ; I am reader at the table ; I am re- 
 quired every day to be parish-preacher ; I am direc- 
 tor of the studies of the brethren ; I am vicar, that 
 is, eleven times prior; I am inspector of the fish- 
 ponds in Litzkau; I am advocate for the Hertze- 
 bergers in Torgau; I am lecturer on Paul; I am 
 commentator on the Psalms; and, as I have said, 
 the greater part of my time is occupied in writing 
 letters. I seldom have time for the canonical hours 
 and for the mass, to say nothing of the temptations 
 of the flesh, the world and the devil. You see what 
 a man of leisure I am. Concerning brother John 
 Metzel, I think my opinion and reply have already 
 reached you. Nevertheless, I will see what I can 
 do. How do you suppose I can find a place for all 
 your Sardanapaluses and sybarites [easy monks]? 
 If you have trained them up wrong, you must sup- 
 port them after thus training them. I have useless 
 brethren enough everywhere, if any can be useless 
 to a patient mind. I am satisfied that the useless 
 can be made of more use than the most useful. Sup- 
 port them, therefore, for the present. In respect of 
 the brethren you sent to me, I think, (but I am not 
 sure,) I lately wrote unto you. The convert,* with 
 the young men, I sent to master Spangenberg, as 
 they desired, to the end that they might escape 
 from breathing this pestilential air. Two I have 
 kept here, with two others from Cologne, in whose 
 good parts I felt so deep a concern that I chose 
 
 * One who becomes monk late in life. 
 15
 
 170 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1516. 
 
 rather to keep them, at no little cost, than send them 
 away. There are now twenty-two priests and twelve 
 youths, forty-one persons in all, who live upon our 
 more than most scanty stores. But the Lord will 
 provide. You say you began yesterday [to lecture] 
 upon the second part of Lombard's Sentences. To- 
 morrow, I shall begin on the Epistle to the Galatians. 
 Albeit, I fear the plague will not suffer me to go 
 on. It taketh away two or three each several day. 
 A son of our neighbour, Faber, opposite, who was 
 well yesterday, is carried to his burial to-day. An- 
 other son lieth infected. What shall I say? It is 
 already here, and hath begun to rage suddenly and 
 vehemently especially with the young. You ask 
 me and Bartholomew [Feldkirk] to flee with you. 
 Whither shall I flee ? I hope the world will not fall 
 to pieces, if brother Martin do fall. The brethren I 
 shall disperse throughout all the country, if the pesti- 
 lence should prevail. But I am placed here, and my 
 duty of obedience will not allow me to flee, until 
 the authority which commanded me hither shall 
 command me away." 
 
 Who can fail in this letter, to see Luther 
 with almost every trait of his character? How 
 frank and agreeable his manner with Lange, and 
 how sportive his rebukes ! Yet how sensible and 
 earnest in respect to useless monks; and how 
 ready to turn the evil to a spiritual account ! How 
 strong his sympathy with young students of enter- 
 prise, and how prompt to aid them! What fidelity 
 in maintaining his post in time of danger, and in 
 securing all but himself! Death was a trifle to 
 him, compared with unfaithfulness. So we see 
 him here, just one year and five days before the 
 ninety-five theses or indulgences were published, like
 
 JE. 33.] IN WITTENBERG. 171 
 
 a stream, broad and deep, and ever growing broader 
 and deeper as it advances. No character was ever 
 more steadily progressive than his, from 1507 to 
 1517. 
 
 The only remaining letter to Lange, during the 
 year 1516, is but a note, in which he commands 
 that the three obstreperous monks, of whom repeated 
 complaints had been made, should be sent to San- 
 gerhausen; which seems to have been frequently 
 honoured in this way. The letters to Spalatin 
 speak with disapprobation of the way in which 
 Erasmus explains "the righteousness of the lawj" 
 returns thanks to the Elector Frederic, "for the 
 present of a garment of too fine cloth for a monk's 
 habit, did it not come from a prince ;" gives an ac- 
 count of the success of Staupitz in collecting relics 
 along the cities of the Rhine; and explains why 
 Luther is not yet prepared to publish his notes on 
 the Psalms. 
 
 We have now reached the year 1517, so celebrated 
 as the one from which the great Reformation of the 
 sixteenth century takes its date. But there are yet ten 
 months to the 31st of October, the day on which Luther 
 posted up his theses against Tetzel. We cannot do 
 better than follow him through this brief period in 
 his correspondence. January 27th, he writes to his 
 old acquaintance and colleague Scheurl, a jurist, then 
 at Nuremberg, acknowledging the receipt of his let- 
 ter, which is "to me," he says, "most pleasant and 
 yet most sad. But why do you wrinkle your brow ? 
 For what could you write more pleasant than the 
 merited eulogy of our reverend father, the vicar, or, 
 rather, Christ in him? Nothing more grateful to 
 me could be said than that the word of Christ 
 [through Staupitz] is preached, heard, received ; nay,
 
 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1617. 
 
 rather lived and felt and understood. On the other 
 side, you could write nothing more bitter than the 
 courting of my friendship and the honouring me with 
 so many vain titles." And in this strain of unaf- 
 fected modesty the whole letter is written. 
 
 In a letter to Lange, dated March 1, after men- 
 tioning that he sends Didymus, "who is still ignor- 
 ant of the usages of the order/' to Erfurt, and that 
 he is about to publish his translation and exposition 
 of the Penitential Psalms, he proceeds to say: "I 
 am reading our Erasmus, and my esteem for him 
 
 groweth less every day With him, what 
 
 is of man prevaileth over what is of God. Though 
 I am loth to judge him, I must admonish you not 
 to read his works; or rather, not to receive all he 
 saith without examination. These are dangerous 
 times, and I perceive that a man is not to be esteemed 
 truly wise because he understandeth Greek and 
 Hebrew; seeing that St. Jerome, with his five lan- 
 guages, did not match Augustine with one though 
 
 to Erasmus it may seem otherwise This 
 
 opinion of him I keep hid, lest I should strengthen 
 the opposition of his enemies [the monks and priests]. 
 Perhaps the Lord, in due time, will give him under- 
 standing. Farewell. Salute the fathers, the mas- 
 ters and the reader; and inquire whether Dr. Jodo- 
 cus [Truttvetter] will reply to me." 
 
 In two notes to Spalatin, (April 3d and 9th,) Lu- 
 ther begs a stipend for a poor student; and, in reply 
 to a previous request, recommends the reading of 
 certain works of Augustine, Ambrose and Cyprian. 
 On the 6th of May, he writes again to Scheurl, as 
 follows: "First, I thank you, most excellent man, 
 for the present of the treatises of Staupitz, but lament 
 that my trifles should be spread among you by the
 
 M 38.] IN WITTENBERG. 173 
 
 reverend father. They were not written for your 
 delicate and polite Nurembergers, but for the rude 
 
 Saxons Upon your requesting me to write 
 
 familiarly to Eck, I wrote as carefully as I could. 
 .... The propositions hereunto joined, I send to 
 you, and through you to master Wenceslaus [Link], 
 and to any others who are entertained with such 
 things. They are not the paradoxes of Cicero, [who 
 wrote a book under this title,] but of our Carlstadt, 
 or rather of St. Augustine. These paradoxes will 
 expose the carelessness or ignorance of all those that 
 looked upon them as more paradox than orthodox."* 
 
 The next succeeding letter, giving a provost in- 
 structions how to treat a fallen monk, may be passed 
 over. May 15, Luther sends a few lines to Lange, 
 in which he says, "The reverend vicar writeth that 
 he shall soon return to us. Our theology and St. 
 Augustine go on prosperously by Grod's help, and 
 reign in our university. Aristotle is sinking by 
 little and little, and verging towards a fall from 
 which he will never more rise. The scholastic lec- 
 tures have wonderfully lost their savour; and no 
 one can expect to have hearers, unless he consent to 
 lecture on the Bible, or on St. Augustine, or some 
 writer which has church authority." Thus com- 
 pletely had Luther revolutionized the university, 
 and given a new direction to its studies. 
 
 Omitting two unimportant letters to Lange, we 
 come to the one bearing date September 4, in 
 which he says, "I send you, by master Otto, my 
 propositions, [against the scholastic theology,] and 
 
 * These propositions, in connection with those of Feld- 
 kirk, mentioned above, led to the disputation which, in 
 the following year, ensued at Leipsic between Eck and 
 the Wittenberg theologians. 
 
 15*
 
 174 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1517. 
 
 my exposition of the ten commandments 
 
 I wait with much, with very great, with stupendous 
 anxiety, to learn what you think of these paradoxes 
 of mine. I suppose that to your theologians these 
 paradoxes will appear heterodox ; though to us they 
 cannot be otherwise than orthodox. Let me know 
 as quick as you can; and say, in my name, to my 
 masters and reverend fathers of the theological 
 faculty and others, that I am fully prepared to 
 come and discuss these subjects with them; either 
 in the university or in the monastery. Let them 
 not suppose that I wish to whisper these things in 
 a corner; if our university is still so insignificant as 
 to seem to be a corner." How evidently are things 
 tending to a crisis ! 
 
 On the llth of the same month, he wrote a letter to 
 Scheurl, the last from which we shall quote, the three 
 which remain being but casual notes. It well illus- 
 trates, what is indeed everywhere obvious, how per- 
 fectly Luther adapted himself in tone and manner to 
 the various characters of his correspondents. He 
 writes thus : " Although, my dearest Christopher, I 
 have no occasion to write to you sufficient to justify 
 me in writing to such a man, yet this is a sufficient 
 one for me, namely, the desire to write to a friend, 
 (setting aside all the titles and dignities with which 
 you are adorned,) to a friend who is pure and most 
 upright and urbane, and what is most to the point 
 lately known and acquired. If silence is ever to 
 be esteemed a fault, the silence of friend toward 
 friend is particularly so, since playfulness and trifles, 
 not less than weighty matters, strengthen, not to 
 say perfect friendship. St. Jerome exacted this 
 of his friend, that he should write and inform him 
 that he had nothing to write. Thus, I determined
 
 JE. 83.] IN WITTENBERG. 175 
 
 to write trifles rather than to be silent toward a 
 friend. But what will that brother Martin, falsely 
 called the theologian, ever write besides trifles ? who, 
 amid the creaking and pell-mell of syllogisms, hath 
 made no proficiency in polite literature ; or, if he 
 ever had any taste of learning and eloquence, it hath 
 been kept back in a state of stammering infancy by 
 long practice and use in that other style of writing. 
 But my preface is long enough, and too long, if I 
 am not to write a volume, instead of a letter, that 
 is, doubly to unbend in trifles and foolishness, when 
 to do it once, is more than enough for a theologian. 
 The aim of my letter is to let you know how high 
 an opinion I have formed of you, and of your 
 fidelity. . . . But it cometh to mind, that you sent 
 by Ulrich Pindar, the small treatises of our reverend 
 father, the vicar, about two florins' worth, a part 
 whereof I have sold, and a part given away to good 
 friends of the reverend father. The money received, 
 I have given to the poor, as you required, that is, 
 to myself and the brethren, for I could find no one 
 poorer than myself. ... I send you my proposi- 
 tions, or paradoxes, or heterodoxies, as many regard 
 them. You can show them to our learned and in- 
 genious Eck, that I may know what he thinketh of 
 them." 
 
 We have now concluded what has generally been 
 treated as an almost unknown period of Luther's 
 life, and what most biographers have despatched in 
 a few pages. Henceforth, the career of the great 
 Reformer is of the most public character, attracting 
 the attention of the religious world more than that 
 of any other individual in Christendom.
 
 176 
 
 LIFE OP LUTHER. 
 
 [1517. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 FROM THE PUBLISHING OF THE THESES IN 1517, TO THE PRE- 
 SENTATION OF THE AUGSBUKG CONFESSION IN 1530. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE OPENING OF THE REFORMATION IN 1517, TILL THE 
 TIME OF THE LEIPSIO DISPUTATION IN 1518. 
 
 SECTION I. Indulgences. 
 
 HOUGH much 
 
 & yet remained 
 for Luther to 
 learn, and many 
 and great 
 changes in his 
 U opinions were 
 yet to take 
 place, we may 
 consider the 
 ground-work of 
 his character as 
 having been al- 
 ready firmly 
 laid. In trac- 
 ing his internal history, and searching out all 
 the influences which the social and religious in- 
 stitutions of his times exerted upon him in the for- 
 mation of his character, we have incidentally brought 
 before us many scenes which strikingly illustrate 
 the fallen and corrupt state of the church. To this,
 
 JE. 33.] INDULGENCES. 177 
 
 in its contrariety to the religious character and as- 
 pirations of Luther, as represented in the foregoing 
 statements, it is now necessary to direct particular 
 attention. The Reformer stands before us in all 
 his leading peculiarities. It would be well as dis- 
 tinctly to see the church in all those deformities, 
 which called so loudly for a reformation. The 
 limits of this work, however, make it necessary to 
 confine our attention to that class of abuses which 
 the preceding account has not exhibited, the abuses 
 practised under the name of INDULGENCES. 
 
 The tendency of the Catholic church to degrade 
 religion from its high spiritual character to a mere 
 round of outward forms and ceremonies, reached its 
 height in the practical workings of the system of 
 confessions, penances and indulgences. As the 
 most marked peculiarities of Luther's reform con- 
 sisted in making every thing in religion depend on 
 Christ, rather than on human mediators, whether 
 on earth or in heaven, and our connection with 
 Christ to depend on the spiritual affections of each 
 individual's heart, rather than on outward rites and 
 ecclesiastical relations, it was perfectly natural that 
 a collision should take place just where it did, namely, 
 at those points of the two opposite systems which 
 related to the removal of sin. In the one system, 
 the agent was the church : in the other it was 
 Christ. In the one, the sinner was to be reformed 
 by penances, from which he might purchase release ; 
 in the other, he was to exercise godly sorrow for sin 
 and faith in Christ. The one was external and sa- 
 cramental ; the other was internal and spiritual. 
 
 How could such a perversion of the New Testa- 
 ment doctrine of repentance and remission of sin 
 ever make its way into a nominally Christian com-
 
 178 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1517. 
 
 munity? To this inquiry there is a decisive histo- 
 rical reply; but the process is long and the answer 
 complicated. Like the formation of a coral island, 
 the perversion was one of gradual accumulation. It 
 had small beginnings, and went on for fifteen cen- 
 turies, keeping even pace with the intellectual and 
 moral character of the age. 
 
 First, outward mortifications were injudiciously, 
 but with good intentions, imposed by the church upon 
 members under ecclesiastical censure, as signs of re- 
 pentance. Next, the priest enjoined similar things 
 privately, upon those members who, in consequence 
 of certain sins, were supposed to be unprepared for the 
 communion. Then the priest, who had already as- 
 sumed a false position in the church, as mediator be- 
 tween God and his people, became lord of the indi- 
 vidual conscience, examined every one before the com- 
 munion, decided, as an infallible judge, upon the exact 
 amount of each one's sin, and affixed a corresponding 
 penance. Repentance itself, instead of being regarded 
 as a duty always to be performed, was made a part 
 of an ordinance of only periodical recurrence. At 
 those stated times, the individual was to feel con- 
 trition, to confess to the priest, and to make satis- 
 faction by submitting to the penances imposed. 
 The first of these three parts of the ordinance, 
 namely, contrition, was lightly passed over. The 
 second, the confession, was accepted on condition 
 of its being full and complete. The third, satis- 
 faction, was to be attended to afterward; and with 
 reference to this, too, absolution was conditionally 
 pronounced by the priest, and the penitent was 
 then admitted to the communion. In theory, those 
 three successive acts must be faithfully performed 
 by the penitent, or the absolution was of no efficacy.
 
 M. 33.] INDULGENCES. 179 
 
 But how was one to know that his penitence was 
 sufficient? How would he be sure that no individual 
 sin was omitted in the confession ? Why should ab- 
 solution be pronounced before the conditions were all 
 fulfilled, before satisfaction was known to be made? 
 
 These were the questions which tortured the mind 
 of Luther, when he was a conscientious monk. The 
 theological objections to the whole system are, that 
 the third part is without foundation, a mere human 
 invention ; that the second is in no sense necessary, 
 and arose from a false interpretation of two or three 
 passages of Scripture ; is founded on an absurd view 
 of the nature of sin, as a measurable quantity, and 
 is, moreover, utterly impracticable, as no mortal has 
 the means of searching the heart and ascertaining 
 the precise amount of a man's sins. The first part is 
 the only one which has any value or authority, and 
 this is perverted by being so far limited to a parti- 
 cular time and place. But the worst of all is, that 
 the practice fell far short of the theory, miserable 
 as that was : and contrition, the only shadow of a 
 virtue that remained, was just the part which the 
 poor ignorant people least regarded. Luther at- 
 tacked the practice; his opponents defended the 
 theory, and there the matter stands to this day. 
 
 The theory of the treasure of the church, con- 
 sisting of the superabundant merits of Christ and 
 of his followers, especially the martyrs, on which 
 the Bishop of Rome could make drafts at plea- 
 sure, was a mere scholastic invention, made at a late 
 period, for the purpose of propping up a system 
 which had long existed in practice. On this there 
 was no agreement among the scholastic theologians ; 
 Alexander of Hales maintaining one view, Albert 
 the Great another, and Thomas Aquinas a third.
 
 180 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1517. 
 
 Luther did not fail to take advantage of this cir- 
 cumstance, and triumphantly maintained, that in 
 attacking these modern individual opinions, he by 
 no means attacked the doctrines of the ancient uni- 
 versal church. 
 
 Indulgences relate only to the third part of the 
 sacrament of penitence, and consist in substituting, 
 in the place of satisfaction, or the endurance of the 
 penance imposed by the priest, pilgrimages to sa- 
 cred places, crusades against the infidels, or pecu- 
 niary contributions for certain religious purposes. 
 The last were, in theory, a substitute for the others, 
 or for ecclesiastical penalties : but in practice, a tax 
 for sins. Indeed, it is said, that the modern system 
 of taxation is borrowed from the church practice. 
 
 Plenary indulgence could proceed only from the 
 pope, and was granted to those who went on a pil- 
 grimage to the holy sepulchre at Jerusalem. The 
 indulgences given by archbishops and bishops were 
 restricted to their own dioceses, and could not ex- 
 tend beyond forty days. When the crusades had 
 lost their novelty, pilgrimages to Rome were ac- 
 cepted as a substitute. There, at certain sacred 
 places, were stations for prayer, which were resorted 
 to by pilgrims. Most of all were indulgences given 
 at St. Peter's, on Christmas eve. As Boniface VIII. 
 happened to be elected on such an occasion, he ap- 
 pointed a jubilee in 1300, after the manner of the 
 old Roman secular games, and promised plenary in- 
 dulgence to all who should daily visit St. Peter's 
 and St. Paul's for thirty successive days. Strangers 
 who came to Rome as pilgrims were required to spend 
 but half that length of time in visiting those places. 
 The income of that single jubilee has been esti- 
 mated at fifteen millions of florins. Hence, Luther
 
 M. 33.] INDULGENCES. 181 
 
 said, it was " truly a golden year." Because men 
 could not live long enough to see the close of another 
 century, Clement VI. appointed another jubilee, to 
 take place at the end of fifty years, and added the 
 Lateran church, as a third station or place of sacred 
 resort. Even this period, one has observed, seemed 
 an eternity to Urban VI. He, therefore, caused the 
 next to be held after thirty-three years, the period 
 of the Saviour's life, and appointed St. Mary Mag- 
 giore as a fourth place of pilgrimage. These four 
 churches had each a golden door, opened only on 
 the year of jubilee. The money, which the pil- 
 grims must not forget, was received by priests at 
 these four churches, and afterward at three others 
 also. Just before the year of jubilee, preachers of 
 jubilee and of indulgence were sent into various 
 countries, calling the attention of the people to the 
 approaching year of grace. In 1400, the King of 
 France prohibited his subjects from visiting Rome 
 at the jubilee. In 1450, the Duke of Bavaria did 
 the same, the council of Basle having passed a 
 decree against the practice. This last year of ju- 
 bilee seems not to have been so profitable to the 
 successor of St. Peter as the preceding had been, for 
 after it had passed, he sent a legate, Nicholas of 
 Cusa, into all the dioceses of Germany, to receive 
 the change from those who had not found it conve- 
 nient to visit Rome ! 
 
 But it was found that money for building and 
 repairing churches and bridges could be most con- 
 veniently raised by selling indulgences. Thomas 
 Aquinas had taught that indulgences could be 
 given in consideration of any act performed for the 
 glory of God and the good of the church, "such 
 as building of churches and bridges, performing pil- 
 
 16
 
 182 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1517. 
 
 grimages and giving alms." In 1319, John XXII. 
 granted forty days' indulgence to those who should 
 aid in building a bridge across the Elbe at Dresden. 
 In 1484, the papal legate promised the same to all 
 who should contribute towards rebuilding a church 
 destroyed by fire at Freiberg, in Saxony, and a hun- 
 dred days to those who should do so for another 
 church in the same city. In 1491, Innocent VIII. 
 granted to the inhabitants of Saxony, a dispensation 
 from the quarterly fasts for a period of twenty years, 
 on condition that each person would pay the twen- 
 tieth part of a Romish florin annually toward build- 
 ing a bridge and chapel at Torgau, and the colle- 
 giate church at Freiberg. One-fourth, however, of 
 the whole sum was to go to Rome, for building St. 
 Peter's. This ordinance was resisted by the faculty 
 of law in Leipsic, and the Bishop of Meissen re- 
 fused to publish the bull in his see. 
 
 In 1496, Alexander VI. endeavoured to allay the 
 opposition, by promising that when the twenty years 
 were expired, this kind of indulgences should not be 
 repeated in Saxony. But his successor, Julius II. , 
 paid no regard to that promise, for in 1509, the 
 year before Luther went to Rome, he revived the 
 indulgences for twenty years thereafter. In 1512, 
 the year of Luther's doctorate, when he took the 
 oath by which he felt himself authorized to oppose 
 Tetzel's doctrines, Julius enlarged and extended the 
 system of indulgences in an unheard-of manner, in 
 order to prosecute the enterprise in which he had 
 been engaged six years, of erecting the magnificent 
 structure of St. Peter's. Leo X. followed in his 
 steps, and in 1514, 1515, and, most of all, in 1516, 
 sent his agents into Germany, to sell indulgences for 
 this purpose.
 
 JE. 33.] INDULGENCES. 183 
 
 At this point, an extraordinary character presents 
 himself, to whom we have before alluded and whose 
 name is, for all time, so fatally connected with 
 Luther's that it cannot be passed over in silence. 
 It is Tetzel, the notorious preacher and vender of 
 indulgences. Born in Leipsic, not far from 1460, 
 he studied in the gymnasium of his native city, 
 and then entered the university in 1482, one 
 year before Luther was born. After a protracted 
 course of study, particularly under the celebrated 
 Professor Wimpina, he took his degree in 1487, and 
 ranked as the sixth student in a class of fifty -five. 
 As he excelled in oratory, his friends were surprised 
 at his entering, two years afterward, the Dominican 
 monastery, then called the Paulinum, and now 
 known as a university building under that name. 
 He was soon made priest, and was sent to Zwickau, 
 where, by his ready and showy eloquence, he ac- 
 quired considerable popularity as a preacher. But 
 here, also, he furnished the first proof of his worth- 
 less character. 
 
 On a certain day, he proposed to be the sexton's 
 guest, who excused himself, saying, he was too poor 
 to furnish suitable entertainment for so distinguished 
 a man. " No matter," was the ready reply, " we will 
 easily provide ourselves with the money. Look at the 
 calendar, and see what saint' s-day it is to-morrow." 
 
 It happened to be the day of Juvenal, and the 
 sexton regretted that the saint was so little known. 
 "We will make him known," said Tetzel. "To- 
 morrow, ring the church-bell as at all high festi- 
 vals, and we will hold high mass." His orders 
 were obeyed, and the mass was accordingly held. 
 
 When the ceremony was ended, Tetzel ascended 
 the pulpit, and said, "Dear people, I have some-
 
 184 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1517. 
 
 thing to say unto you. If I should withhold it, 
 your salvation would be in peril. You know, we 
 have long prayed to one saint and another, but 
 they have become old, and are tired of attending to 
 us and aiding us. To-day is the festival of Juvenal, 
 and though he hath not yet been known to you, it 
 is all the better. He is a new saint, and will hear 
 us the more patiently. Juvenal was a holy martyr, 
 who shed his innocent blood for the truth. If you 
 would enjoy the benefit of his innocence, lay some- 
 thing, each one of you, upon the altar, on this day 
 of high mass. You, that are noble and rich, go 
 forward and give to the rest a good example." 
 He received the collection, placed a part of it upon 
 the altar, and took the remainder himself, and said, 
 with a smile to the sexton, "Now, we have enough 
 for our evening cups." Such is the account of the 
 old Zwickau Chronicle, and it can hardly be supposed 
 to be a pure fiction. 
 
 In 1502, he was selected as papal agent and 
 preacher, offering indulgences for the jubilee that 
 had just passed, to the multitudes in Nurenberg, 
 Leipsic, Magdeburg, and other German cities who 
 did not visit Rome. Next, we find him on the Vis- 
 tula, similarly employed, and raising money for a 
 crusade by the Teutonic Knights, against the Rus- 
 sians and Tartars. From 1507 to 1513, he was 
 itinerating again in the cities and towns of Saxony. 
 For two years he made Annaberg, a new mining 
 town considerably to the south of Leipsic, his head- 
 . quarters. " The surrounding mountains," said he, 
 " would be turned into silver, if the people would 
 only purchase indulgences." 
 
 In the summer of 1510, while in Annaberg, at 
 St. Anne's, with the red-cross raised, as usual, be-
 
 M. 33.] INDULGENCES. 185 
 
 fore the altar, he said : " Three days more, and the 
 cross will be taken down and the door of heaven 
 closed." Never again would the time return when 
 eternal life and forgiveness of sins would be had so 
 cheap, nor would the liberality of the pope to Ger- 
 many ever be so great again! "Now," said he, "is 
 the accepted time, now is the day of salvation." 
 
 At Gorlitz, where the city council wished to raise 
 money for indulgences to put a copper-roof upon 
 the principal church, Tetzel was employed, and was 
 aided by the parish preacher, the penitentiary priests, 
 the confessors, the rector of the school and his as- 
 sistants, and the Franciscan monks, and they suc- 
 ceeded in collecting forty-five thousand rix dollars ! 
 Of the many anecdotes recorded of him, only one 
 more can find a place here. Whether true or not, it 
 is perfectly characteristic. Wishing, on a certain 
 occasion, to quicken the devotions of the people, he 
 promised to show them, the next day, a feather which 
 the devil plucked from the wing of the archangel 
 Michael. But, during the night, some rogues made 
 their way into his room, found the box of relics, 
 took out the feather and put some coals in its place. 
 Next morning he proceeded to the church with his 
 box, without having opened it, and spoke at large 
 of the virtues of this celestial feather, and opening 
 the box, behold, there was nothing but some black 
 coals ! Not at all disconcerted, he exclaimed, " No 
 marvel that with such a treasure of relics, I have 
 chanced to take the wrong box," and went right on 
 to explain the value of these coals, which were the 
 remains of the burnt body of St. Laurentius ! No- 
 thing better illustrates the childish character and 
 spirit of those times than such original anecdotes, 
 whether true or false.
 
 186 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1517. 
 
 Tetzel afterward went to Innspruck, where he was 
 detected in the grossest immorality and lewdness, 
 and at the intercession of powerful friends, instead 
 of being enclosed in a sack, and cast into the rivfcr, 
 according to the sentence passed against him, was 
 only imprisoned. 
 
 Before we proceed farther with our narrative, we 
 must introduce another new personage, though of a 
 very different order, Albert, the accomplished, but 
 worldly and ambitious Archbishop of Mainz, a 
 young prince now twenty-eight years old. He was 
 the youngest brother of Joachim I., Elector of Bran- 
 denburg, (Prussia.) He had been carefully edu- 
 cated under Eitelwolf von Stein, an ardent lover of 
 classical literature, and one of the founders of the 
 Frankfurt University on the Oder. The young 
 prince attached himself to the liberal party, and 
 favoured the cause of Reuchlin, Erasmus and Von 
 Hutten. Being destined for the church, he was, 
 while a boy, made canon at Magdeburg, Mainz and 
 Treves. At the age of twenty-four, he was made 
 Archbishop of Magdeburg, and, ten days later, Ad- 
 ministrator of Halberstadt, and in five months from 
 that time, Archbishop and Elector of Mainz, thus 
 holding, at the same time, three of the large and 
 wealthy sees of Germany. For the see of Magde- 
 burg, he had obtained from Rome the pallium, (the 
 archbishop's badge of office,) at great expense. He 
 was not sufficiently in funds to procure at his own 
 expense another for the see of Mainz, and yet, 
 at his election, it was expressly stipulated that he, 
 and not the people, should be at that expense. 
 Albert being the third archbishop elected at Mainz, 
 within a period of eight years, the see, if it paid 
 for his pallium thirty thousand florins, the usual
 
 JE. 33.] INDULGENCES. 187 
 
 sum given, would, during that short period, be at 
 the enormous expense of ninety thousand florins 
 for that white strip of cloth.* Albert was obliged 
 to borrow the money of Jacob Fugger, the rich 
 broker, the Rothschild of Augsburg. To get out 
 of his pecuniary embarrassments, he applied to the 
 pope for the appointment of commissary for indul- 
 gences in his own three dioceses and in the Mark of 
 Brandenburg, for a period of three years. The ap- 
 pointment was given him, on the condition that he 
 was to retain half of all the money that should be 
 collected, and pay the remainder to the pope, as 
 usual, for building St. Peter's. The appointment 
 was afterward confirmed and extended. 
 
 Meanwhile Tetzel had got released from prison, 
 with the understanding that he should proceed to 
 Rome and obtain absolution from the pope. He 
 went by way of Mainz, and desired Albert to 
 use his good offices in recommending him to the 
 papal favour, promising his services in turn, if suc- 
 cessful, in raising the thirty thousand florins. 
 With a letter of recommendation from the arch- 
 bishop he went to Rome and applied to Leo, who was 
 not very nice in matters of morality, and not only 
 obtained absolution, but was made sub-commissary 
 for disposing of indulgences under Arcimboldi, ge- 
 neral commissary for Germany. In April, 1516, 
 Tetzel was in Wurzen practising his old art, to 
 which most of his public life was devoted, and this 
 was the time that Luther and Staupitz came in near 
 contact with him, when they were at Grimma. Ar- 
 
 * It was made of lamb's wool, spun and woven by nuns, 
 and consecrated at the graves of the apostles Peter and 
 Paul.
 
 188 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1517. 
 
 cimboldi resigning his office near the end of the same 
 year, Albert was raised to the post of nuncio and 
 general commissary; and Tetzel went immediately 
 to Halle, the favourite residence of Albert, and en- 
 tered into his service. Of this last connection, 
 Luther was ignorant; and very innocently wrote to 
 Albert, as his ecclesiastical superior, requesting him 
 to put a stop to the shameful traffic ! 
 
 In the Archbishop Albert, and in Pope Leo, Luther 
 found himself disappointed even more than in Eras- 
 mus. They were all enlightened and liberal men, but 
 their interest overruled their better judgment, and 
 they all became the personal enemies of the reformer, 
 whom they respected and feared; and whom, in the 
 main points in question, they knew to be in the 
 right. 
 
 It was about the beginning of the year 1517 that 
 Tetzel entered the service of Albert, and well did he 
 redeem the pledge given when on his way to Rome ; 
 for, during the year, he succeeded in collecting one 
 hundred thousand florins, in nominal value sixty -two 
 thousand five hundred dollars, but in real value vastly 
 more. In the Saxon territories, Tetzel was not very 
 popular. The Saxon house was, moreover, jealous 
 of the house of Brandenburg and did not care to 
 have their lands drained to fill Albert's cofiers. 
 Tetzel, therefore, found the best reception either in 
 Albert's territories, the sees of Magdeburg and Hal- 
 berstadt, or in those of his brother, Joachim of 
 Brandenburg. From February to June, we find him 
 at Halle, which belonged to the diocese of Magde- 
 burg, at Annaberg, and once at Leipsic. In Sep- 
 tember, he went north to Berlin, was a short time at 
 Zerbst, and finally came to Jiiterboch, in a detached 
 district of Magdeburg, about eighteen miles to the
 
 JE. 33.] INDULGENCES. 189 
 
 north-east of Wittenberg, and there he was the 
 means of calling out Luther. The house of a certain 
 Teupitz, in which Tetzel then lodged, is still shown 
 to visitors. 
 
 It was reported to Luther that Tetzel made the 
 following declarations in his sermons, viz.: That he 
 had such grace and power from the pope, that though 
 one had corrupted the Holy Virgin Mary, the 
 mother of God, he could grant forgiveness provided 
 the individual should put into the box the proper 
 amount of money; that the red cross of indulgence, 
 with the papal coat of arms, when erected in the 
 church, had as much efficacy as the cross of Christ; 
 that, if St. Peter were present, he could not have 
 greater grace and power than he himself had ; that 
 he would not divide with St. Peter in heaven, for he 
 had redeemed more souls with his indulgences than 
 Peter had with his preaching ; that when one puts 
 money into the box for a soul in purgatory, such 
 soul escaped to heaven as soon as the money tinkled 
 in the box; that the grace of indulgences was the 
 very grace by which a man was reconciled to God ; 
 and that if one obtained indulgences, or a certificate 
 of indulgence, there was no need of contrition, nor 
 sorrow, nor repentance. 
 
 Some of these statements, particularly those more 
 offensive to Papal than to Protestant ears, may be 
 exaggerated. At any rate, Tetzel procured two 
 certificates from the clergy and authorities in Halle, 
 where the first statement was said to have been made, 
 testifying to the contrary. Those certificates were 
 first discovered and published in 1844. But that 
 the reports were for the most part true, is evident, 
 not only from what Luther says, but from Tetzel's 
 own words. In his published instructions to the
 
 190 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1517. 
 
 priests, he said, " Let the people consider that Rome 
 is here. God and St. Peter call you. Give your 
 mind, then, to the obtaining of such great grace, 
 both for the salvation of your own souls and those 
 of your deceased friends. They that impede this 
 work are thereby excommunicated by the pope, and 
 are under the indignation of Almighty God, and of St. 
 Peter and Paul/' In his printed sermons he said, 
 " Let your sheep [an ominous word] know that on 
 these letters are imprinted and inscribed all the 
 ministries of the suffering of Christ. For every 
 mortal sin a man must needs endure seven years 
 penance, either in this life or in purgatory. But 
 with these letters of pardon, you can at one time, 
 and for all cases, have plenary indulgence from all 
 penalties due unto that time; and, afterwards, 
 throughout all your lives, whensoever you shall 
 wish to confess, you can have a like remission ; and, 
 last of all, in the article of death, plenary indulgence 
 from all penalties and sins." 
 
 In order to be prepared to estimate rightly the 
 work of Luther, one must understand not only what 
 his character and views were and what the corrup- 
 tions and abuses of the church were, but also what 
 others before his time had thought and said on the 
 same subject. But not every kind of opposition which 
 was made to the papal hierarchy can claim to be a 
 reformation. A reformation, in the proper sense of 
 the term, is not merely the reaction of reason and 
 philosophy against stupidity and folly, as some 
 modern rationalists would have it ; nor of classical 
 education and refinement against ignorance and bar- 
 barism, such as was manifested by many in Italy, 
 France and Germany at the revival of learning; nor 
 of civil liberty and national independence against
 
 M. 33.] INDULGENCES. 191 
 
 the tyranny of a foreign ecclesiastic, for in this many 
 German emperors, princes and statesmen were far 
 from being deficient ; but it is the reaction of a pure 
 and spiritual Christianity, resting solely on the Bible, 
 against the degeneracy, corruption, false authority 
 and traditions of the Church of Rome ; a sort of 
 Christianized Boodism, which had subjugated the 
 masses of the people to an almost unheard-of super- 
 stition and spiritual despotism. 
 
 To this monstrous system of abuses, men of pro- 
 found piety and of great hearts had offered resistance 
 in the form of religious and theological objections, 
 long before the time of Luther. To say nothing of 
 such men as Wicklif and Huss, out of Germany, or of 
 the many in Germany who had uttered their unavailing 
 lamentations and transient murmurs, we may mention 
 three men, whose theatre of action was along the 
 middle and lower Rhine, who were, theoretically, far 
 in advance of Luther at the time of publishing his 
 well-known theses, namely, John of Goch, whose pub- 
 lic life covered the interval from 1450 to 1475 ; John 
 of Wesel, professor of theology at Erfurt from the 
 year 1440 to 1460, and then for about twenty years 
 preacher at Mainz and Worms ; and John Wessel, 
 a disciple of Thomas & Kempis, and, from 1452 to 
 1479, professor in Cologne, Paris and Heidelberg. 
 What these men did, for about the last quarter of a 
 century before Luther's birth, in undermining the 
 foundations of the papal hierarchy, was certainly not 
 without its effect upon the community ; preparing it 
 for Luther's influence, though he himself was formed 
 for his great enterprise independently of them. 
 
 The first of the three theologians here named, who 
 regarded the Bible as the only authority in matters
 
 192 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1517. 
 
 of religion, and Christ as the only mediator and 
 helper, treated, in his writings, largely of grace and 
 works, and is even an abler and clearer writer 
 on this subject than Luther. Of the last of the 
 three, Luther himself says, "If I had formerly read 
 his works, Luther might have appeared to his enemies 
 as having derived every thing from Wessel, so per- 
 fectly is the spirit of both the same. This coinci- 
 dence giveth me new joy and strength." 
 
 The second, John of Wesel, took up the subject 
 of indulgences in particular, and was more mature 
 and more decided than Luther was at the commence- 
 ment. The very title of his book, which was not 
 "On Indulgences," but "Aga inst Indulgences," is 
 indicative of his position. Among other things, he 
 says : " We read the discourses of Christ, containing, 
 perhaps, all that is necessary to salvation, but we find 
 in them nothing touching indulgences. Afterwards 
 the Apostles wrote epistles and preached, but in 
 them there is no mention made of indulgences. 
 Finally, the distinguished teachers Gregory of Nazi- 
 anzum, Basil, Athanasius, Chrysostom, Ambrose, 
 Jerome, and Augustine wrote many works, approved 
 by the church, and yet they contain nothing about 
 indulgences." " That any priest, or even the pope, 
 can give indulgences by which a man may be re- 
 leased from all the punishments imposed by God, is 
 not taught in the Scriptures." "Some say, and this 
 is the common opinion, that Christ gave to the 
 church the keys of jurisdiction, and that indulgences 
 rest on this power. They say so, but do not prove it. 
 Neither the Old Testament nor the New saith any 
 thing about the keys of jurisdiction. Jurisdiction, as 
 it now is in the church, was brought in by men."
 
 M. 83.] INDULGENCES. 193 
 
 " One may affirm that indulgences are a pious decep- 
 tion of believers, and so many priests have said. 
 They are a pious deception, because believers are 
 thereby moved to make pilgrimages to holy places ; 
 to give alms for pious uses j to build churches ; 
 and to raise armies against the infidels. They be- 
 lieve they shall thereby be delivered from the pun- 
 ishment due to their sins, and from suffering in pur- 
 gatory. In this they are deceived." 
 
 Enough, perhaps, has been said to indicate what 
 is important in the circumstances under which Lu- 
 ther entered publicly upon what may, without af- 
 fectation, be called his "mission." 
 
 SECTION II. Luther's Collision with Tetzel, and the Publica- 
 tion of the Ninety-five Theses. 
 
 FOR a year and a half before the controversy broke 
 out between Luther and Tetzel, the former had 
 directed his attention to the abuses practised in the 
 sale of indulgences. His exposition of the decalogue, 
 delivered as lectures, as early as 1516, and afterwards 
 published, may be referred to as evidence. A sermon 
 against indulgences, as then dispensed, delivered July 
 17, 1517, in the presence of the elector, who had, 
 but little more than a year before, procured the right 
 of granting indulgences in the very same church 
 where the preacher now stood, was not much relished 
 by the prince. When Luther perceived that half 
 of the population of Wittenberg were resorting to 
 Jiiterbock and Zerbst, where Tetzel and his colleague, 
 Rauch, were practising their arts upon the ignorant 
 populace, he warned his hearers, in a discourse held 
 in the little old cloister-chapel, against the deception. 
 " It would be better," said he, " to yive alms to the 
 poor according to the command of Christ, than to 
 
 17
 
 194 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1517. 
 
 buy with money such uncertain grace. He that re- 
 penteth during all his life, and turneth to God with 
 all his heart, receiveth heavenly grace, and the for- 
 giveness of all his sins; which Christ, by his sacrifice 
 and blood hath obtained for us, and offereth us without 
 money, from pure grace." Meanwhile, Luther per- 
 ceived that some of his congregation, who had pur- 
 chased indulgences, relied upon their certificates, and 
 consequently did not come to the confessional, nor seek 
 absolution before the communion. He, therefore, re- 
 fused to administer to them the supper, unless they 
 would first make to him confession of their sins, and 
 submit to the penances he should impose. This they 
 refused to do, and referred to their certificates of indul- 
 gence, in which they were pronounced absolved from 
 the grossest crimes not only past, but those yet to be 
 committed ; and that without penitence or satisfaction. 
 Luther adhered to his resolution ; and said, to the great 
 surprise and consternation of the individuals concern- 
 ed, "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." 
 Some of them went back to Tetzel, complained that 
 Luther would not receive the certificates, and demand- 
 ed their money again, but to no purpose. Tetzel, who 
 was also inquisitor, was thrown into a rage of pas- 
 sion ; and, in his sermons, poured out curses upon 
 the heretics; and, to give emphasis to his denuncia- 
 tions, he caused, at different times, piles of fagots 
 to be kindled in the public square, as signals of 
 what awaited the heretic who should dare utter a 
 word against the papal indulgences. 
 
 There are three stages of the doctrine of indul- 
 gences which, in the case of Luther, must be distin- 
 guished from each other. The first is that of the 
 ancient church, in which indulgence is the mere re- 
 laxation or removal of ecclesiastical, that is, human
 
 M. 33.] INDULGENCES. d5 
 
 penalties, in respect to penitents who confess their 
 faults and feel contrition. The second is that which 
 prevailed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, 
 when penance had become a sacrament; and the 
 indulgence was a spiritual grace, securing the for- 
 giveness of sin ; but true repentance was a condition 
 of pardon. The third was the same system, except 
 that the condition of repentance was but little re- 
 garded; and in some cases declared not to be neces- 
 sary; as 1 in some of the later papal bulls, and in the 
 instructions and public declarations of Tetzel. In 
 the first of these, Luther was still a sincere believer. 
 The third he openly assailed, without knowing that 
 either Leo or Albert were implicated. In respect 
 to the second, he spoke doubtfully, and, by way of 
 discussion, ready to adopt whatever should be proved. 
 
 Luther, in these circumstances, felt it his duty to 
 write to Albert, his metropolitan, as Archbishop of 
 Magdeburg, and Jerome Scultet, Bishop of Branden- 
 burg, to whose see Wittenberg belonged, informing 
 them of the disorders and abuses against which he 
 had already preached; and calling upon them to 
 interpose their episcopal and metropolitan authority, 
 and put a stop to the evil. But Albert had good 
 reasons for pay*J t^> i^sard to the request. Scul- 
 tet replied, inbfifrl 'wu^ t-tlidly and unsatisfactorily. 
 Luther then wrote to t^c Bishops of Meissen and of 
 Merseburg and of Naumburg, but with what effect 
 is not known. None of the above-mentioned letters 
 have been preserved. 
 
 Perceiving that nothing was to result from the 
 application he had made to his ecclesiastical superiors, 
 he felt bound in conscience to perform his duty as 
 preacher in the city parish, where he was assistant 
 of Pontanus, and accordingly preached anew on the
 
 196 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1517. 
 
 subject there. Nor was he content with his efforts 
 to check the evil in a practical way before the com- 
 mon people, where it began, but he resolved to bring 
 forward the subject of indulgences as a matter of 
 public debate before the learned, and before the 
 theologians as such. The Electoral Church, on ac- 
 count of its many sacred relics, and the indulgences 
 which could be procured there on certain days, at- 
 tracted many pilgrims there; particularly on the 
 first of November, the anniversary of the dedication, 
 and All Saints' day. Luther took the occasion of 
 that solemn celebration for a disputation ; and, on 
 the day before, viz. Saturday, October 31, at twelve 
 o'clock, posted up on the doors of that church his 
 ninety-five propositions respecting the power of papal 
 indulgences, inviting any and all persons to discuss 
 the subject with him. 
 
 These theses have a very remarkable character 
 and history. They show that the mind of their 
 author was drifting on a current in a direction of 
 which he himself was hardly aware. An expres- 
 sion of abject submission to the authority of the 
 church and of the pope, still a part of his reli- 
 gion, and then a startling declaration, or a sarcasm 
 that shocked the servile sons of the church and 
 servants of the pope; and to finish the medley, 
 some doubts, thrown out to elicit discussion these 
 are the three ingredients of propositions, which 
 acted with the velocity of lightning, and threw all 
 the centre of Europe into a ferment. 
 
 Though designed only for the learned, and proposed 
 only as a sketch of the topics for debate, they were 
 translated and circulated by thousands among all 
 classes. Luther, perceiving that an unexpected and 
 unextinguishable fire was kindled in the popular
 
 m. 33.] INDULGENCES. 197 
 
 mind, and that the propositions, by their abstruse, 
 scholastic and querying rather than affirmatory cha- 
 racter, were ill adapted for the common people, pub- 
 lished a sermon in the vernacular tongue, the sub- 
 stance of discourses previously delivered to the people, 
 in which he firsfrstruck upon that popular tone of plain 
 and energetic eloquence for which he was ever after- 
 wards distinguished. From the latter part of this 
 sermon, as better adapted than the theses to give a 
 plain and simple view of Luther's opinions at that 
 time, we shall here make a few extracts. After 
 laying down eleven propositions, he proceeds to say : 
 
 " 12. We are told, indeed, that for the residue of 
 the punishment, the sinner should be referred to pur- 
 gatory, or to indulgences. But many other things 
 are also said without reason or evidence. 
 
 "13. It is a great error for one to think to make 
 satisfaction for his sins, in that God always for- 
 giveth gratuitously and from his boundless grace, 
 requiring therefor nothing but honest living. The 
 church doth indeed require somewhat, [penance, as 
 a sign of sorrow,] but it may and should mitigate 
 its demands, and ought, moreover, never to lay upon 
 men any thing too grievous or intolerable. 
 
 " 14. Indulgence is granted unto weak and sloth- 
 ful Christians, that will not manfully exercise them- 
 selves in good works, or endure mortifications. For 
 indulgences carry no one forward in godliness, but 
 rather bear with and wink at his backwardness. 
 For this cause no one ought to speak against in- 
 dulgences, nor ought any one to be persuaded to 
 them. 
 
 "15. One would act mych more safely, and do far 
 better, to give purely for tSod's sake unto the build-
 
 198 LITE OP LUTHER. [1617. 
 
 ing of St. Peter, or unto any other object, than to 
 take indulgences for it. For it is not safe to give, 
 in such matters, moved by indulgences rather than 
 by the love of God. 
 
 " 16. Far better is a deed of charity done to the 
 poor than a tribute for building churches, or than 
 indulgences granted for the same. For, as before 
 said, one good deed performed is better than many 
 omitted. Indulgence is a relaxing of the require- 
 ment of many good works ; otherwise no indulgence 
 would be given. . . . My will, desire, entreaty and 
 counsel are, that no one obtain indulgences. Let 
 loitering and drowsy Christians do after this manner; 
 but do thou go thine own way. 
 
 " 17. Indulgences are not things required, or even 
 recommended; but pertain to those things which 
 are only permitted, or allowed. Therefore it is not 
 a work of obedience, nor meritorious, but a drawing 
 away from obedience. Therefore, though we may 
 not forbid men to obtain indulgence, we ought to 
 dissuade all Christians therefrom, and exhort and 
 move them to do those works and suffer those pains 
 which are remitted in indulgence. 
 
 "18. Whether souls be delivered from purgatory 
 by indulgency or no, is more than I can tell ; but I do 
 not hold to that opinion yet. Certain modern teachers 
 hold and maintain it, but they cannot prove it ; nei- 
 ther hath the church established it as true. It is 
 therefore much safer that thou thyself shouldst pray 
 and act for them. For this is more sure and certain. 
 
 "19. On these questions I make no doubt. They 
 are sufficiently settled in the Scriptures. You, there- 
 fore, should not doubt, but let the scholastic teachers 
 be scholastic teachers. All of them together cannot 
 give authority to a doctrine with their opinions.
 
 JE. 88.] INDULGENCES. 199 
 
 " 20. If some, to whose coffers such truth is not of 
 advantage, shall cry out and call me a heretic, I shall 
 little heed their clamour, inasmuch as * it will be 
 made only by those cloudy heads that have had no 
 taste of the Bible, that have never studied the Chris- 
 tian doctrines, that have never understood their 
 own teachers, but in their ragged and tattered 
 opinions have gone well-nigh to decay. For had 
 they understood them, they had known that no man 
 is to be condemned until he has been heard and con- 
 futed." 
 
 At a later period, Luther, looking back upon his 
 first efforts at reform, speaks thus: "By these 
 theses [then published anew] will be publicly set 
 forth my shame, that is, my great weakness and 
 ignorance, which, at first, made me begin the work 
 with great fear and trembling. I was alone ; and 
 plunged myself into the business without fore- 
 sight ; and now that I could not go back, I not only 
 gave place to many weighty articles of the pope, but 
 sincerely and earnestly reverenced him. . . . What 
 and how my heart endured and suffered the first and 
 second year; into what humility, not false and 
 feigned, but real, nay into what despondency I 
 sunk, the unmolested actors of these peaceful times 
 know little. ... I, who braved the danger alone, 
 was not so easy, confident and sure of my cause. 
 I was then ignorant of much that I now, thank God, 
 know. I only debated the matter, and was ready 
 to be instructed. . . . With great earnestness and 
 veneration I held the church of the pope to be the 
 true church." 
 
 No one had appeared at the time appointed to 
 debate with Luther on the subjects embraced in his 
 theses. On the festival day, he had preached be-
 
 200 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1517. 
 
 fore the multitude, though with great moderation, 
 on the subject of indulgences. A few days after, 
 probably within a week, he published the sermon 
 above mentioned. As there had been no free and ex- 
 tended discussion of these topics, and as his brief in- 
 timations in the theses were liable to be misunder- 
 stood, especially by the common people, for whom 
 they were not designed, he wished to publish an 
 extended explanation of his views, and for this 
 purpose wrote his work entitled " Proofs or Solutions 
 of the Theses." But his bishop objected to their 
 publication, as we learn from the following letter 
 to Spalatin, dated Nov. 1517: "Yesterday the 
 Abbot of Lenin [a rich abbey situated nearly mid- 
 way between Wittenberg and Brandenburg] was 
 here. In the name and in behalf of the Bishop of 
 Brandenburg did he come, bringing a letter from 
 him, and likewise saying to me, by our bishop's 
 order, that he, the bishop, desired and entreated 
 me to put off the publishing of my Proofs and other 
 similar writings. He was sorely grieved that I had 
 put forth the sermon on Indulgences, and desired 
 that it should not be published again or sold any 
 further. Overcome with modesty that so high a 
 prelate should humble himself to send unto me such 
 an abbot, I said on this behalf alone, ' Very well, 
 I would rather obey than do miracles.' . . . Although, 
 in his esteem, nothing heretical was to be found in 
 those writings, but every thing was orthodox, and 
 though he himself did condemn those indiscreet 
 declarations (as they are called) on the power of in- 
 dulgences, yet, to avoid offence, he thought it best to 
 remain silent for a season and delay publishing." 
 To J. Lange of Erfurt, he wrote under date of Nov. 
 11, 1517, sending at the same time a copy of his
 
 JE. 33.] INDULGENCES. 201 
 
 theses : " If your theologians should be offended 
 at these, and say (as all the world doth of me) that 
 I declare my opinions and impugn other men's rashly 
 and arrogantly, . . . say to them in my name, that 
 I commend their ripe modesty and grave inodera* 
 tion, so that they reduce their principles to prac- 
 tice. . . . But why do they not use moderation in 
 their judgment of me? Why do they not mo- 
 destly wait for the issue of the controversy ?" He 
 signs himself, " Martinus Eleutherias, (freeman,) or 
 rather servant and captive at Wittenberg." 
 
 In a letter of the same date to Spalatin, he ac- 
 knowledges the receipt of a piece of cloth, and thanks 
 the prince for the present. 
 
 In another letter of but five lines, written in No- 
 vember, to the same, he says, "To be short, I will 
 do all that you ask in your letter. The bishop has 
 made answer and released me from my promise. 
 Only I do not know whether I can preach these 
 three following days. Nevertheless I will see; if 
 not, Amsdorf can come to my aid." 
 
 In these few words we see the busy and business- 
 like man, who was beginning to attract that universal 
 attention which was never afterward withdrawn from 
 him. His relations to the elector at this period are also 
 apparent from his familiar letters. "My theses," 
 he writes in the same month again to Spalatin, "I 
 did not wish to have fallen into the hands of our illus- 
 trious prince or any of his court, till after they had 
 seen them that may find themselves touched there- 
 in, lest these persons should think that I, by the 
 command or will of the elector, had sent them forth 
 against the Bishop of Magdeburg, (Albert,) as I 
 hear say many already imagine. But we can now 
 i swear that they were brought to the light without
 
 202 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1517. 
 
 the knowledge of the Elector Frederic. More at 
 another time, for I am now very busy." In a post- 
 script he says: "You said in your letter that the 
 prince had promised me a garment. I would fain 
 know to whose charge he has committed the busi- 
 ness." This is not the same present mentioned in 
 a previous letter. Luther recurs to the subject in 
 another letter, addressed a few days after to the 
 elector himself, in such a manner as to give us a 
 peep into court life, as well as a view of the 
 character of both the elector and of the Reformer. 
 " Most gracious lord and prince," he writes, " inas- 
 much as your grace formerly promised through 
 Hirsfeld to give me a new garment, I now beg 
 leave to put you in mind of the same. But I must 
 ask, as I did before, that if Pfeffinger is to fulfil 
 the promise, he do it by deed, and not by soft 
 words. He knoweth how to spice up fine di.** ~ivse, 
 but that never maketh good cloth." 
 
 After endeavouring to reconcile him vu Staupitz, 
 who had been misrepresented and maligned, Lu- 
 ther proceeds to say, "To give proof of my fidelity, 
 and to render myself worthy of my court garment, 
 I will say, that I have heard your grace intendeth 
 after the present taxing to lay another and perhaps 
 heavier one upon his subjects. If your grace will 
 not despise a poor beggar's petition, 'I entreat you 
 in God's name not to let that be done, for it 
 grieveth me, as it doth many of your grace's 
 friends, to learn that this last taxation hath dero- 
 gated much from your good name." 
 
 It is time to notice the various annoyances which 
 Luther experienced in consequence of the publica- 
 tion of his theses, and the many petty strifes in 
 which his enemies engaged with him. Here we
 
 M. 34.] INDULGENCES. 203 
 
 shall see the Reformer appearing in all the quali- 
 ties of his mind and heart, profoundly sincere and 
 honest, entirely religious and conscientious, though 
 still held in bondage to many errors and supersti- 
 tions; more and more deeply convinced of the just- 
 ness and importance of his biblical views of theo- 
 logy and religion, and of the corruption of the 
 church, of the ignorance and stupidity that reigned 
 in the monasteries and the schools, and finally un- 
 deceived in respect to the character of Pope Leo, 
 the Archbishop Albert, and other high dignitaries 
 of the church. Sometimes we shall see him sighing 
 over these evils; sometimes reasoning with Her- 
 culean strength in order to convince the wise and 
 the good; sometimes, when assailed by malignant 
 foes with the vilest arts, either indignant and blast- 
 ing them as by a thunderbolt, or comical, and mak- 
 ing them appear superlatively ridiculous. 
 
 Before the close of the' year 1517, Tetzel sought 
 to elevate himself to an equality with Luther by 
 taking, at the University of Frankfort on the Oder, 
 the degree of doctor of divinity, and, on that occa- 
 sion, he brought forward and defended a set of 
 theses directed against those of Luther. Not only 
 was he obliged to resort to Professor Wimpina, a 
 distinguished man, formerly of Leipsic, but now of 
 Frankfort, who was jealous of the fame of the Wit- 
 tenberg theologians, to draw up those theses in 
 tolerable Latin, but he had the mortification to be 
 beaten in the argument by a young student, by the 
 name of Knipstrov. Though the latter, for so 
 daring a crime, was confined in a monastic prison, 
 he was afterward professor of theology and vice- 
 chancellor of the University of Greifswald. 
 
 At the close of the following spring, Tetzel pub-
 
 204 LIFE Or LUTHER. [1518. 
 
 lished a reply to Luther's sermon on Indulgences, 
 pointing out in it twenty alleged heretical doc- 
 trines. Luther did not let this ridiculous cry of 
 heresy and menace of the flames pass unanswered. 
 He said it would be more in keeping with the cha- 
 racter and habits of Tetzel, if, instead of appealing 
 to "water and fire/' he had appealed to "the juice 
 of the grape and the flames over which fowls were 
 roasted." After rebuking the levity with which a 
 man, guilty of almost every crime named in the 
 Decalogue, himself not fearing the fires of hell 
 and eternal death, attempted to frighten Christian 
 teachers, as though they were children, by means 
 of fire and sword, he goes on to say, comically 
 enough: "Inasmuch as this matter doth not pertain 
 to faith and to salvation, nor is one of necessity or 
 of command, and since these persons are so very 
 godly and abundant in charity that they are eager 
 to burn Christians for things indifferent and devoid 
 of heresy, may my gracious God and Father forgive 
 me, that, setting aside all honour, as a thing alien 
 from you, I should bid defiance to my Baalites. 
 Here am I at Wittenberg, Dr. Martin Luther, and 
 if there be any inquisitor who thinketh he can eat 
 iron and rend rocks, I hereby give him to under- 
 stand that he shall have safe conduct, open doors, 
 free lodgings and living to boot, at the expense of 
 our excellent prince, Duke Frederic, the Elector of 
 Saxony." 
 
 Silvester Prierias, a monk of the same order with 
 Tetzel, and master of the sacred palace or chief 
 censor of books at Rome, replied to Luther's theses 
 as early as January, 1518, and consequently was 
 the first writer who published a work against the 
 doctrines of Luther. It was a dialogue, in which the
 
 JE. 34.] INDULGENCES. 205 
 
 positions of Luther constituted one part, and the 
 replies of Prierias the other. The sole aim of this 
 weak and supercilious production was to exalt the 
 church of Rome, and to maintain the supremacy of 
 the pope. 
 
 The discussion which Luther had with the theo- 
 logians, at the general meeting of his order at Hei- 
 delberg, in which he developed his views on the great 
 questions of the day, was attended with the happiest 
 consequences. While his arguments were such that 
 the aged men, who disliked them, could not answer 
 them, he made converts to his doctrine among young 
 men of the highest promise. To these belonged 
 Bucer, afterward the Reformer in Strassburg and 
 in England, Brentz and Schnepf, the reformers of 
 Suabia. 
 
 With Eck also, with whom he had lived on terms 
 of friendship, he was led into a controversy which 
 ended in the Leipsic disputation. And, finally, he 
 was obliged to defend himself against the Bishop of 
 Rome. These remarks will enable the reader to un- 
 derstand without difficulty most of the letters of 
 Luther, written during the period immediately fol- 
 lowing the publication of the theses. 
 
 To Spalatin he writes this hasty note, under date 
 of January 7, 1518 : " The schedule, which you 
 demand, my dear Spalatin, is not with me. I will 
 see whether it be in Wittenberg or no, and, if it be, 
 will send it unto you. But I send you the late 
 phantoms of Silvester [Prierias] from the city [of 
 Rome,] which have just come to hand through 
 Nuremberg. When you shall have read them, do 
 your diligence to send them back to Wittenberg, 
 that I may commune with my friends whether to 
 
 18
 
 206 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1518. 
 
 answer them, or let them go unanswered. I have 
 no other but this one copy." On the 14th of the 
 same month, he wrote to him another long letter, 
 from which we take the following : " Do not think 
 it strange, my dear Spalatin, that certain persons 
 should declare that I was overcome while at a sup- 
 per in Dresden. They say, and have long been used 
 to say, whatsoever they please. I was verily at the 
 house of Jerome Emser with Lange and the Dres- 
 den prior, having been not so much invited as forced 
 to a supper. Though I thought myself among 
 friends, speedily I found a snare was laid for me. 
 There was a paltry master there, who had dipped a 
 little into Aquinas, and thought himself wondrous 
 wise. He, burning with anger at me, first entreated 
 me kindly, but when a discussion arose, he inveighed 
 against me bitterly and clamorously. In the mean 
 season there was standing without the door a cer- 
 tain mendicant friar, who listened unto all I said, 
 (as I afterward learned,) and who declared he was 
 in anguish of spirit, and could hardly keep from 
 coming forth and spitting in my face, and calling 
 me by every evil name ; so vexing was it to the 
 poor man that I should confute that little master, 
 the Thomist. This is the man that everywhere 
 boasteth, even until now, that I was so beaten that I 
 could not say a word either in Latin or in German. 
 Because we spoke in Latin and German commingled, 
 he gave out that I did not know a word of Latin." 
 
 In another letter to the same, he gives his friend 
 advice and instruction, as to the best way of prose- 
 cuting the study of the Bible ; and in a third, dated 
 February 15, 1518, he replies to inquiries in respect 
 to good works and indulgences. "As touching in- 
 dulgences," he remarks, " the matter is still in dis-
 
 IE. 34.] INDULGENCES. 207 
 
 pute, and my propositions are drifting along in the 
 waves of calumny. Two things, however, I dare 
 say ; the first unto you alone and my other friends, 
 until the matter shall be known and come to the 
 light, namely, that indulgences look to me to be no- 
 thing but a delusion, and of no profit, save to such 
 as are drowsy and sluggish in the way of Christ. 
 Albeit Carlstadt doth not hold the same opinion, I 
 make no doubt he esteemeth them lightly. To pluck 
 away this delusion, I, for the love of the truth, have 
 cast myself into a dangerous labyrinth of disputa- 
 tion, and have stirred up against me a thousand 
 centaurs. Secondly, .... I counsel you to buy 
 no indulgences, till you can no longer find a poor 
 neighbour to give the money to. I doubt he 
 will bring upon himself wrath, who neglecteth the 
 poor and buyeth indulgences. But, God willing, you 
 shall see more on this matter when the Proofs of my 
 Propositions come out. To this measure am I forced 
 by men more ferocious than ferocity itself, who, in 
 all their discourses, pronounce me a heretic; and 
 their wrath goeth to such a length that, for my sake, 
 they arraign the University of Wittenberg, and stig- 
 matize it as heretical. They are so ignorant of 
 things, both divine and human, that it is a reproach 
 to have a controversy with them ; and yet their ig- 
 norance giveth them incredible audacity, and a front 
 of more than brass. . . . They clamorously give 
 out that what I have in hand took its rise with our 
 illustrious prince, out of enmity to the Archbishop 
 of Magdeburg (and Mainz.) I pray you, therefore, 
 to consider what must be done, whether the matter 
 should be laid before the prince or no, I cannot 
 abide that he should be brought under suspicion for 
 my sake ; and I shudder with fear and horror at the
 
 208 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1518. 
 
 thought of being the cause of dissension between 
 such princes." 
 
 To Dr. Scheurl, advocate in Nuremberg, he writes, 
 March 5 : " I have received from you, most excel- 
 lent and learned Christopher, two letters at the same 
 time, one in Latin, the other in German, together 
 with a gift from the famous Albert Diirer, (the 
 painter,) and also my theses in Latin and in Ger- 
 man. You marvel that I did not send you a copy. 
 I make answer, that it was not my purpose nor 
 will that they should be published, but that they 
 should be examined by some persons in our own 
 neighbourhood, and afterward, according to their 
 opinion, be condemned and abolished, or be approved 
 and published. But they have been printed and 
 spread abroad beyond all expectation, so that I re- 
 pent of having sent forth this foetus, not because I 
 am unwilling the common people should know the 
 truth, for that is what I most desire, but the manner 
 and form of it is ill adapted for the instruction of 
 the people. Some things therein contained are to 
 myself doubtful ; others I would have declared after 
 a different and more positive sort, or left out, had I 
 seen the end from the beginning. Though, from 
 this manner and degree of their dispersion, I know 
 what men think in respect of indulgences, neverthe- 
 less they do it secretly, for ' fear of the Jews.' I 
 am, therefore, constrained to prepare proofs and ex- 
 planations of the theses, though the Bishop of Bran- 
 denburg, with whom I have taken counsel, being 
 much troubled in this matter, hath caused me so 
 long to delay the publishing of them. Nay, if the 
 Lord give me opportunity, I desire to bring out in 
 German, a treatise on the power of indulgences, and 
 thus to suppress those theses which are so dispersed."
 
 JE. 34.] INDULGENCES. 209 
 
 March 21, 1518, he writes to Lange, in Erfurt: 
 "Wonderfully do the indulgence-mongers fulminate 
 against me from the pulpit. Not content with the 
 portentous names they have given unto me, they 
 add threats, some prophesying that within two 
 weeks, others that within one month, I shall as- 
 suredly be burned by the people: Against my 
 theses they now set forth others, so that I fear they 
 may burst for the greatness and vehemence of their 
 anger. Finally, I am besought by everybody not 
 to go to Heidelberg, lest I be despatched by fraud, 
 if I cannot be by violence. But I shall fulfil my 
 duty of obedience, [as a monk to attend the general 
 meeting,] and shall journey on foot, and pass 
 through Erfurt, if Grod permit. Albeit do not 
 tarry for me, for I shall not set out till the 13th of 
 April. Our prince, moved by great zeal for solid 
 learning, hath, without our asking, undertaken earn- 
 estly to defend me and Carlstadt, and will not 
 suffer me to be dragged to Rome, which torments 
 my enemies here, who are not ignorant of his will 
 toward me. 
 
 "To the end that you may know the truth, if 
 the report of the burning of Tetzel's theses should 
 come to your ears, and that nothing, as is wont to 
 be the case, may be added to the tale, I will cer- 
 tify you of the matter. The students, holding in 
 odium the old sophistical studies, and being inclined 
 to the Scriptures, and perhaps to me, when they had 
 learned that a man, sent by Tetzel the author, had 
 come hither, went forthwith to him to terrify him 
 for having the audacity to bring such things hither. 
 Some of them did buy a few copies, but others 
 plucked away the eight hundred which remained 
 
 18*
 
 210 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1518. 
 
 and burnt them, having already given notice that, 
 if any desired to see the funeral pile of Tetzel's 
 theses burned, to be at the place at two o'clock. 
 This was done without the knowledge of the elector, 
 of the academical senate, of the rector, or of any 
 of us." 
 
 In a letter to Egran, preacher at Zwickau, writ- 
 ten March 24th, he says, "Some obelisks have of 
 late been written against my theses by a man of 
 true learning and of excellent parts, and what 
 grieveth me more, by one for whom I had' not long 
 ago conceived a warm friendship, Dr. John Eck, 
 vice-chancellor of the University of Ingolstadt, al- 
 ready a noted man and well known by his published 
 works. Did I not know the devices of Satan, I 
 should wonder what fury influenced him to break 
 those new and pleasant bonds of friendship, without 
 giving me any warning, or taking leave of me. . . . 
 As for myself, I desired to swallow patiently this 
 cake, worthy of Cerberus. But my friends compel 
 me to reply, though I shall do it privately. Blessed 
 be the Lord Jesus! to him alone be glory. Confu- 
 sion may deservedly cover us. Rejoice, my brother, 
 rejoice, and be not terrified by those flying sheets, 
 nor cease to teach as you have begun, but, like the 
 palm in Cadiz, rise under the weight that is laid 
 upon you. The more they rage, the more I go on. 
 I leave former things behind for them to bark at, 
 and go on to those that are before, that they may 
 have more to bark at." 
 
 On the 31st of March, he writes to Staupitz : 
 "Being very busy, my father in the Lord, I can 
 write unto you but little. First, I firmly believe 
 that with many my name is in ill odour. So much 
 do the good men lay to my charge because I have
 
 JE. 34.] INDULGENCES. 211 
 
 condemned rosaries, crowns, psalteries, and other 
 prayers, and indeed all good works. So St. Paul 
 was accused of saying 'Let us do evil that good 
 may come.' But I have followed the theology of 
 Tauler and of that work [the German Theology] 
 which you have lately caused to be printed by 
 Aurifaber, and teach that men must put their trust 
 in nothing else but Jesus Christ alone, neither in 
 their prayers and merits, nor in their good works. 
 For, not by our running, but by God showing 
 mercy, are we saved. From such teachings do 
 those men draw forth the poison which you see 
 them scatter abroad. But as I did not begin, so 
 neither will I give over either for glory or for in- 
 famy." 
 
 Several of the letters next succeeding relate to 
 his journey to Heidelberg, where the monks of his 
 order were to meet in convention. The story of the 
 incidents connected with that occasion is best told 
 by himself. From Coburg, nearly two-thirds of the 
 distance, he wrote to Spalatin, April 15th: "From 
 Pfeffinger I suppose you have learned all that we 
 talked about, when I met him at the village of Ju- 
 denbach, [a few miles before reaching Coburg.] 
 Among other things, I rejoiced at this, that an op- 
 portunity was given unto me to make that rich roan 
 poorer by some shillings. For he paid not only for 
 my dinner, but for that of two other companions. 
 And now, if I could, I would make our prince's 
 officer here at Coburg pay for us. But if he is not 
 willing, still we shall live at the elector's cost. . . 
 All things go well with us, except that I sinned, I 
 confess, in setting out on my journey on foot. But 
 for this sin, as the contrition is perfect, and a full 
 penance hath been imposed and borne, there is no
 
 212 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1518. 
 
 need of indulgence. I was very much wearied, [the 
 distance was more than one hundred and forty miles,] 
 and could not get conveyed, and so there was abun- 
 dance, enough and more than enough of contrition, 
 penance and satisfaction. I was unknown to all, 
 except as the presence of Pfeffinger made me known. 
 But at Weissenfels, the parish priest, though a 
 stranger to me, knew me and treated me with great 
 kindness. He was a Wittenberg master." 
 
 His next letter to the same is dated "Wurzburg, 
 April 19. "We at length arrived at Wurzburg 
 on the 17th, and, on the evening of the same day, 
 presented our letters to the illustrious prince [Bibra, 
 the excellent Bishop of Wurzburg.] . . . The 
 reverend bishop, on receiving them, called for me, 
 communed with me, and desired to give me at his 
 own charges another messenger to accompany me 
 all the way to Heidelberg. But as I found here 
 many of my order, and especially Lange, the Erfurt 
 prior, I thanked the kind-hearted prince, saying it 
 was not necessary to provide me with a messenger. 
 I wished, moreover, to ride with them, being ex- 
 hausted with fatigue. Only one thing did I ask of 
 him, and that was a safe-conduct, which I have just 
 received. ... If something more can be paid to 
 my messenger Urban, I think he deserveth it; for 
 he was delayed in the journey on my account. I 
 would bring this to pass if I could see our Hirsfeld. 
 The man is worthy of it for his fidelity and honesty. 
 Do you also plead his cause. I am poor, as I am 
 bound to be, and therefore could give him but 
 little." 
 
 On his return to Wittenberg he gave an account 
 of the remainder of his journey to Spalatin, May 
 18th : " At length, by the favour of Christ, I have
 
 M. 34.] INDULGENCES. 213 
 
 returned to my home, dear Spalatin, and arrived 
 at Wittenberg the Sabbath after Ascension-day. 
 Though I went on foot, I returned in a carriage. 
 For I was compelled by my superiors to ride with 
 the Niirembergers to Wurzburg; thence with the 
 Erfurt brethren .to that place ; and from Erfurt 
 with the brethren from Eisleben, who, at their own 
 charges, and with their own horses, conveyed me to 
 Wittenberg. I was quite well all the way, my food 
 agreeing with me marvellously, so that some think 
 I have grown more fat and corpulent. 
 
 "The Count Palatine (at Heidelberg) and Simler, 
 and Hase, masters of the palace, received me with 
 great honour. The count invited us, that is, Stau- 
 pitz, Lange, now provincial vicar, and myself, to his 
 palace, where we rejoiced and were made merry in 
 each other's company, eating and drinking and see- 
 ing all the adornments and weapons of war which 
 beautify that regal and truly noble castle. Simler 
 could not enough extol the letter of our prince given 
 for me, saying, ' Those are most precious credentials 
 which you have.' Indeed, nothing of humanity was 
 wanting. 
 
 "The learned doctors willingly suffered my dis- 
 putation, and disputed with me so courteously as to 
 make themselves very dear to me. Although my theo- 
 logy seemed strange to them, they argued against it 
 honourably and acutely ; save one young doctor, 
 who made the whole audience shout with laughter 
 when he said, 'If the peasantry should hear that, 
 they would stone thee to death.' 
 
 "To the Erfurt doctors my theology was a bitter 
 pill, especially to Jodocus of Eisenach. ... I had 
 a conference with him, and made him to understand 
 at least as much as this, that he could never esta-
 
 214 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1518. 
 
 Wish his own positions, nor confute mine. . . With 
 doctor Usingen, as I rode with him, I laboured 
 more than with all the rest, in order to convince 
 him, but know not whether it had any effect. I 
 left him cogitating and wondering." 
 
 These two men, it will be recollected, were Lu- 
 ther's principal teachers at the university. In a pre- 
 vious letter to Lange, he sent a friendly salutation not 
 only to father Usingen, but to father Nathin, his 
 former enemy, and the chief agent in producing the 
 misunderstanding between Luther and the Univer- 
 sity of Erfurt. This magnanimity and love of bro- 
 therly concord are noble traits in the character of the 
 bold and stern reformer. 
 
 In the midst of all these cares and tumults, Lu- 
 ther was active in raising the literary character of 
 the university. He at first introduced the study of 
 the Bible; next he endeavoured to banish the scho- 
 lastic philosophy. Now he was active in introducing 
 the study of Hebrew and Greek, and promoting the 
 Latin. He looked out new professors, laid new 
 plans of study before the elector through Spalatin, 
 and counteracted the parsimonious views of Pfeffin- 
 ger, the financial minister of state. Leipsic, espous- 
 ing warmly the cause of Tetzel and of the pope, was 
 more than ever the jealous rival of Wittenberg. 
 "Our studies," says Luther, March 21, "are ad- 
 vanced so much that we expect soon to have lectures 
 in both languages, [Latin and Greek,] or rather in 
 three, [by adding the Hebrew,] in Pliny, in mathe- 
 matics, in Quintilian and some others of the best 
 sort, giving up the puerile lectures on Peter of 
 Spain, Tartaretus [of France] and Aristotle. The 
 elector hath already signified his approval, and the 
 council have the subject under consideration."
 
 JE. 34.] INDULGENCES. 215 
 
 On the 18th of May, he writes to Spalatin, "I 
 hope and pray you will not be unmindful of our 
 university, that is, that you will be zealous in esta- 
 blishing a Greek and a Hebrew professorship. I 
 suppose you have seen the programme of lectures at 
 Leipsic, our rival as ever. Many are there pomp- 
 ously announced which I do not believe will ever 
 be delivered." The measures here referred to led 
 first to a negotiation with Mosellanus, and then, 
 that failing, to the appointment of young Melanc- 
 thon, as professor of Greek. 
 
 On the 30th of May, 1518, Luther wrote two 
 letters of great historical value, the one to Staupitz, 
 the other to Leo X. ; the former giving an account 
 of the gradual change his mind underwent on the 
 subject of indulgences; the other stating the rise, 
 character and progress of the outward controversy. 
 In the letter to Staupitz, he says : "I remember, 
 reverend father, that among those most delightful 
 and profitable conversations of yours wherewith the 
 Lord Jesus used wonderfully to comfort me, men- 
 tion once happened to be made of the word repent- 
 ance. Being distressed for the consciences of many, 
 by reason of the manner wherein those murderers 
 of the conscience taught the duty of confession, by 
 countless and intolerable precepts, I heard from 
 you, as if by a voice from heaven, the declaration 
 that ' there is no true repentance, save that which 
 beginneth with the love of righteousness and of Godj 
 that what these men make the end and completion 
 of repentance is rather the beginning thereof.' 
 Those words of yours stuck to me like a sharp arrow 
 of a strong archer. I afterward compared them 
 with those passages of Scripture which teach repent- 
 ance, and how sweetly did they all play in and
 
 216 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1518. 
 
 agree with this opinion. Formerly there was in all 
 the Bible scarcely a word more bitter to me ; now 
 none sounds more sweetly or agreeably to my ears 
 than the word repentance. At a later time, I learned, 
 by the help of those scholars who made us acquainted 
 with G-reek and Hebrew, that the Greek word for 
 repentance, signified ' thinking of a fault after it 
 was done,' . . . and, as I proceeded farther in the 
 knowledge of the Greek tongue, I perceived that it 
 also signified ' a change of mind.' . . . Being con- 
 firmed in these opinions, I made bold to consider those 
 as false teachers who imputed so much of repentance 
 to [outward] works, making it of little account be- 
 yond certain satisfactions and scrupulous confes- 
 sions. . . . When my mind was kindling into a blaze 
 with these meditations, behold, all of a sudden, 
 a new trumpet of indulgences and of pardons was 
 sounded, or rather rung with a loud clangour in our 
 ears, whereby we were not summoned to war, 
 but .... these heralds proclaimed, with great pomp 
 and in a manner unheard of before, not repentance, 
 nor even the weakest part thereof, satisfactions, but 
 the remission of this weakest part. Moreover did 
 they teach ungodly, false and heretical doctrines 
 with such authority, (I should say, audacity,) that 
 if any one muttered a word against it, he was 
 straightway a heretic, devoted to the flames, and 
 worthy of eternal malediction. Not able to sus- 
 tain their fury, I determined to dissent from them 
 modestly, and to call into doubt their opinions, 
 standing upon the doctrine of all the teachers 
 of the whole church, viz. that it is better that 
 the satisfactions be performed than that they be 
 remitted, that is, released by indulgence. Nor 
 did any one ever teach otherwise. Thus I took up
 
 M. 34.] INDULGENCES. 217 
 
 the disputation, that is, stirred up against my un- 
 lucky head every thing, top, bottom and midst, so 
 far as it was in the power of these persons, who are 
 so zealous for money, or as they will have it, for 
 souls. These gentle creatures, resorting to base 
 sleights, inasmuch as they could not dispute what I 
 had said, set up the pretence that the power of the 
 pope was impugned in my disputations. This, re- 
 verend father, is the cause of my now coming un- 
 happily before the people. I always wished rather 
 to be in a corner, and would now much sooner look 
 at the august spectacle of the great men of our age 
 than become myself an object of the public gaze. 
 But I see it is needful for the chick-weed to be with 
 the pot-herbs, and the dark colour with the light, 
 to set off the charm by contraries. I pray you, 
 therefore, receive these trifles of mine, and send 
 them forward as speedily as may be to Leo X., that 
 they may appear there as my defence against my ma- 
 lignant foes. Not that I wish to draw you into my 
 perils. I desire that the perils be mine alone. Christ 
 will know whether these things which I have said 
 are his or mine. ... As to those threats, I have no- 
 thing to reply to my friends but the words of Reuch- 
 lin, ' He that is poor hath nothing to fear, for he hatb 
 nothing to lose.' I have nothing, and I desire nothing. 
 If I enjoyed any good name or honour, this they are 
 now fast destroying. But one thing remains, that is, 
 my frail body, already weak and decayed by constant 
 sufferings. If, by the will of God, they should destroy 
 this by violence or fraud, why, they will only make me 
 poorer by a few hours of my life. Enough for me 
 is my sweet Redeemer and Saviour, the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, and his praises will I sing as long as I live. 
 If any one will not sing with me, what is that to 
 
 19
 
 218 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1518. 
 
 me ? Let him bark, if he please, by himself. The 
 Lord Jesus Christ preserve you evermore, my dear- 
 est father." 
 
 The letter addressed to Leo, at the same time 
 with the above, accompanying the Proofs and Expla- 
 nations of the Theses, is important as determining 
 Luther's views of the papacy and of Leo at this 
 period, views which he soon had occasion to change. 
 "I have heard," says he, "the worst account, most 
 blessed father, touching myself, namely, that cer- 
 tain friends have made my name most odious to you 
 and yours, as of one who was labouring to diminish 
 the authority and power of the keys and of the 
 supreme pontiff; and that I am called a heretic, an 
 apostate, a traitor, and a thousand other ignominious 
 names. These things shock and amaze me; one 
 thing only sustains me, a sense of innocence. But 
 this is nothing new. Even here in my own coun- 
 try I am honoured with such tokens by these men 
 of honour and truth, I mean these conscience-smitten 
 men, who strive to heap their monstrous crimes upon 
 me, and, by my ignominy, to cover their own. But, 
 most blessed father, condescend to hear the whole 
 matter from me, a child and rude though I be. 
 The jubilee of apostolic indulgences began to be 
 proclaimed here not long ago, and was carried on 
 in such a sort, that the preachers thereof, employing 
 the terror of your name, thought there were no 
 bounds to their license, and presumed to teach 
 openly things the most blasphemous and heretical, 
 to the great scandal and contempt of ecclesiastical 
 authority, as if the decretals touching the abuses 
 practised by preachers of indulgences had nothing 
 to do with them. Not satisfied with scattering their 
 joison by their licentious tongues, they published
 
 JE. 34.] INDULGENCES. 219 
 
 tracts and dispersed them among the . people, in 
 which, to say nothing of the insatiable and unex- 
 ampled avarice flowing forth at every letter and 
 point, they repeated those blasphemous and here- 
 tical declarations, and bound the confessors with 
 an oath to enjoin the same most faithfully and 
 earnestly upon the people. I speak nothing but the 
 pure truth, which cannot be concealed from the 
 light. The books themselves are extant, and they 
 cannot deny these things. They have carried on 
 their business with great effect, and with their 
 false promises they have drained the purses of the 
 people, and, as the prophet saith, ' plucked the flesh 
 from their bones/ themselves the meanwhile faring 
 most sumptuously. 
 
 " To stay the public scandal, they have resorted to 
 the terror of your name, to the menace of the flames, 
 and to the ignominy of heresy. It is incredible 
 how bent they are on using these weapons, where- 
 soever their opinions, even in the very least mat- 
 ters, are called in question. This, however, is not 
 so much quenching public scandal as it is stirring 
 up schisms and seditions by deeds of tyranny. At 
 the same time, tales concerning the avarice of the 
 priests, and detraction in respect of the power of 
 the keys and of the supreme pontiff", were going 
 from mouth to mouth in the taverns, as the voice 
 of the whole land giveth witness. I burned, I con- 
 fess, with zeal for Christ, as it seemed to me, or with 
 youthful heat, if any one please j but perceived that 
 it did not belong to me to do or decide any thing 
 in this matter. Accordingly, I admonished pri- 
 vately a few of the dignitaries of our church. Some 
 received what I said, some did ridicule ; some one 
 thing, and some another ; for they were terrified by
 
 220 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1518. 
 
 the use made of your name, and by the threat of 
 the inquisition. At length, when I saw I could do 
 nothing else, I thought it best to arraign them 
 gently, that is, to make their dogmas a matter of 
 doubt and of debate. Therefore, did I publish a 
 disputation, inviting only the learned to discuss the 
 subject with me, if they chose. This my enemies 
 may know, as it standeth in the prefatory words at the 
 head of the propositions. 
 
 "Behold, this is the conflagration whereof the 
 whole world complain, indignant, perhaps, that I, a 
 master of theology by your authority, should, after 
 the custom of all the universities and of the whole 
 church, have the right to dispute in a public school, 
 not only on indulgences, but .... on incompara- 
 bly greater things By what unlucky chance 
 
 it is, that these particular propositions of mine, more 
 than all others, either of my own or of any teacher, 
 should go forth into nearly all the earth, I am at a 
 loss to know. They were set forth here for our 
 use alone, and how they should come to everybody's 
 knowledge is incredible to me. They are not doc- 
 trines or dogmas, but matters of debate, stated, 
 according to custom, obscurely and enigmatically. 
 Could I have foreseen the result, I would assuredly 
 have taken care to make them more plain and clear. 
 But what shall I do ? Recall them I cannot ; and 
 yet I see that their notoriety bringeth upon me 
 great odium. ... In order, then, to soften my ad- 
 versaries, and to gratify many friends, I send forth 
 'these trifles, [Proofs, &c.] to explain my theses. 
 For the greater safety, I let them go forth, most 
 blessed father, under your name, and under the 
 shadow of your protection. Here, all who will 
 may see how sincerely I honour the ecclesiastical
 
 JE. 34.] INDULGENCES. 221 
 
 power and reverence the keys ; and also how basely 
 I am reproached and belied by my enemies. If I 
 were such as they would make me to be, if those 
 things were not all proposed for the sake of debate, 
 it would be impossible that the illustrious elector 
 should allow such a pestilent thing in his univer- 
 sity, being, as he is, a vehement lover of the catho- 
 lic and apostolical doctrine, or that I should be 
 borne with, by the acute and zealous teachers in our 
 university. But I speak to no purpose ; for these 
 gentle spirits do not stick at covering with the like 
 infamy the elector and the university. Wherefore, 
 most blessed father, I cast myself, with all I am and 
 have, prostrate at your feet. Save or slay, call or 
 recall, approve or disapprove, as it shall best please 
 you; I will acknowledge your voice as the voice of 
 Christ presiding and speaking in you. If I am 
 worthy of death, I refuse not to die ; for the earth 
 is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof; blessed be his 
 name, and may he keep you evermore. Amen." 
 
 A course of events was rapidly hastening on which 
 was destined to shake Luther's confidence, both in 
 the bishop and in the church of Rome. Eck had 
 circulated extensively, though privately, his manu- 
 script comments, or "Obelisks," on Luther's theses. 
 The latter sent his "Asterisks," also privately, 
 as a reply. Carlstadt, in the mean time, made a 
 public answer. Eck professed to regret the course 
 things were taking, and Scheurl, a friend of both, 
 undertook to mediate between him and Luther. The 
 following is Luther's reply : " What you desire in 
 behalf of our Eck, my dearest Christopher, would 
 not have needed the mediation of such a friend, if 
 the matter were still open, and he had been before- 
 hand with you in writing of his letters. My suspicion 
 
 19*
 
 222 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1518. 
 
 that Eck's heart was turned away from me, is much 
 increased for the reason, that, after all the opprobrious 
 words heaped upon me by him, though privately, he 
 never communicated with me on the subject, either 
 in writing or by word of mouth. Now, as Carl- 
 stadt's Positions are already published, though with- 
 out my consent or knowledge, I know not what can 
 be done by either of them. Sure I am, that I hold 
 the man's good parts in great esteem, and his learn- 
 ing in admiration ; and what has taken place, I tes- 
 tify to you, moves me to grief, rather than to anger. 
 On my part, I have written him the kind and 
 friendly letter which you will herewith receive and 
 can read. Not only for your sake am I reconciled, 
 but on account of the confession made by him, 
 though not to me, that his notes have been sent 
 forth by the fraud or malice of others. Therefore, 
 both you and he have me in your power in this 
 matter. Only see that he do not answer our Carl- 
 stadt too sharply. Let him remember that it was 
 his fault that these evils should spring up among 
 friends. As my Asterisks were given out only pri- 
 vately, there is no need of his answering them if 
 he do not choose. But if he desires to rejoin, I 
 stand ready for either event, though I should choose 
 peace." 
 
 Before advancing to the correspondence relating 
 to Luther's citation to appear for trial at Rome, and 
 his actual appearance at Augsburg for that purpose, 
 it will be convenient to advert to some other parti- 
 culars connected with his present situation and oc- 
 cupations, equally illustrative of his character and 
 of his feelings at the present juncture. 
 
 June 4, he wrote to Spalatin : " I pray you, my 
 dear Spalatin, to take it patiently, that I am so
 
 M. 34.] INDULGENCES. 223 
 
 slack and negligent in writing to you. I am not 
 able to perform half the business which is unex- 
 pectedly and fast increasing upon my hands. Peter 
 Mosellanus was here not long ago, and is content to 
 accept the conditions and begin his duties [at Wit- 
 tenberg] as professor of Greek ; and he desired 
 me to write unto you to that effect. I promised to 
 write, which I now do, not knowing whether there 
 had been any negotiating between you. It will re- 
 main for you to do in this matter as God shall give 
 you knowledge and ability. . . . John Tetzel hath 
 written against my German discourse a treatise in 
 German, a singular witness and herald of his igno- 
 rance. I will hold the light to it, so that all may 
 see what it is." 
 
 For reasons not known, the negotiations with Mo- 
 sellanus were broken off, and Reuchlin was consulted, 
 who recommended Melancthon as professor of Greek ; 
 and in August he was on the ground, thencefor- 
 ward the second great pillar of the Reformation. 
 
 June 29, he writes again to the same : " I am not 
 angry, most excellent Spalatin, that those men say 
 the worst things of me, or that they give out that 
 the Proofs and Conclusions owe their origin to the 
 elector. I only fear that this will be the occasion 
 of stirring up enmity between such princes, espe- 
 cially, if the Elector of Brandenburg should allow, 
 by way of requital, any thing to take place like 
 unto what we lately heard of him. 
 
 " You ask me, how far I think dialectics useful 
 to a theologian. I see not how they can be other- 
 wise but hurtful. In the training and exercising the 
 minds of the young, they may have their use ; but 
 in sacred learning, where faith and heavenly illumi- 
 nation alone are sought after, they ought to be left
 
 224 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1518. 
 
 behind, as Abraham, about to offer sacrifice, left the 
 servants and asses behind." 
 
 To his most intimate friend, Link, now in Nurem- 
 berg, who, together with Scheurl, kept Luther in- 
 formed of all that was going on in the south of 
 Germany for or against the Reformation, Luther 
 writes, July 10 : "I should have sent you, reverend 
 father,* the Proofs of my Theses, but for the slack- 
 ness of our printer, who himself feels ashamed of 
 it. Eighteen of the conclusions [about one third of 
 the book] were already printed, which I have endea- 
 voured to have sent to you immediately. . . . Our 
 vicar, John Lange, [chosen at the late meeting at 
 Heidelberg,] who is here to-day, saith, he hath been 
 warned by a letter from Count Albert of Mansfeld, 
 to suffer me by no means to go from Wittenberg, 
 [to Augsburg,] because some nameless persons of 
 power are lying in wait to hang me or drown me. I 
 am plainly that man of contention and discord men- 
 tioned in Jeremiah, and do daily vex the Pharisees 
 with new doctrines, as they are called, though I 
 am conscious of teaching nothing but the purest 
 theology. I have all along known that I should 
 present an offence to the sanctimonious Jews, and 
 folly to the most wise Greeks. But I hope that I 
 am a debtor to Jesus Christ, who saith to me also, 
 I will show him how great things he must suffer for 
 my name's sake. For, if he doth not say this,- why 
 hath he made me invincible in the ministry of this 
 word ? Why hath he not taught otherwise than I 
 preach ? Such was his holy will. The more men 
 are enraged, the more confidence will I have. My 
 wife and children are provided for, [he was then un- 
 
 * Title as monk and theologian.
 
 JE. 34.] INDULGENCES. 225 
 
 married.] My lands, houses, and goods are all set 
 in order, [he was still a monk, and owned nothing.] 
 My reputation and name are already torn and man- 
 gled, and only a frail body remaineth. ... I know 
 that the word of Christ from the beginning of the 
 world hath been of such a sort, that he who would 
 maintain it must, with the apostles, forsake and re- 
 nounce all things, and stand in- waiting for death 
 every hour. If it were not so, it would not be the 
 word of Christ. It was purchased with death ; it 
 was promulgated with death; it hath been maintained 
 with death, and must be hereafter. Thus, our en- 
 listing was to us an enlisting to blood. Pray that 
 the Lord Jesus may increase and preserve this spirit 
 in his faithful poor sinner." 
 
 "I have lately preached before the people on the 
 power of excommunication, wherein I have taken 
 occasion to chastise the tyranny and ignorance of 
 that most sordid horde of officials, commissaries and 
 vicars. All cry out with wonder that they never 
 heard such-like things. We are all aware what ills 
 this will bring upon me; a new fire will be kindled. 
 But so the word of truth is made a sign everywhere 
 spoken against. I had desired to debate these mat- 
 ters in a public disputation, but behold public rumour 
 prevented, and stirred up so many of the great, that 
 my Brandenburg bishop desired, through a noted 
 messenger, that I would put off the disputation, 
 which 1 have done, especially as my friends also ad- 
 vised it. Behold, what a monster I am, whose every 
 endeavour is intolerable ! Doctor Jodocus of Eise- 
 nach hath sent me a letter, running over with the 
 greatest ^cal, (for so must I mention with honour the 
 most impassioned passion of this man,) far more bitter 
 than that which you heard read before the chapter.
 
 226 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1518. 
 
 He said the same things openly to me in Erfurt. 
 It excruciates even to madness these men that they 
 must become fools in Christ; that our most eminent 
 masters in all the world must be considered as hav- 
 ing erred for so long a time." 
 
 On the 7th of August, 1518, Luther received a 
 formal citation to appear within sixty days at Rome 
 for trial. Prierias, his opponent and bitter enemy, 
 was appointed one of the judges by whom he was to 
 be tried. All Luther's friends readily perceived that 
 this was but a Romish trick to secure his destruc- 
 tion. At that time the German diet was in session 
 at Augsburg; the one at which Ulrich von Hutten 
 published his attack upon Rome ; the last which the 
 Emperor Maximilian ever attended. The Elector 
 Frederic, with his secretary and counsellors, was there. 
 
 On the following day, August 8th, Luther wrote 
 thus, to Spalatin: "Now, my dear Spalatin, I 
 greatly need your succour; or, rather, the honour 
 of almost the entire university requireth it with me. 
 What is wanted is, that you should use your power 
 with the illustrious prince (the elector) and Pfeffin- 
 ger, that he, the prince, and his majesty the emperor, 
 procure a release for me, or permission to have my 
 cause tried in Germany, as I have written to the 
 elector. For I see how craftily and maliciously those 
 murderous preachers are plotting my destruction. I 
 would fain have written to Pfeffinger that he 
 might, by his good offices and those of his friends, 
 seek the same favour for me from the emperor and 
 the elector. But this must be done without delay, 
 for only a short time is allowed me, as you will see 
 in this monster of a summons. Read it, with its 
 hydra heads and portents. If you love me and hate 
 iniquity, obtain the counsel and succour of the elec-
 
 JE. 34.] INDULGENCES. 227 
 
 tor as speedily as possible ; and when you have done 
 so, signify it to me, or rather to our reverend father 
 Staupitz, who is either already with you at Augs- 
 burg, or will be there soon. ... I beg you not to 
 be anxious or cast down on my account. The Lord 
 will, with the temptation, make a way of escape. 
 To the dialogue of Silvester [Prierias,] which is 
 indeed silvan and rustic, I am now making a reply. 
 You shall have it entire, as soon as it is ready. This 
 same sweet creature, my adversary, is also to be my 
 judge; as you will see in the summons." 
 
 On the 20th, he writes again: "The messenger 
 whom I sent to our illustrious Prince Frederic hath 
 not yet returned. I am, therefore, still waiting to 
 learn what the Lord intendeth through you to do in 
 my case. I have heard that the reverend Cardinal 
 Cajetan is specially charged by the pope to use his 
 endeavours to imbitter the emperor and the elector 
 against me. [Happily the effort did not succeed.] So 
 timid is the conscience of great pontiffs ; or rather such 
 is the insufferable power of truth over deeds done in 
 darkness. And yet I, as you know, my dear Spalatin, 
 have no fear in all these things. Even if their flatte- 
 ries or their authority should have the effect to ren- 
 der me odious unto all, I have this left in my heart and 
 conscience, that I know and confess that whatsoever 
 I hold and they impugn, I have from Grod, to whom 
 I cheerfully refer all and offer all. If he take them 
 away, let them be taken away ; if he preserve them, 
 let them be preserved; and let his name be hallowed 
 and blessed for ever, Amen. I do not yet well see how 
 lean escape that ecclesiastical censure which is pur- 
 posed, unless the prince shall come to my aid. And, 
 on the other hand, I would much rather be under 
 perpetual censure, than have the prince suffer in his
 
 228 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1518. 
 
 good name on my account. As I have before offered 
 myself, so believe and be assured I still hold myself 
 ready for any thing you should wish, 01 think best. 
 A heretic I will never be ; err I may in disputation. 
 But I wish to decide no doctrine ; only, I am not 
 willing to be the slave of the opinions of men. It 
 seemeth best to our learned and prudent friends 
 here that I should ask our prince, Frederic, for a 
 safe-conduct through his dominions, and that he 
 should refuse it, as I know he would, and that this 
 should be urged as my reason and excuse for my not 
 appearing in Home." 
 
 It was in the very midst of these transactions, and 
 before any thing was agreed upon between the elec- 
 tor, the emperor, the cardinal and the pope, in respect 
 to Luther's trial, that the latter was cheered by the 
 accession of a brilliant young man to the university 
 and to the circle of his particular friends; who, from 
 that time, enjoyed his confidence and supported 
 him in his great work more than any other individual. 
 Nothing could have been more advantageous or more 
 opportune than this event. At the time when the 
 timidity of Staupitz was beginning to cause him to 
 withdraw from Luther, and when the mature and 
 learned Carlstadt began to betray a want of tact in 
 the management of affairs, Melancthon was sent by 
 Providence, with his winning and amiable character; 
 with his varied, elegant and profound learning; with 
 his clear, philosophic views, his sincere piety and 
 warm friendship, to take his stand by the side of 
 Luther, and join him as his truest and ablest associate 
 in fighting out the battle of truth. 
 
 When the negotiations with Mosellanus, in respect 
 to the Greek professorship, were broken off, in July, 
 1518, the elector applied to Reuchlin, then residing
 
 JE. 34.] INDULGENCES. 229 
 
 at Stuttgard, to recommend two professors, one for the 
 Greek and one for the Hebrew language. Reuchlin re- 
 commended Melancthon for the former, and CEcolam- 
 padius for the latter. Melancthon was at that time 
 twenty-one years of age, and was temporarily occu- 
 pying the chair of rhetoric at the University of 
 Tubingen, but a few miles from Reuchlin's house. 
 Being the grandson of Reuchlin's sister, the young 
 Melancthon had been carefully educated under his 
 direction. He distinguished himself by his rapid 
 acquisitions in the Latin school of Simler at Pforz- 
 heim. At Heidelberg, where he entered the univer- 
 sity at the age of twelve, he acquired the reputation 
 of being the best Greek scholar. At Tubingen, to 
 which, at the end of two years after having taken 
 his first degree, he resorted, and where he spent six 
 years in laborious study, he made such extensive and 
 various acquisitions in learning as to stand prominent 
 above all the youths of the university. Destined, as 
 he was, to be the " preceptor of Germany," it was 
 well that his range of study at Tubingen was very 
 wide. Proceeding from the Latin and Greek, as 
 from a common centre, he extended his studies to 
 history, rhetoric, logic, mathematics, philosophy, 
 theology, law, and even to the leading medical writers, 
 and attended lectures on all these subjects. He not 
 only warmly espoused the cause of Reuchlin, as the 
 representative of Greek and Hebrew literature, and 
 its persecuted but victorious defender against the 
 ignorant Dominican monks of Cologne, but he made 
 himself familiar, even from boyhood, with the New 
 Testament, in the original a copy of which, received 
 as a present from Reuchlin, he always carried about 
 his person. Reuchlin, in his reply to the elector, 
 said he knew of no German who was Melancthon' a 
 20
 
 230 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1518. 
 
 superior, except it be Erasmus of Rotterdam. July 
 24, 1518, Reuchlin wrote to his young kinsman : "I 
 have received a letter from the elector, offering you 
 a place and a salary; and I will apply to you the 
 promise of God made to Abraham : ' Get thee out of 
 thy country, &c.; and I will make thee a great na- 
 tion ; and I will bless thee, and make thee a great 
 name, and thou shalt be blessed.' So I prophesy of 
 thee, my dear Philip, who art my care and my 
 comfort." 
 
 He went by way of Augsburg, in order to see the 
 elector there before he should leave the diet, then 
 in session. On leaving Augsburg, Melancthon pro- 
 ceeded to Nuremberg, where he made the acquaint- 
 ance of Pirkheimer and Scheurl, and then pursued 
 his way to Leipsic, where he saw the young Greek pro- 
 fessor Mosellanus, and on the 25th of August, 1518, 
 reached Wittenberg. Luther's joy, on learning what 
 an acquisition was made to Wittenberg in this re- 
 markable young man, was great; and never had he 
 occasion to abate his admiration. In the very next 
 letter after the one last quoted from him, under date 
 of August 31, he writes to Spalatin, still in Augs- 
 burg with the elector: "As touching our Philip 
 Melancthon, be assured all is done, or shall be, which 
 you desire in your letter. He pronounced an [in- 
 augural] oration on the fourth day after his arrival 
 here, [in which he set forth the new method of study 
 in contrast with the old scholastic method,] full of 
 learning and force, meeting with such favour and 
 admiration in all, that you may now leave off all 
 anxiety in commending him unto us. We soon lost 
 the feeling produced by his [small] stature and [his 
 weak bodily] frame; and now we do wonder and re- 
 joice at that which we find in him, and thank the
 
 JE. 34.] INDULGENCES. 
 
 illustrious prince and yourself for what you have 
 done. You have need, rather, to inquire in what study 
 he may render himself most acceptable to our prince. 
 With his consent and approval, I would choose that 
 Philip be made Greek professor. I only have fears 
 that his feeble health will not abide the severity of 
 our climate. I hear, furthermore, that he receiveth. 
 too small a stipend, so that the men at Leipsic are 
 hoping to get him away from us. He was beset by 
 them on his way to this place." 
 
 September 2, he writes to the same, informing 
 him that the students, now eagerly pursuing the new 
 studies and hearing, by way of preference, lectures 
 on the Bible and the ancient languages, complain 
 that, before receiving their degrees, they are required 
 to attend useless courses of lectures on scholastic 
 theology. Luther and his friends desired that those 
 studies be made optional, and that persons be 
 admitted to the degrees in theology on passing a 
 regular examination on the new branches of study 
 introduced by him, Melancthon and others. He 
 closes by saying, " I commend unto you heartily the 
 most Attic, the most erudite, the most elegant Me- 
 lancthon. His lecture-room is full, and more than 
 full. He inflameth all our theologians, highest, 
 lowest and midst, with a love of Greek." 
 
 On the 9th of the same month, he writes to Lange : 
 "The very learned and most Grecian Philip Melanc- 
 thon is professor of Greek here, a mere boy or strip- 
 ling, if you regard his age, but one of us if you con- 
 sider the abundance of his learning and his know- 
 ledge of almost all books. He is not only skilled in 
 both languages, [Latin and Greek, then a rare thing,] 
 but is learned in each. Nor is he wholly ignorant 
 of Hebrew." After going to Augsburg, whither he
 
 232 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1518. 
 
 resorted for reasons soon to be given, he wrote to 
 Melancthon himself, under date of Oct. 11 : "There 
 is nothing new or strange here, saving that the 
 whole city is filled with the rumour of my name, 
 and everybody is eager to see the new Herostratus 
 that has kindled such a conflagration. Concerning 
 yourself, go on in your manly course, as you have 
 begun. Teach the youth right things. I give my- 
 self up to be sacrificed for them and for you, if it 
 be the will of God. I will sooner perish, and, 
 what is most grievous, for ever lose your delightful 
 converse, than recall what hath been rightly said, and 
 become the occasion of extinguishing good learning. 
 Italy is covered with Egyptian darkness, together 
 with those sottish and yet savage enemies of letters 
 and of study. They neither know Christ nor the 
 things of Christ; and yet they are our lords and 
 masters both in matters of faith and of morals." 
 
 WE must now resume our narrative in respect to 
 Luther's summons and trial. So far was Luther 
 from being terrified at the threatening aspect things 
 were beginning to wear at Rome, that he published 
 a bold reply to Prierias. At the close, he says, 
 " Behold the answer I make you, hastily and within 
 the space of two days, because what you have brought 
 forward against me appeared so trifling. ... If you 
 wish to rejoin, see that you bring your Thomas upon 
 the arena a little better equipped; otherwise you 
 will not get off so easy as you have this time. I 
 have put myself in check, lest I should render evil 
 for evil." Such language did he venture to hold to 
 an adversary now his judge ! The nature and ex- 
 tent of his Christian courage are well portrayed in a 
 letter to Staupitz, Sept. 1. "Do not doubt," he 
 writes, " my reverend father, that I shall maintain
 
 JE. 34.] INDULGENCES. 
 
 my freedom in examining and expounding the 
 Scriptures. Neither the summons nor the threats 
 given out shall move me. I suffer, as you know, 
 incomparably worse things, [spiritual conflicts,] which 
 make me regard those temporal and momentary 
 thunderings as trifles. Still, I sincerely regard ec- 
 clesiastical authority. . . . If Silvester [Prierias,] that 
 silvan sophist, shall go on, and provoke me fur- 
 ther with his scribblings, I shall not play with him 
 again, but giving loose reins to my mind and pen, 
 will show him that there are in Germany men who 
 understand his Koman arts. ... I see that attempts 
 are made at Rome that the kingdom of truth, i. e. 
 of Christ, be no longer the kingdom of truth. They 
 continually ply their rage to hinder truth from being 
 heard and entertained in its own proper kingdom. 
 But I desire to belong to this kingdom, if not truly, 
 as I should, in life, truly at least with my tongue 
 and heart, renewed, albeit, and making true con- 
 fession. I learn from experience that the people 
 are sighing for the voice of their Shepherd, Christ, 
 and the youth are burning with wonderful zeal for 
 the sacred oracles. A beginning is made with us 
 in reading of Greek. We are all giving ourselves 
 to the Greek for the better understanding of the 
 Bible. We are expecting a Hebrew teacher, aud the 
 elector hath the business in hand." 
 
 Meanwhile the elector, still at Augsburg, was 
 using his influence with the emperor and with the 
 papal legate, that Luther might receive his trial iu 
 Germany. Sept. 9, Luther writes to Lange : " The 
 illustrious prince hath written unto me, that he hath 
 persuaded the legate, Cajetan, to write to Rome, ask- 
 ing that my cause may be tried within the country; 
 and that I must wait for the answer. I have hopes. 
 
 20
 
 234 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1518. 
 
 therefore, that the ecclesiastical censure will be with- 
 holden. But I am offensive to many, more, most." 
 Nevertheless the cardinal, without waiting for any 
 new instructions from Rome, agreed that Luther 
 should appear before him at Augsburg, at the close 
 of the diet. Of the character and conditions of that 
 trial, however, nothing was decided. The elector 
 and many other members of the diet had left the 
 place before Luther's arrival. The latter, happy to 
 learn that he was released from the obligation to 
 appear at Rome, readily complied with the request 
 to present himself before the papal legate at Augs- 
 burg. He set out on foot, availing himself of the 
 hospitality of the cloisters that lay in his route. 
 He reached Weimar, Sept. 28, and on the following 
 day, which was a great festival, he preached in the 
 chapel attached to the palace, and touched upon the 
 character of the bishops, who, instead of appearing 
 in the form of servants of the church, acted the part 
 of lords and tyrants. The treasurer of the monks 
 at Weimar, by the name of John Kestner, ap- 
 proached Luther, and expressed great solicitude in 
 respect to the result of the step he was about to 
 take. " Oh, my dear doctor," said he, " the Italians 
 are very learned people. I fear you will not be able 
 to gain your cause with them, and they will put you 
 to the flames." Luther replied, " With nettles I 
 could bear ; but with fire it would be rather too hot. 
 Dear friend, pray to our Lord God in heaven with 
 a paternoster for me and for his dear Son, whose is 
 my cause, that he would show mercy. If he will 
 maintain my cause, let it be maintained ; if he has 
 not a mind to maintain it, then I will not maintain 
 it ; I will let him see to that." From this place he 
 was sent forward by the elector, who furnished him
 
 SL. 34.] INDULGENCES. 235 
 
 with many important letters to those who were to 
 be his counsellors and protectors at Augsburg. A 
 few miles before reaching the place, he was so ex- 
 hausted that he was obliged to take a carriage. He 
 had also borrowed a robe of his Nuremberg friend 
 Link, that he might appear the more respectably 
 before the great men at Augsburg. 
 
 Three days after his arrival, he wrote to Spalatin : 
 "I arrived, my dear Spalatin, at Augsburg on St. 
 Mark's day, Oct. 7. We were very much wearied ; I 
 especially was almost consumed by the journey, being 
 exhausted from a disordered stomach. But I have re- 
 covered. This is the third day since my arrival, and 
 I have not yet seen the most reverend legate. I sent 
 to him, on the first day, Doctor Link and another to 
 announce my arrival. In the mean while, my good 
 friends here have been diligent in procuring for me 
 a safe-conduct from the emperor and the senate [of 
 Augsburg.] By the authority of our illustrious 
 prince, they are all very kind unto me and careful 
 of my wants. Although the reverend cardinal 
 legate promiseth to use all lenity, [he had made 
 such a promise to the elector,] yet my friends are 
 not willing that I should put any trust in him. 
 They take upon themselves to exercise their own 
 prudence and diligence in this matter. For they 
 know that, whatsoever he pretendeth outwardly, he 
 is inwardly very bitter against me. I have had the 
 same thing hinted, in no obscure manner, from other 
 quarters. To-day I shall go unto him, and seek my 
 first audience, and see him face to face. What will 
 be the issue, I know not. Some think it a good 
 omen for my cause that the Cardinal Gurk is absent ; 
 others, that the emperor himself is absent, though 
 the latter is not far away, [engaged in the chase,]
 
 236 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1518. 
 
 and his return is daily expected. The Bishop of 
 Augsburg is also absent from the city. Yesterday 
 I dined with Dr. Conrad Peutinger, and a better 
 citizen and man I have never seen. He is most 
 of all engaged in my interest, and other senators are 
 scarcely less so. Whether the reverend legate is 
 afraid of me, or is cherishing a monster,* I do not 
 know. Yesterday he sent unto me the orator of 
 Montferrat, who told me not to visit the legate with- 
 out first having a conference with himself. It is 
 thought by all, that he came by the legate's order. 
 With many words, and, as he saith, 'judicious coun- 
 sels/ he endeavoured to persuade me to submit forth- 
 with to the legate, and to return to the church by 
 recanting my hard speeches, at the same time pro- 
 posing to me the example of Joachim, Abbot of 
 Florence, who, by such means, though he had said 
 heretical things, escaped from being a heretic. Then 
 the sweet creature wished me to abstain from giving 
 the reasons for what I had said. ' Dost thou wish 
 to break a lance ?' said he. To be short, he is an 
 Italian, and will always be an Italian. . . . He went 
 on to make the most absurd declarations, and ac- 
 knowledged openly that it was right to preach what 
 was false for the sake of a good profit, as he called 
 it, and filling the purse. . . . But I dismissed this 
 Sinon, [who deceived the Trojans in regard to the 
 wooden horse,] who had so little of the Grecian 
 cunning, and he went his ways. Thus I am in sus- 
 pense between hope and fear; for this unapt medi- 
 ator hath inspired me with no little confidence." 
 
 Luther goes on to mention that he had engaged 
 Rossenstein, of Ingolstadt, as professor of Hebrew, 
 
 * Secretly favouring a bad cause.
 
 M. 34.] INDULGENCES. 237 
 
 and provided for his travelling expenses to Witten- 
 berg ; that Staupitz had written that he would be 
 at Augsburg as soon as he should know that Luther 
 was there ; that the orator of France had left Augs- 
 burg, but not without leaving a signal proof of his 
 regard for him ; that the golden rose was sent to 
 the elector by the pope, and " salutes all his Wit- 
 tenberg friends, and wishes them prosperity, whether 
 he returns to them or not." The letter to Melanc- 
 thon, written about the same time, has been already 
 given above. 
 
 October 15, he wrote again to Spalatin: "I am 
 not minded, my dear Spalatin, to write to our illus- 
 trious prince. You, therefore, who are familiar with 
 him, receive my communication, and signify it to 
 him. The legate hath treated with me, or rather 
 against me, now for the space of four days ; having 
 before promised our illustrious prince that he would 
 act a kind and fatherly part, but, in truth, doing 
 every thing by inflexible power alone. He was 
 loth to have me debate the matters in dispute with 
 him publicly; nor was he willing to discuss them 
 with me privately. His replies were all of this one 
 tenor: 'Recant; acknowledge your error ; the pope 
 will have it so, and not otherwise, whether you will 
 or not,' and such like. ... At length, overcome by 
 the entreaties of many, he consented that I should 
 give my reasons in writing ; which I have done this 
 day, in the presence of the elector's minister, Fe- 
 litzsch, who brought to mind the- prince's request. 
 At length the paper was rejected with disdain, and 
 my revocation loudly demanded ; and with a long 
 rehearsal from the fables of Aquinas, he seemed to 
 conquer and silence me. I essayed a dozen times to 
 say a word, and he chopped in upon me as many
 
 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1518. 
 
 times with thundering tones, and reigned alone." 
 Luther finally said to him, " If you will prove your 
 point even from those papal decrees you have been 
 reading, I will revoke as you desire." "And now 
 such airs and such laughter ! He suddenly seized 
 the book, read eagerly and out of breath/' till he 
 came to a certain passage, when Luther stopped him, 
 and said, "This expression teacheth just the contrary 
 of what you assert. My conclusion is, therefore, 
 right." " He being confused, and yet not wishing to 
 appear so, prudently dashed off upon another matter. 
 But I eagerly and not very reverently interrupted 
 him, and said : ' Let not your reverence suppose 
 that the Germans are ignorant of grammar, too.' 
 . . . His confidence deserted him ; and as he cried 
 out, ' Recant/ I left him, he meanwhile saying / Go, 
 and return not to me, till thou art willing to recant.' " 
 What is here thrown together took place at differ- 
 ent times, as will appear from the following. 
 
 Luther had received the imperial safe-conduct on 
 Monday, the llth of October. On Tuesday, in com- 
 pany with Frosch, prior of the Carmelite convent, 
 with whom he lodged, two other brethren of the 
 same order, and Link, and another Augustinian monk, 
 he had proceeded to the legate, with whom he found 
 the apostolical nuncio and the orator Urban, above 
 mentioned. According to instructions previously 
 received, Luther prostrated himself upon his face 
 before the legate. When the latter bade him rise, 
 he rose first upon his knees, and afterward upon his 
 feet. Meanwhile, a throng of curious Italians had 
 crowded into the room, in order to see the fearless 
 monk. After acknowledging that he was the author 
 of the theses, and saying, that he was willing to be 
 instructed if he had erred, the legate required him
 
 &. 34.] INDULGENCES. 
 
 to confess his errors, and promise to drop them, and 
 no more trouble the church. The errors were chiefly 
 two, the denial that the merits and sufferings of 
 Christ are the treasure of the church, and the asser- 
 tion that faith was necessary in order to partake of 
 the holy communion. Here ensued the discussion 
 mentioned in the foregoing letter. On returning to 
 his lodgings at night, he found Staupitz there, hav- 
 ing just arrived from Salzburg, his present residence. 
 On Wednesday, Luther proceeded again to the car- 
 dinal's house, accompanied by Staupitz, the three 
 imperial counsellors, Auerbach, Peutinger and Lan- 
 genmantel, and by Felitzsch, and desired permis- 
 sion to reply, in writing, to any errors which might 
 be imputed to him ; and this, after a long discus- 
 sion, in which Staupitz took part, was granted. On 
 Thursday, he came again with Felitzsch, the elec- 
 tor's minister, and Dr. Riihel, and presented a full 
 reply in writing, in which he resolutely maintained 
 the two positions complained of, and showed the 
 heresy of the contrary view. This was the paper 
 which the legate threw aside in contempt ; and then 
 it was that he was reduced to silence by Luther, who 
 turned against him the very passage the legate was 
 reading to prove his point. In the afternoon, the 
 legate sent for Staupitz, and requested him to under- 
 take the work of persuading Luther to renounce his 
 heresy. But Staupitz replied, that he could not do 
 it, as Luther was too strong for him in the Scrip- 
 tures. He finally made the attempt, but when Lu- 
 ther brought forward his passages of Scripture, and 
 asked Staupitz to give any other interpretation of 
 them, he confessed he could not, and concluded by 
 saying to Luther : " Remember, dear brother, that 
 thou hast taken this matter up in the name of
 
 240 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1518. 
 
 Jesus." The cardinal then agreed with Staupitz 
 that he would point out the particular articles which 
 Luther should retract. But the articles did not 
 come, and Luther sent his friend Link to request 
 that the points in dispute might be adjusted. The 
 legate appeared friendly, said he did not regard Lu- 
 ther as a heretic, and that he would not excommu- 
 nicate him, unless he should receive further com- 
 mand so to do from Rome, whither he had just sent 
 a special messenger with Luther's reply. If Luther 
 would but admit the single article on indulgences, 
 he continued, the case might easily be disposed of, 
 for the article on faith might admit of some expla- 
 nation. "A. clear proof this," said Staupitz, on 
 hearing it, " that Rome hath more care for money 
 than for faith and salvation." 
 
 It was the opinion of the various friends of Lu- 
 ther, that Staupitz and Link should leave Augs- 
 burg, and put no further confidence in these wily 
 Italians ; and consequently they both went, though 
 by different routes, to Nuremberg the same day. 
 Luther remained all day, Saturday, without hearing 
 from the legate; also the following Sunday, when 
 he sent a very humble communication to Cajetan, 
 saying, he had, in his excitement, been too violent 
 and disrespectful toward the pope ; that it would 
 have been better to have been more temperate, and 
 not to have answered a fool according to his folly; 
 that he would be silent in respect to indulgences, 
 if the other party should be made to do the same. 
 He would furthermore gladly renounce whatever his 
 conscience would allow; but at no one's command, 
 nor to please any one, could he violate his conscience. 
 Having received no word in reply, he wrote again 
 on Monday, saying, he was not conscious of neglect-
 
 JE. 34.] INDULGENCES. 241 
 
 ing any thing which belonged to him as a faithful 
 son of the church ; he could not waste his time, nor 
 be longer burdensome to the Carmelite monastery. 
 Besides, the legate had forbidden him to appear 
 again without a revocation. His friends had advised 
 him to appeal from the pope misinformed to the 
 pope better to be informed. Ecclesiastical censure 
 he had not deserved ; neither did he stand in fear 
 of it. By the grace of God he had reached to that 
 point, that he feared excommunication less than he 
 feared error. The legate, he hoped, would, before 
 the pope, put a kind construction upon his depart- 
 ure and upon his appeal. Luther remained Mon- 
 day and Tuesday, and, as he heard nothing from 
 the cardinal, his friends thought such silence no 
 good omen, and, according to their advice, Luther 
 left Augsburg, Wednesday, the 20th, on a horse 
 which Staupitz had provided for him, and with a 
 guide furnished him by the council. Langenmantel 
 let him out of the city by a small gate by night. 
 Luther, without suitable garments, that is, in a 
 monk's robe, without boots, rode about forty miles 
 the first day, and when he alighted from his horse 
 at the stable at night, he was unable to stand, and 
 fell down on the straw. In Grafenthal, half-way 
 between Coburg and Jena, Count Albert of Mans- 
 feld found him, and laughed heartily at the bare- 
 footed and bare-legged rider, and made him his 
 guest. 
 
 Luther felt thankful for his safe return, respecting 
 which he had been apprehensive. To Carlstadt he 
 had written : " But whether I come back to you 
 without injury or separation, or be banished to some 
 other place, may you prosper and adhere to Christ, 
 and exalt him without dismay or discouragement."
 
 242 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1518. 
 
 Still, with a single word, (revoco, I revoke,) he 
 might, he assures us, have rendered himself most 
 acceptable and beloved. "But," says he, "sooner 
 than renounce that doctrine which has made me 
 a Christian, will I die, be burned, banished and 
 cursed." 
 
 The very day he reached Wittenberg, Oct. 31, pre- 
 cisely twelve months from the time he came out with 
 his theses, he wrote to Spalatin : " To-day, my dear 
 Spalatin, have I come, by the grace of God, safely 
 to Wittenberg, not knowing, however, how long I 
 shall abide here, for I am in a state of uncertainty 
 between hope and fear." After saying that if his 
 first appeal is without effect, he will make another to 
 a general council, he adds, " I am full of joy and peace, 
 so much so as to marvel that this my trial should 
 appear a great matter to many notable men." At 
 Nuremberg, on his way home, he saw, for the first 
 time, the papal brief and other instructions given to 
 Cajetan, by which it appeared he was already con- 
 demned, unless he renounced his errors. He was 
 greatly incensed at this "apostolical, or rather dia- 
 bolical brief." "It is incredible that a thing so 
 monstrous should come from the chief pontiff, espe- 
 cially from Leo X. ... If, in truth, it did come 
 forth from the Roman court," he continues, "then 
 I will show them their most licentious temerity and 
 their most ungodly ignorance." He did, indeed, 
 afterward publish that brief, with a cutting running 
 commentary, in which, among other things, he says, 
 " The best of all is, that the brief is dated August 
 23, and my citation was given August 7, leaving a 
 
 space of but sixteen days What, then, 
 
 becometh of the sixty days spoken of in my sum- 
 mons ? [within which he was to appear for trial.]
 
 M. 34.] INDULGENCES. 243 
 
 Is this the fashion and custom of the Roman court, 
 to cite, warn, accuse, judge, condemn and give sen- 
 tence all on one and the same day; and that, too, 
 when the person indicted is so far from Rome as to 
 know nothing thereof? What answer will they 
 make to this? Peradventure they forgot to clear 
 their brain with hellebore before entering upon these 
 acts of deception and fraud." 
 
 In the same letter, quoted from above, Luther 
 mentions that Frosch, prior of the Carmelite monas- 
 tery at Augsburg, who had treated him "with in- 
 credible liberality and kindness" during his stay 
 there, was about to apply for the degree of doctor 
 of divinity at Wittenberg. " He is worthy on sun- 
 dry accounts," says Luther, "to be requited with a 
 favour from us. By promise of the elector, as he 
 saith, he expecteth a public dinner to be given unto 
 him on occasion of that solemnity. I may rest well 
 assured it will be so, if the elector hath promised it. 
 All needful preparations will, without doubt, be 
 made. See to it, then, that his expectation be ful- 
 filled on our part with due honour." The elector 
 seems either not to have had a distinct recollection 
 of the promise, or to have found some difficulty in 
 fulfilling it. Luther observes, not without chagrin, 
 in a subsequent letter : " Lest a man so worthy of 
 being honoured be dismissed without honour, we 
 have had recourse to our own monastery, and shall 
 provide the dinner at our own trouble. . . . But 
 we are very poor, and there is already a multitude 
 of us, so that we cannot, without difficulty, be at that 
 expense. I pray you, therefore, to see that the 
 prince furnish us with the wild fowl and venison." 
 On the 18th of November, Luther, as dean of the 
 theological faculty, conferred the degree. But Me-
 
 244 LIFE OP LUTHER. ' [1518. 
 
 lancthon, the young Greek professor, whom the 
 heroic reformer had as yet seen but a few times, did 
 not come to the dinner. Luther wrote him the same 
 day the following facetious note, inviting him to sup- 
 per: " To-day, you have despised me and the new 
 doctor, which may the muses and Apollo forgive 
 you. And I, though the affair was not altogether 
 mine, myself forgive you. But unless you appear 
 this time to meet Dr. Carlstadt, licentiate Amsdorf, 
 and especially the rector, neither your Greek learn- 
 ing, nor little brother Martin, as Cajetan calleth me, 
 will excuse you. The new doctor jocoselysaithhe 
 supposeth he, as a barbarian, is lightly esteemed by 
 the Greek. Be careful what you do, for I have pro- 
 mised that you will assuredly be present this time." 
 As early as the 25th of October, Cajetan wrote to 
 the Elector Frederic, complaining of Luther, and 
 affirming that his teachings were contrary to those 
 of the Roman see, and deserving to be condemned. 
 11 Your grace," he continues, " may believe me, for 
 I speak the truth, from what I certainly know, and 
 not from mere opinion." He then begs and exhorts 
 the elector either to send Luther to Rome, or to 
 banish him from the country. This letter was put 
 into the hands of Luther, with the request that he 
 would indicate what reply ought to be given. Luther 
 took this opportunity to rehearse the whole course of 
 the transactions with Cajetan ; to expose the unfair- 
 ness of them, and to open the eyes of the prince 
 more fully in respect to the chicanery practised by 
 the Roman court. In this letter he says to the elec- 
 tor : " In order that no evil may accrue to your 
 grace on my account, a thing which .1 least of all 
 desire, I purpose to forsake your dominions, and go 
 wheresoever my gracious God will have me, and sub-
 
 M. 86.] INDULGENCES. 245 
 
 mit myself to his divine will, whatsoever may come." 
 He wrote to Spalatin that he should regret to be ar- 
 rested in his course at Wittenberg, not so much on 
 his own account as on that of the university and the 
 many excellent young men who were there, burning 
 with zeal for a knowledge of the Holy Scriptures. 
 If he should be silenced, the turn would next come 
 to Carlstadt and to the whole theological faculty. 
 The university wrote to the elector, entreating him 
 to interest himself especially in the cause of Luther. 
 To his congregation Luther said, " I am, in these 
 times, as you well know, an irregular preacher, hav- 
 ing often gone away without taking leave of you. 
 Should that ever take place again, I will now say 
 farewell, in case I should not return." 
 
 As Frederic was very reserved in regard to his 
 opinion of Luther's course, and as the latter was 
 desirous not only not to involve his prince in the 
 controversy, but to enjoy more freedom for discussion 
 than he supposed could be allowed him in Saxony, 
 he seriously purposed retiring from his post, and 
 seeking some other place of abode. Paris seemed to 
 be the place of his choice, as he vainly imagined 
 the defenders of the liberties of the Gallican church 
 would sympathize with him. There was much con- 
 sultation with Spalatin and other friends about the 
 place and manner of retirement, and all things were 
 arranged by Luther for a speedy departure, when 
 suddenly, on the 1st of December, a letter came to 
 him from the secretary Spalatin, which prevented 
 the execution of the plan. 
 
 December 2, he writes : " Had your letter not 
 
 been received yesterday, my dear Spalatin, I had 
 
 taken measures for my departure, and I still hold 
 
 myself ready either to go or to remain. The con- 
 
 21*
 
 246 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1518. 
 
 cern my friends feel for me maketh me marvel, and 
 is more than I can endure. Some have urged with 
 great earnestness that I should give myself up as a 
 captive to the elector, in order that he might take 
 possession of me and keep me in custody, and then 
 write to the legate that I was detained in safe keep- 
 ing until I should render an account of my doings. 
 What opinion ought to be entertained of this ad- 
 vice, I leave to be decided by your wisdom. I am 
 in the hands of God and of my friends. 
 
 "It is certain that the elector is believed to be on 
 my side. This I learn from a man who would as- 
 suredly not deceive me. At the court of the Bishop 
 of Brandenburg, the question was lately moved what 
 my confidence was, in whose support I trusted. One 
 replied, 'In Erasmus, Capito, and other learned 
 men.' 'No/ said the bishop, 'these would have 
 no weight with the pope. It is the University of 
 Wittenberg and the Duke of Saxony that uphold 
 him.' Thus I clearly see that the elector is thought 
 to be with me, and this displeaseth me. The sus- 
 picion he stands in as being joined with me will 
 constrain me to withdraw, if any thing can have 
 that effect, although the elector might say in his 
 reply, that he is a layman, and doth not take upon 
 him to judge in such matters ; and the more so, 
 because he seeth that the university, which hath 
 the approval of the church, is not against me. But 
 you have no need of these my cogitations. If I 
 remain here, I shall be hindered from saying and 
 writing many things; if I go away, I shall open my 
 whole mind, and offer up my life unto Christ." 
 
 The pope resorted to another expedient in order 
 to accomplish his purpose in respect to Luther. 
 He appointed Miltitz, a Saxon by birth, now agent
 
 M. 35.] INDULGENCES. 247 
 
 of the elector at Home, as a nuncio to Germany, 
 and fitted him out with a golden rose, a token of 
 friendship given only to princes who were the pope's 
 favourites. Miltitz was to unite with this flattering 
 office that of making good what had been lost by 
 Cajetan toward effecting a reconciliation. This 
 undertaking of Miltitz, which from various causes 
 was an entire failure, was a sort of interlude. The 
 nuncio acted a shrewd part, and, but for Eck and 
 other zealots, would probably have been successful. 
 He avoided connection with Cajetan, who had be- 
 come generally odious by his arrogance, and asso- 
 ciated himself closely with Pfeffinger, the elector's 
 minister. He demeaned himself as a subject of 
 Frederic, admitted the justness of Luther's com- 
 plaints against indulgences, and treated Luther with 
 great consideration and tenderness. For a long time, 
 he was received and treated with suspicion. Luther 
 did not trust him. Still he induced Luther to make 
 many important concessions, all that could possibly 
 be made by him with a good conscience. When, in 
 the beginning of the year 1519, the imperial throne 
 became vacant, the pontiff was interested to exclude 
 the house of Austria, already too powerful, from the 
 succession, and secure the election of the King of 
 France. Frederic's position, as one of the most in- 
 fluential of the electors and as vicar of the empire, 
 now rendered it necessary for the Roman see to 
 change its haughty tone toward him, and conse-* 
 quently Luther was left for several months com- 
 paratively free. 
 
 On the 9th of December, 1518, Luther wrote two 
 letters to Spalatin, one in which he proposes a mode- 
 rate reform in the university, by dropping one or two 
 courses of lectures in the scholastic philosophy; the
 
 248 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1518. 
 
 other in which he speaks thus : " That which you, 
 my dear Spalatin, direct me not to do [the publish- 
 ing of his account of the interview with Cajetan at 
 Augsburg] hath been already done. My rehearsal 
 of those doings have been published, and I have 
 used great liberty therein, and yet have come short 
 of the whole truth. Herein, as well as in all other 
 matters, I perceive that I must act without any 
 delay. Yesterday I was given to understand from 
 Nuremberg that Charles von Miltitz was on his way 
 hither with three papal briefs, as it is on good au- 
 thority said, for apprehending me and delivering me 
 up to the pope. The Eisleben doctor, who, with 
 Felitzsch, was present when I stood before the legate, 
 hath given me warning through our prior to be on 
 my guard. ... I have heard many such-like things 
 which, whether they be true, or only given out in 
 order to terrify me, must not, I think, go unheeded. 
 Therefore, to the end they may not come upon me 
 unawares and despatch me, nor, on the other hand, 
 cast me down and overcome me by means of judg- 
 ments passed against me, I hold myself in readiness 
 for any event, and so await the will of God. I have 
 made my appeal to a future council. The more 
 they rage and have recourse to violence, so much 
 the less am I terrified. I will one day be yet more 
 bold against those Roman hydras. That which you 
 have heard, namely, that I have taken leave of the 
 people of Wittenberg, is not so. I only said, . . . 
 ' If I should ever again suddenly leave you, I wish 
 now to say farewell, in case I should not return/ " 
 
 On the llth of the same month, he wrote to his 
 friend Link in Nuremberg: "The report touching 
 the three apostolical briefs, given unto Miltitz against 
 me, hath come to my ears. Casper, [Aquila,] who
 
 M. 35.] INDULGENCES. 
 
 had learned this from your letter, informed me of 
 the same by a special messenger, in his over-anxiety 
 for me. I send you my Transactions, written with 
 more sharpness than the legate would like to see 
 published. But my pen is already producing still 
 weightier things. I know not whence these cogita- 
 tions arise. This matter hath in my esteem hardly 
 a beginning yet, so far is it from the end, which the 
 great ones of Rome are looking for. I will send 
 unto you my trifles, that you may see whether I 
 rightly interpret the words of Paul in respect of 
 antichrist, as referring to the court of Rome. I 
 think I can plainly show that the Romans are even 
 now worse than the Turks. ... I live in expecta- 
 tion of the attempts of my murderers, whether from 
 Rome or from any other quarter. I marvel that 
 the excommunication tarries so long. . . . Our stu- 
 dies are going actively on, and we are as busy as 
 bees. Farewell. Greet all my friends, especially 
 the preacher Sebaldinus, and the other master, but 
 most of all Pirkheimer, Albert Diirer, and Christo- 
 pher Scheurl, [the most influential men in Nurem- 
 berg.] Eck wnteth that he is not altogether pleased 
 nor altogether displeased with my reply to Prierias ; 
 but he addeth a very sagacious and true clause, 
 namely, that he well knoweth his opinion will not 
 weigh much with me." 
 
 Two days later, he wrote to Staupitz then in 
 Salzburg, mentioning his safe return from Augsburg, 
 and then proceeding to say : "The elector dissuaded 
 me altogether from bringing out my account of the 
 Augsburg Transactions; but at length he hath given 
 his consent, and they are now in course of printing. 
 In the mean season, the legate wrote [to him,] bit- 
 terly accusing me and you and my associates, as ho
 
 250 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1518. 
 
 calleth them, complaining that I departed secretly 
 from Augsburg, and that it was done in guile. He 
 then counselleth the elector to send me bound to 
 Rome, or to banish me from his dominions, in order 
 that he bring not a foul spot upon his name for the 
 sake of one little monk. He saith the cause will be 
 sustained and prosecuted at Rome; that he himself 
 hath written to the city, giving an account of my 
 fraud, and that he hath washed his hands of the 
 fault. The elector desired me to reply to that 
 letter, in order that he might put my answer with 
 his own, and send both to the legate. This have I 
 done, and, as I think, in a satisfactory manner. The 
 elector manifests much concern for me, but would 
 choose I were somewhere else. He ordered Spalatin 
 to call me to Lichtenburg, and to confer fully with 
 me on the matter there. 1 told him, that if the ex- 
 communication should come I would not continue 
 here. He entreated me not to think of going to 
 France. I am still waiting to learn his final deci- 
 sion. As for you, my beloved father, farewell. Com- 
 mend to Christ my soul alone. I see that these men 
 have determined on my death; but Christ deter- 
 mineth not to yield in me. Let, yea, let his holy 
 and blessed will be done. Pray for me. . . . Our 
 studies prosper well, save that there is a lack of time 
 for our best lectures." 
 
 To Reuchlin, the very next day, December 14th, 
 Luther wrote the following spirited and magnificent 
 letter. " The Lord be with you, most courageous 
 man : I rejoice in the goodness of God which is 
 manifested in yoXi, most erudite and most excellent 
 sir, in that you have been able to stop the mouths 
 of evil-speakers. Surely you were an instrument of 
 the Divine will, though not knowing it yourself, yet
 
 JE. 35.] INDULGENCES. 251 
 
 longed for by all the lovers of a pure theology. 
 Quite other things are accomplished by God than 
 that which seemeth outwardly to be done through 
 you. Of those who desired to be joined with you 
 I was one; but I had no opportunity. Yet was I 
 always most present with you in my prayers and 
 wishes.. But now, that which was denied me when 
 I would fain have been your fellow-labourer, is 
 abundantly granted me as your successor. The 
 teeth of that behemoth are now gnashing upon me, 
 to repair, if possible, the dishonour received through 
 you. I meet these men with much less of ability 
 and learning, but not with less confidence than that 
 wherewith you met and overcame them. They ab- 
 stain from contending with me. They refuse to 
 reply unto me, and have recourse to nothing else 
 but force and violence. But Christ liveth, and I 
 can lose nothing, because I possess nothing. By 
 your firmness the horns of those bulls are not a little 
 broken. This doth the Lord accomplish through 
 you to the end that the sophistical tyrants may learn 
 to be a little more tardy and moderate in resisting the 
 truth; that Germany may draw breath again, and 
 the teaching of the Scriptures be revived, which, 
 alas ! have for so many centuries been not only kept 
 down, but extinguished." He excused himself for 
 writing so familiarly, by saying that his affection for 
 him, and his knowledge of him both through com- 
 mon fame and through his books, together with 
 Melancthon's assurance that it would be kindly re- 
 ceived, emboldened him thus to write. Reuchlin's 
 dispute with the Dominican monks of Cologne was 
 at first personal, and related to the value of Hebrew 
 and Greek literature ; but it ended in dividing Ger-
 
 252 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1518. 
 
 many into two great parties, henceforth to be repre- 
 sented by Luther and his opponents. 
 
 In a letter to Spalatin, December 20, on the sub- 
 ject of the elector's letter to Cajetan, Luther, among 
 other things, says : " I have seen the excellent letter 
 of our illustrious prince to the reverend legate. With 
 what joy did I read that letter over and over again, 
 which so aboundeth in Christian confidence, and is 
 yet so wonderfully meek. I do only but fear that 
 the Italians will not understand how much is meant 
 under that humble attitude and form. They are a 
 people, whose custom and use it is, both in their 
 doings and in their writings, to set every thing forth 
 with great ostentation and show. But they will, at 
 least, see so much as this, that nothing which they 
 have put their hands to seemeth to prosper. It 
 cannot be otherwise but that they will be greatly 
 displeased. Wherefore, I entreat you in the Lord, 
 to thank the prince on my behalf, and show unto 
 him how joyful and grateful I am. It hath all 
 turned out well that he, [Cajetan,] who, a little 
 while before, was but a poor monk like myself, did 
 not fear to draw near to great potentates, [such as 
 Frederic,] without showing them any honour or re- 
 verence, and to threaten them, to command them, 
 and to treat them as haughtily as he pleased. He 
 may now know, though late, that the civil power is 
 of Grod, and that the honours thereof may not be 
 trodden in the dust, especially by one who hath re- 
 ceived his own authority from only a man, [the 
 pope.] It pleaseth me much, that in this matter 
 the prince hath shown an impatience sopatient and 
 prudent. The Lord own and acknowledge all this, 
 whatsoever it be, as his." 
 
 On the 27th of December, Miltitz reached Alten-
 
 JE. 35.] INDULGENCES. 253 
 
 burg, his head-quarters while in Saxony. Having 
 learned the vile practices of Tetzel, and especially 
 his squandering habits, he wrote to Leipsic, only 
 twenty-seven miles distant, where that monk passed 
 the remaining few months of his life, ordering him 
 to appear at Altenburg, to give an account of his do- 
 ings. We have the reply of Tetzel, preserved in 
 full. Under date of December 81, 1518, he begins 
 his letter thus : " Your excellency hath given me 
 notice, that I am required to come to Altenburg, to 
 hear somewhat in particular from you. Now, I 
 would willingly undertake the labour of such jour- 
 ney, if I could, without peril of life, go out of Leip- 
 sic. For the Augustinian monk, Martin Luther, 
 hath stirred up not only all the German estates, but 
 even the kingdoms of Bohemia, Hungary, and Po- 
 land against me, so that I am nowhere in safety." 
 
 He complains of Luther's hostility and false accu- 
 sations, particularly as made in the account which 
 the latter had recently given of the transactions at 
 Augsburg, "in which all the blame was cast upon 
 Tetzel and his abettors ; and closes by saying, that 
 he has already suffered very much for his fidelity to 
 the pope, but will nevertheless continue to be faith- 
 ful until death. He died not long after, in such 
 wretchedness as to excite Luther's compassion, and 
 draw forth from him a letter of Christian consola- 
 tion. His death occurred during the Leipsic dispu- 
 tation, on the 4th of July, the very day that Luther, 
 but a few rods distant from Tetzel' s retreat, began 
 his debate with Eck. 
 
 Meanwhile, Luther had an interview with Miltitz,. 
 at Altenburg, the first week in January, 1519. On 
 the second day, he writes without date to the elector : 
 "It is quite too much that your electoral and princely 
 
 22
 
 254 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1519. 
 
 grace should be so entangled in my affairs and trou- 
 bles ; but as it is a thing of necessity, which Grod 
 hath so ordered, I pray you accept it graciously. 
 Yesterday, Charles von Miltitz set forth very earn- 
 estly the discredit and dishonour done through me 
 to the Roman see, and I promised to do, with all 
 humility, what I could to make reparation. . . . 
 First, I agreed to drop the matter, and let it die of 
 itself, on condition that my adversaries do the same. 
 For I think if they had let my writings pass, all 
 should have been still, and the song ended, and the 
 people weary of it long ago. Furthermore, I fear, 
 if this course be not taken, but the strife go on either 
 by violence or by disputation, something ill will 
 come of it, and the play will turn out to be too 
 much in earnest. Therefore, I think it best to let 
 the matter end where it is. Secondly, I have pro- 
 mised to write to his holiness the pope, submitting 
 myself humbly to him, and acknowledging that I 
 have been too heated and violent, though I did not 
 intend thereby to harm the holy Roman church, but 
 rather, as a true son of the church, to set myself 
 .against blasphemous preaching, which brought the 
 Roman church into contempt and reproach among 
 the people. Thirdly, I consented to put forth an 
 address, exhorting all to follow, obey and honour 
 the Roman church, and to interpret my writings, not 
 to the discredit, but to the honour of that church ; 
 and I promised to confess in the same, that I have 
 been too warm, and, perchance, out of season, in what 
 I have said. . . . Fourthly, Master Spalatin, at the 
 instance of Fabian, proposed to lay the matter in 
 dispute before the most reverend Archbishop of 
 Salzburg, by whose decision, to be made after con- 
 sultation with learned men, I must abide, unless I
 
 &. 35.] INDULGENCES. 255 
 
 may choose to appeal from it to a future council. 
 Perhaps, the jar may thus be stayed, and made 
 quietly to pass away. But I fear the pope will not 
 allow a judge, [to decide between him and me,] and 
 I certainly will not allow the pope's authority. If, 
 therefore, the first plan doth not work well, the play 
 will be, that the pope will give the text, and I make 
 the commentary. But that is not a thing to be 
 wished. I have conferred with Miltitz thereon, who 
 doubteth this will not be enough ; and yet did he 
 not demand a recantation from me, but will take 
 the proposal into consideration. If your grace 
 thinketh I can do more, condescend, for the Lord's 
 sake, graciously to show it unto me; for all pains 
 taken to draw from me a retractation will nothing 
 avail." 
 
 To many it seems difficult to interpret these con- 
 cessions in a manner that shall be honourable to 
 Luther. His firmness seems almost to have de- 
 serted him. But we must remember that his case, 
 at that time, appeared almost desperate. He was 
 unwilling to stand in such relations of dependence 
 to the elector, or to involve him in the controversy. 
 The result was very uncertain. The papal nuncio 
 treated him with great kindness, and conceded nearly 
 all that he had asserted, so that Luther would 
 come off quite as well as the pope would. Besides, 
 the concessions of Luther related to the Roman 
 church, in the abstract, apart from the abuses of 
 unworthy functionaries ; and for this church, so 
 viewed, he never lost his reverence, nor did he 
 ever adopt the theory of separation. Luther was 
 always, and more particularly in the earlier and later 
 parts of his life, a churchman, and therefore he 
 could take the ground he did in this letter. Finally,
 
 256 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1519. 
 
 he refused to retract, and would confess little, except 
 indiscretion in the manner he had written. And, 
 after all, what if Luther was human, and was not 
 always equally the saint or the hero ? What if the. 
 transactions with the nuncio betrayed a weak point in 
 the reformer in an hour of despondency and gloom ? 
 Luther was not perfect, was not always consistent, 
 nor always right either in his opinions or in his feel- 
 ings. Far from it. 
 
 The interview on Luther's part was somewhat of 
 a diplomatic character. He distrusted the Roman 
 courtier, though a Saxon by birth. He doubted 
 whether the court of Rome would go so far as the 
 nuncio believed. He wished to have it appear, in 
 case of failure, that the fault was not his. And, 
 moreover, he all the while entertained views and 
 feelings which he thought it not best to betray either 
 to the nuncio or to the elector. He was dealing with 
 men of the court. 
 
 In the freedom of confidential correspondence, 
 Luther, in letters to various friends, unbosoms all 
 his feelings and transient impressions. But with 
 wonderful variety and adaptation to character, he 
 imparts to his several correspondents only what 
 their peculiarities would enable them to appreciate, 
 and what would meet with their sympathy. To the 
 elector he writes with reserve, but in a way adapted 
 to win his confidence and affection, and speaks of 
 transactions as they would be likely to affect his 
 policy. To Spalatin, he writes as to a friend and a 
 "theologian more fully and freely, but with the evi- 
 dent expectation that it will, indirectly and on the 
 most fitting occasions, and with suitable accompani- 
 ments, reach the elector's ear. To Scheurl, he writes 
 as to an intelligent statesman and warm friend,
 
 &. 35.] INDULGENCES. 
 
 whom he highly respects, and whose influence in 
 Nuremberg is of great importance to him. Through 
 him, he is virtually addressing the south of Ger- 
 many, and he does not forget that in the tone of his 
 letters. To Egran, an independent and bold inno- 
 vator or reformer in Zwickau, he writes as to a kin- 
 dred spirit, and speaks right out without reserve. 
 To Staupitz, he writes with affection and a delicate 
 regard to his character and position, as a timid 
 friend, whom he wishes to draw forth from his pa- 
 pal connections and sympathies. All these things 
 must be taken into the account, if we would rightly 
 understand his letters. 
 
 To Scheurl he writes, January 13, 1519 : " I 
 have stolen from myself and from my labours this 
 hour, and write, at last, to the intent that I may not 
 seem unthankful for so many letters from you, or 
 unwilling to reply. I, in all sincerity, thank you 
 for the pure and true friendship whereby you lend 
 me your counsels and show your solicitude for me. 
 Gladly would I see the end of this turbulence, if my 
 enemies were of the same mind. But they purpose, 
 as I see, to compass their work, not by gentleness, 
 but by power and violence. Hence, they daily stir 
 up against themselves the more oppositions, and 
 bring nothing to pass. That the upstir can never 
 be put down by naked force, I well know. The 
 trifles of Silvester [Prierias,] if they are indeed his, 
 seem not to deserve a reply from me : they are pue- 
 rile and womanly, nothing but the meanings of his 
 grief. With Charles [Miltitz,] I have had a very 
 friendly meeting, and it has been agreed, first, that 
 utter silence on this subject shall be observed on 
 both parts ; and, secondly, that by order of the su- 
 preme pontiff, some German bishop shall point out 
 
 22*
 
 258 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1519. 
 
 the errors which I shall retract. But, except God 
 interpose, nothing will be brought to pass, especially 
 if they shall take in hand to force me with that new 
 decretal, the which I have not yet seen. I have 
 heard that it asserts the plenitude of [the papal] 
 power, without bringing forward any 'support either 
 from the Scriptures or from the canons. But this I 
 would never grant to any decretal, even the most 
 ancient. Who can tell what God intends to raise 
 up through these monsters ! As touching myself, I 
 am neither terrified nor desirous to hush the matter. 
 I have in store many things, which could touch the 
 Roman hydra, and which I would fain bring forth, 
 if suffered to do so. But if God will not that I 
 should have the liberty, the will of the Lord be 
 done." What, in the dubious state of things then 
 existing, could be said more adapted in any event 
 to secure the confidence and continued respect of the 
 friend who had evidently been advising him to a 
 peaceful course ? How different the tone of his letter 
 to Egran, who had already broken, on his own ac- 
 count, with the Papists, or rather with the monks 
 who had assailed Luther. It was written February 2, 
 and begins thus: " Accept a brief notice, my dear 
 Egran, of the present state of my affairs. Charles 
 von Miltitz was sent unto our prince, armed with 
 more than seventy apostolical briefs, given to this 
 end, that he should bring me alive and bound to 
 Rome, that murderous Jerusalem. But being laid 
 prostrate by the Lord on the way, that is, being ter- 
 rified by the multitude of those who favour me, after 
 he had most carefully noted the estimation in which 
 the people held me, he turned his violence into friend- 
 ship, which was nothing but a pretence, and treated 
 with me a long while to persuade me, for the honour
 
 JE. 85.] INDULGENCES. 259 
 
 of the church, to retract what I had said. To which 
 I replied after this sort : ' Let the manner of retracting 
 be determined, and the grounds of the error pointed 
 out in such a manner that they would appear plain 
 both to the common people and to the learned, lest a 
 wrong retractation should stir up still greater hatred 
 against Rome.' It was at length agreed by us, that 
 the Bishops of Salzburg and Treves should be chosen, 
 and that unto one of them the case should be re- 
 ferred for decision ; and thus we parted as friends 
 with a [Judas] kiss. For in his entreaties he shed 
 tears. I, for my part, feigned not to understand 
 those crocodile tears. Thus far hath the matter 
 proceeded. What is now doing at Rome, I know 
 not. Charles [Miltitz] said, there had not for a 
 century been a cause which had given more trou- 
 ble to that most odious herd of cardinals, and of 
 Romanizing Romanists; that they would sooner 
 give ten thousand ducats, than allow this matter to 
 go on as it had begun." Here we perceive clearly, 
 that Luther had no confidence in the nuncio's sin- 
 cerity, but still thought it best to treat with him 
 without appearing to comprehend his policy. In 
 this way, Luther would either induce him to effect 
 a relaxation of the severity of the pope, or make it 
 appear to all the world that he himself was not in 
 fault if the reconciliation was not effected. 
 
 The following letter to Staupitz, written February 
 20th, will serve not only to illustrate the foregoing, 
 but to throw light upon Luther's present relations 
 to Staupitz, and upon the view they took of the 
 course of events. "Though you are far from me, 
 [at Salzburg, near the western boundary of Aus- 
 tria,] reverend father, and keep silence, not writing 
 to me as I had expected and desired, I nevertheless
 
 260 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1519. 
 
 will break the silence. I and all others are desirous 
 to see you here in these regions. I suppose you 
 have received my Transactions, that is, the ire and 
 indignation of Rome. God hurries and forces me 
 on instead of leading me. I am not master of my- 
 self. While I desire to be quiet, I am driven into 
 the midst of tumults. Charles Miltitz has seen me 
 at Altenburg, and complained that I had drawn all 
 the world away from the pope unto myself; that he 
 had, on his journey, made observation and found that 
 scarcely two or three out of five held with the Ro- 
 man party. He was armed with seventy apostolical 
 briefs for the purpose of carrying me captive to that 
 murderous Jerusalem, that Babylon in purple, as I 
 afterward learned from the court of the elector. 
 When that device was given up in despair, he un- 
 dertook to persuade me to retract, and thus to restore 
 what I had taken away. On my asking to be in- 
 structed as to what I should retract, it was agreed 
 that the cause should be carried before certain 
 bishops. I made mention of the Archbishop of 
 Salzburg, Treves, and Freisingen. At evening I 
 complied with an invitation to sup with him, and 
 we had a pleasant season together, and when we 
 parted, he kissed me. I made as though I did not 
 understand this Italian dissimulation. He also 
 summoned and censured Tetzel. Afterward, at 
 Leipsic, he convicted him of receiving as wages 
 ninety florins a month, besides three horsemen and 
 a carriage, and all his charges to boot. Tetzel him- 
 self hath now disappeared, no one, save perhaps the 
 fathers of his order, knowing whither he hath gone. 
 Eck, a man of guile, draweth me, as you here see 
 [from his theses,] into new disputes. Thus the Lord 
 taketh care that I be not idle. But, by the will of
 
 INDULGENCES. 261 
 
 Christ, this [Leipsic] disputation shall turn out ill 
 for those Roman laws and customs on which Eck 
 leaneth for support. . . . The Leipsic professors 
 have given their consent to have the disputation with 
 Eck held in their university, and accuse me of rash- 
 ness in saying that they refused, and ask me to take 
 back what I said. But I learned with certainty 
 from Duke George that they had refused him ; and 
 I have twice replied that their dean had refused me, 
 as in truth he did, when I requested permission. 
 Thus craftily do these men strive to stifle this dis- 
 putation, but Duke George urgeth it forward." 
 
 By being " driven on and kept from idleness," Lu- 
 ther means that Eck's propositions and challenges 
 frustrated the plans of Miltitz for effecting a recon- 
 ciliation. For if the papal party should renew the 
 discussion, Luther was, by the terms of the agree- 
 ment, left free to reply. Tetzel did not leave Leipsic, 
 as was supposed, but secluded himself there after his 
 disgrace, and remained in the cloister, called the 
 Paulinum, till his death, a few months after. Luther 
 expresses his feelings, in respect to that humiliation 
 and disgrace, in another letter thus : " I am sorry 
 that Tetzel is reduced to such necessity in respect 
 to his safety, and that his doings have been exposed 
 to the light. I would much rather, if it were pos- 
 sible, that, by a reformation on his part, he should 
 escape with honour. As I lost nothing by his glory, 
 so I should gain nothing by his ignominy. I cannot 
 sufficiently marvel that he should dare to take such 
 a large amount of money from poor people for his 
 own use, enough to support a bishop, nay, an 
 apostle."
 
 262 
 
 LIFE OF LUTHER. 
 
 [1519. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE LEIPSIC DISPUTATION. 
 
 SECTION I. Preliminary Correspondence. 
 
 PUBLIC 
 
 debate, held 
 from June 
 27 to July 
 8, 1519, at 
 Leipsic, be- 
 tween Eck on 
 the one hand, 
 and Carlstadt 
 on the other, 
 to which Lu- 
 ther was, with 
 some diffi- 
 culty, finally 
 admitted, de- 
 rives its interest partly from the topics discussed 
 chiefly the liberty of the will, the power of the pope 
 and indulgences, and partly from the scene of the 
 transactions, and the peculiar relations of Leipsic to 
 Wittenberg. The Duchy of Saxony, with Duke 
 George at its head, Dresden for its capital and 
 Leipsic as its chief seat of theological learning, was 
 strongly Papal, and continued to be so for twenty 
 years from this time, or till 1539. The Electorate 
 of Saxony, belonging to the other line of Saxon
 
 JE. 35.] LEIPSIC DISPUTATION. 263 
 
 princes, with Frederic, cousin of George, for ita 
 reigning sovereign, and Wittenberg for its capital, 
 and its centre of theological influence, was the head- 
 quarters of the Reformation. 
 
 Eck chose Leipsic as the place for holding the 
 disputation, both for the favour which he expected 
 there from the sympathies of the people and of the 
 judges, and for the glory he hoped to acquire from 
 the university and the court of George, by .a victory 
 over the two champions of reform. Eck was perhaps 
 the most learned, certainly the most celebrated Catho- 
 lic theologian of Germany. He was then Vice-chan- 
 cellor of the University of Ingolstadt. He owed his 
 great reputation principally to his shrewdness and 
 practised art as a debater. It was neither greatness 
 of mind, nor depth and solidity of learning, but varied 
 knowledge, self-possession, and skill in studying the 
 passions and prejudices of men and turning them ef- 
 fectively to his account, it was this that made him a 
 formidable antagonist. And in this he succeeded at 
 Leipsic, though those who could estimate arguments 
 by their intrinsic worth gave the victory to the other 
 party. 
 
 Eck, as it appears in the accounts already given of 
 him, had been, for some little time, an acquaintance 
 and personal friend of Luther, having been intro- 
 duced to him by Scheurl of Augsburg. A little 
 sparring between them had occurred in the Obelisks, 
 or notes of the former, on the ninety-five Theses, and 
 in the Asterisks, or reply of the latter. But at Augs- 
 burg, in 1518, they had met on friendly terms; and 
 the proposal of Luther that a disputation should be 
 held between Eck and Carlstadt on the subjects 
 embraced in certain propositions which the latter 
 had recently published, was agreed to, and Eck was
 
 264 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1519. 
 
 allowed to choose between Leipsic and Erfurt as the 
 place for the discussion. But when Eck came to 
 publish his counter-propositions, setting forth the 
 points which he was to maintain, he not only put 
 himself in opposition to Carlstadt's propositions, but 
 also to Luther's theses and other writings, thereby 
 covejtly drawing Luther also into the debate. It was 
 this disingenuous act which discharged Luther from 
 the obligations he had entered into with Miltitz, 
 according to which he was to remain silent, provided 
 his opponents should do the same. The breach of 
 the truce came, therefore, from the papal side ; and 
 Eck's intemperate zeal was far more wounding to 
 the feelings of Miltitz than to those of Luther. 
 
 In the letter of Feb. 2, to Egran, quoted above 
 in part, is the following paragraph : " Our Eck, who 
 was besought by me, when at Augsburg, to meet 
 Carlstaldt in debate at Leipsic, in order to bring the 
 controversy to an end, hath at last accepted the ad- 
 vice. But behold the character of the man, of what 
 sort it is. He hath [in his Propositions] fallen upon 
 my theses, and vehemently assailed them, and hath 
 passed by him [Carlstadt] with whom he is in con- 
 troversy. You would think he was playing pranks 
 at carnival. Therefore, in order to defend what I 
 have said on indulgences, I am forced to enter the 
 lists with him. He is a pitiable animalcula of fame." 
 In a letter of congratulation to Lange, on the occa- 
 sion of his receiving the degree of doctor of divinity, 
 written Feb. 3, Luther observes : " Our Eck goeth 
 about to stir up a new war against me; and the 
 thing which I have long meditated will now, with 
 the favour of Christ, be put in execution ; that is, 
 the bringing out before the public some work di- 
 rected in good earnest against the hydras of Home,
 
 M. 35.] LEIPSIO DISPUTATION. 265 
 
 Hitherto I have but sported and played in the case, 
 though my adversaries grieve dolefully as over a 
 serious and insufferable matter." To Spalatin he 
 writes, under date of Feb. 7th, "Our Eck, an in- 
 sect of fame, hath published his propositions against 
 Carlstadt, to be debated at Leipsic, after Easter. 
 This perverse man, after long making me the object 
 of his hate, hath made an assault both upon me and 
 my writings. While he nameth one antagonist, he 
 aimeth his arrows at another. This stupid syco- 
 phancy of his doth ill please me, and therefore have 
 I published counter-propositions, as you will see in 
 the accompanying papers. Eck will, peradventure, 
 be the mean of turning what hath been but play 
 into serious work, which will do poor service to the 
 Rpman tyranny." 
 
 That the reader may understand what other subjects 
 were, at this period, occupying Luther's thoughts, it 
 may here be stated, by the way, that he wrote, ac- 
 cording to promise, a very submissive letter, under 
 date of March 3d, to Pope Leo X., in which he made 
 great concessions, greater than one would suppose 
 possible under such circumstances. A few days pre- 
 viously, he had published an address to the common 
 people, designed to conciliate them with the church 
 of Rome. Referring to this address, in a letter to 
 Spalatin, written March 5th, he says : " Twice, my 
 dear Spalatin, have you requested me to speak of 
 faith, of good works, and of obedience to the Roman 
 church, in my Defence which was to appear in Ger- 
 man. This I think I have already done; but it 
 was published before your letter was written. Never 
 was it my purpose to separate from the apostolical see 
 of Rome. I am content that the Roman bishop 
 should bear any title, even that of lord, if he please. 
 
 23
 
 266 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1519. 
 
 What doth that concern me, who know that the 
 rule of the very Turks is to be honoured, and sub- 
 mitted to, because it is an existing and an estab- 
 lished power ? For sure I am that, as Peter saith, 
 there is no power but by the will of God. But thus 
 much do I at all times require, on the ground of my 
 faith in Christ, namely, that they wrest not at their 
 pleasure and corrupt the word of God. Let the 
 Roman decretals but leave me the gospel pure and 
 uncorrupt, and they may take away all else ; I will 
 not move a hair. What more than this should I, or 
 can I do? I, then, will, on my part, strive for 
 peace, as we have covenanted ; and will go about no 
 new thing. The disputation will, I hope, be nothing 
 else but a disputation, and be listened to by the 
 learned only [being held in Latin] ; the common 
 people may employ their own language." These 
 statements serve to explain why Luther went so 
 far undoubtedly too far in his concessions, and 
 to confirm what is otherwise abundantly proved, 
 namely, that he desired a reformation which should 
 consist in spirit rather than in forms, in pious feeling 
 rather than in social privileges and immunities. In 
 respect to a rupture with Rome, there is an apparent 
 inconsistency in Luther at this time, which finds its 
 explanation in the fact, that he was in reality the 
 subject of an inward struggle between two contending 
 forces, drawing him alternately in opposite directions. 
 The preliminaries to the disputation were exceed- 
 ingly complicated, consisting not only of the printed 
 propositions and counter-propositions already men- 
 tioned, but of Eck's correspondence with Duke 
 George and with the Leipsic professors; of that be- 
 tween these professors and Bishop Adolphus of 
 Merseburg; between the bishop and Duke George j
 
 JE. 35.] LEIPSIC DISPUTATION. 267 
 
 between the latter and the Elector Frederic ; between 
 Frederic and Luther, and between Luther and the 
 Leipsic professors. 
 
 In reply to a letter of Frederic's secretary, in 
 which the terms of reconciliation, as proposed by 
 Miltitz, were alluded to, Luther wrote to the elector 
 himself, on the 13th of March, the following, among 
 other things : " God knoweth that it was my solemn 
 purpose, as it was also my hope and joy, that this 
 game, so far as in me lay, should be played no far- 
 ther ; and so strict was I in keeping the agreement 
 [made with Miltitz] that I gave no heed to the 
 answer of Prierias, though I had good cause to reply. 
 I let the contempt and contumely of my adversaries 
 pass, and, contrary to the advice of my friends, kept 
 silence. The agreement was, as Charles [Miltitz] 
 well knoweth, that I was to hold my peace, if my 
 adversaries should do the same. But now Dr. Eck, 
 without giving me any warning, hath made such an 
 assault upon me, that it is plain he seeketh to bring 
 both me and the whole university into discredit and 
 disrepute ; and many honest-minded men think he 
 hath been suborned to do the same. I looked upon 
 it as wrong to give no heed to an assault so perfidious, 
 and to allow the truth to be forsaken in such dis- 
 honour." 
 
 The elector consented that Luther should take 
 part in the disputation, if Eck would really debate 
 with him, and not with Carlstadt alone. The Leip- 
 eic professors and the Bishop of Merseburg made 
 very extraordinary efforts to prevent the discussion. 
 The letter of the former to Luther on the subject 
 is still extant, and serves to throw a clear light upon 
 their relation to the parties. It is dated Leipsic, 
 February 19, 1519, and runs thus : " Not many days
 
 268 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1519. 
 
 ago, dear doctor, while we were celebrating Christ- 
 inas, the excellent John Eck, doctor of the Holy 
 Scriptures, wrote to his illustrious highness Prince 
 George, to this university and to the doctors of divi- 
 nity, appointing the theological faculty to sit in judg- 
 ment, and to decide on the dispute and controversy 
 which is to ensue, and earnestly requesting that we 
 would permit him to debate with Carlstadt in our 
 celebrated university. . . . Because it seemeth to 
 you that he hath [in his Propositions] made an as- 
 sault upon you, and you are not minded to yield unto 
 him, you have, in a printed document, challenged 
 him in turn to a disputation. We greatly marvel 
 that, contrary to our veritable decision, you have 
 publicly said, that we refused his request in respect 
 to the disputation, [they having granted it as a de- 
 bate between Eck and Carlstadt, but refused it if 
 Luther was to be a party.] Contrariwise, we marvel 
 that you have given out that such a disputation, [in 
 which Luther was to take part,] whereof we know 
 nothing, would be held in our university, you hav- 
 ing received no permission [to participate in the de- 
 bate] either from us, or from our illustrious prince 
 and gracious sovereign. Therefore, seeing this act 
 of yours hath the appearance of lightness, upon 
 which you are bound to look with abhorrence, we 
 earnestly entreat you not to bring us, contrary to 
 our will, into trouble, [i. e. to render them odious to 
 the pope, by allowing his supremacy to be made a 
 subject bf debate in the university;] but, if it be 
 agreeable to you, either to renounce your doctrines, 
 or in a reply to us, which we earnestly desire, to 
 sound a retreat, until you shall obtain leave from 
 us." Duke George was indignant at this opposition 
 to a disputation to which he had given his consent.
 
 M. 35.] LEIPSIC DISPUTATION. 
 
 The professors said they were bound to the pope, 
 and were moreover prohibited by their superior, the 
 Bishop of Merseburg. The duke, therefore, ad- 
 dressed a letter of withering reproach to the bishop, 
 which has been preserved. After expressing his 
 " surprise that the bishop should set up an opposi- 
 tion to the custom handed down from the Fathers, 
 of making free inquiry after the truth in matters of 
 religion/' and saying, that "the question newly 
 started deserved to be earnestly considered, and the 
 arguments on either side carefully weighed j whether, 
 for example, as soon as the price dropped into the 
 box, the souls of the dead were released from purga- 
 tory and ascended to heaven, by which imposition the 
 silly people were robbed of their money," he adds, 
 " it appears as though the bishop wished to show fa- 
 vour to useless, bladder-puffed persons, who, like cow- 
 ardly soldiers, boast of their courage when out of the 
 conflict, but flee as soon as the trumpet is blown." If 
 those men, who glory in their titles, and claim the 
 first place in assemblies and feasts, shall show them- 
 selves unwilling to earn their titles by defending 
 and maintaining the truth, as their office requireth, 
 " it would be cheaper and more useful to maintain 
 old women and young children, who would do more 
 good, and be more obedient than such theologians. 
 Nay, the old women would be of some service by 
 their spinning and sewing, or at least they could 
 give pleasant pastime to the people by their voices." 
 He closes by saying, that if the professors still per- 
 sist in their refusal, he will issue a proclamation, 
 from which it shall be known before God and all the 
 world, that he desired the truth to be brought to 
 light, but that the clergy, in their lack of knowledge 
 and skill, could not abide a discussion, and therefore 
 
 23*
 
 270 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1519. 
 
 opposed it. The Leipsic professors wrote also to 
 the bishop, saying, that the duke commanded them 
 to permit the disputation to be held, and that the 
 bishop's opposition would be of no avail. The 
 bishop replied to them, that he had not without, 
 good reason prohibited them from allowing the de- 
 bate ; but that he would, nevertheless, submit to the 
 will of the duke. 
 
 Eck was immediately informed both by the, duke 
 and by the university of the result, and hastened to 
 write to Luther the following, dated Ingolstadt, Feb- 
 ruary 19 : " That the learned men of the community 
 should refuse the burden of hearing our debate, was 
 very grievous to me, and I hardly knew what to do. 
 But at length, the most gracious prince, Duke George, 
 at my instance, hath prevailed on the university to 
 yield their assent, as I this day learn by letters from 
 him, from the university and the [theological] fa- 
 culty. I have, therefore, appointed the 27th day of 
 June for the beginning of the disputation. We shall, 
 howbeit, meet the theological faculty on the 26th, to 
 determine who shall speak first in the discussion. 
 Since that Carlstadt is only an accessary of yours, 
 and you the principal, through whom those dogmas, 
 which, to my small and slender judgment, appear he- 
 retical and false, have been spread through Germany, 
 it is meet that you should be present, and stand by your 
 positions and impugn mine. But how earnestly do I 
 desire you to change your mind, and show yourself 
 obedient in all things to the apostolical see, and listen 
 to Leo X., vicar of Christ, not seeking for singularity, 
 but descending to the common opinions of the doctors 
 of the church, being well assured that Christ hath not 
 as you vainly imagine, left his church to their errors 
 for four centuries. You will see from my schedule of
 
 M.S5.] LEIPSIC DISPUTATION. 271 
 
 articles for debate, that I have laid down proposi- 
 tions, not so much against Carlstadt as against your 
 doctrines. Farewell, then, my Martin, and let us 
 pray for each other that we may be enlightened." 
 
 Meanwhile, Luther was active as a negotiator, 
 professor, commentator, student of Hebrew, and pop- 
 ular' and controversial writer. A single letter of 
 his, addressed to Lange, April 13, is all that can be 
 presented on these various topics in this connection. 
 In this we see the living, energetic and cheerful 
 man, whose spirit was electrifying the whole conti- 
 nent of Europe. 
 
 " I rejoice and congratulate you, reverend father, 
 that you also are one of those in whom the cross of 
 Christ worketh. Be of good courage ; this is the 
 way in which one goeth, or rather is carried to hea- 
 ven. For your presents I give you my thanks. 
 But the reason of my not coming to your public 
 celebration, [when Lange was made doctor of divi- 
 nity,] you already know ; my silence in respect to it 
 is not a fault of mine so much as it is of the bad 
 state of the roads, which hindereth persons from 
 going, except now and then, to your place. That 
 Hebrew teacher whom you recommend, I pray you 
 send hither with all possible haste ; the more so, 
 since that Bossenstein of ours, professedly a Chris- 
 tian, but in effect nothing else but a Jew, hath, to 
 the reproach of our university, withdrawn himself. 
 I add, as another reason, that you yourself are some- 
 what indebted to our studies. We will see that he 
 be honourably supported in Christ, and received on 
 proper terms, both because we all ought to encourage 
 zealously a new convert, and because it is our duty 
 to provide a suitable support for each. Eck hath 
 determined upon the 27th of June for our future
 
 272 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1519. 
 
 disputation. It will be between him and me, as you 
 will see from this document. For Carlstadt will not 
 debate those matters with him, partly because they 
 were asserted by me, and not by him, and partly be- 
 cause that wily sophist [Eck] hath, with the design 
 of entrapping him, started the question concerning 
 the power of the pope, which a prebendary* cannot 
 safely debate ; and thus would, without combat or 
 victory, terrify the latter into silence. . . . All are 
 alarmed for me that I shall not come off well with 
 my twelfth proposition, [in which the supremacy of 
 the pope is declared to be a modern doctrine, founded 
 on the miserable decretals of the popes themselves.] 
 But though I do not expect to catch that slippery, 
 clamorous and haughty sophist, I will, with the help 
 of Christ, make good my own declarations. They 
 were made in their present form, in order to give me 
 occasion to bring out before the public the trivial- 
 ness of those most senseless and ungodly decretals 
 by which Christians are needlessly terrified ; for they 
 are full of falsehoods, supported only by the autho- 
 rity of the church of Rome. Christ will strip off 
 the mask. . . . Meanwhile, the theologians lacerate 
 me, especially that bull, ox [Professor Oxenfurth, of 
 Leipsic] and ass, who knoweth not his owner, but 
 eateth the straw. They cry out unto the people of 
 Leipsic, not to join the new heretics, hoping that we 
 may be avoided on account of the hatred of the peo- 
 ple, and from fear of the pope. It is reported that 
 Tetzel said, when he learned that the debate was to 
 be held, 'The devil is in it.' . . . Cardinal Cajetan, 
 who formerly wrote silly things about me to our 
 
 * Carlstadt was a canon, supported by the funds of 
 the collegiate church at Wittenberg.
 
 JE. 35.] LEIPSIC DISPUTATION. 273 
 
 illustrious prince, hath now written like a madman. 
 I rejoice to see this Italian stolidity made known to 
 our laymen." 
 
 "Frobenius, [the celebrated printer and book- 
 seller,] of Bale, hath written me, highly extolling my 
 freedom of speech, and saying, his Paris friends have 
 written to him, that my works are acceptable to 
 many persons there, and that they are read by the 
 doctors of the Sorbonne. Furthermore, he informeth 
 me that the copies [printed by him] are all distri- 
 buted and spread throughout Italy, Spain, England, 
 France and the Netherlands. I rejoice that the 
 truth, though spoken in a barbarous and unlearned 
 manner, findeth such favour. I send you 'The 
 Wagon' by Carlstadt,* which showeth forth the folly 
 of the theologians. There is a tumultuous opposi- 
 tion to it in Leipsic. One preacher tore it in pieces 
 with his hands in the pulpit. Another examined 
 the young people when they came to the confessional 
 whether they indulged in laughter at the 'Wagon/ 
 or kept about them any of Martin's tracts. If they 
 pleaded guilty, they were punished with severe penal- 
 ties. So Andrew Camitian writeth to me. Behold 
 what darkness, what madness ! These are theolo- 
 gians ! I think you have already received the be- 
 ginning of my Commentary on the Psalms. I send 
 you another copy, whereby you can correct yours. 
 You see that our Emser [Luther's opponent at 
 Leipsic, but in this case printer or proof-reader] errs 
 even when printing the truth. I send you the [He- 
 brew] Grammar of Kimchi, until you can obtain 
 
 * A print of two vehicles, the one going the true and 
 straight way to heaven, the other, the false and tortuous 
 way of the scholastic theologians.
 
 274 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1519. 
 
 another. I am also publishing a Commentary on 
 the Galatians at Leipsic. If two sermons of mine 
 have come into your hands, the one in Latin, on a 
 Two-fold Kighteousness ; the other in German, on 
 Matrimony, let justice be done me. They were 
 taken surreptitiously and published without my 
 knowledge. ... I also send you the Lord's Prayer 
 revised. . . . Have you seen my little works against 
 Silvester [Prierias,] published at Bale ? that in 
 the title-page they have, rather by design than mis- 
 take, called him magirum Palatii [cook of the 
 Palace] instead of magistrum Palatii [master of the 
 Palace ;] and that many other ludicrous typographi- 
 cal errors are made in the margin ? It is reported 
 that Cardinal Cajetan is put in prison at Mainz by 
 the ministers of Charles [V.] of Spain, for using all 
 his authority in favour of the faction of the French 
 king. Philip [Melancthon] and I have written to 
 Erasmus. Here you have every thing you asked for. 
 The reverend vicar [Staupitz] hath quite forgotten 
 me, so that he doth not write at all. Kindly salute 
 Father Usingen, and also John Nathin, [formerly 
 Luther's bitter enemy.] Finally, I put you in mind 
 of that Hebrew teacher, that we may help those ex- 
 cellent young men who are prosperously studying 
 theology, and burning with a love of good learning. 
 Farewell, you and your cross, [some trouble of which 
 Lange had complained,] if it be the will of Christ." 
 As, on the one hand, we must keep in mind the 
 buoyancy of Luther's spirit, which gave a certain 
 easy play to his great and varied activity, so, on the 
 other hand, we must never forget the gravity and 
 religious earnestness which lay beneath all this, as 
 the deep ocean lies beneath the play of its waves; 
 and the great fears and anxieties which never ceased
 
 JE. 35.] LEIPSIC DISPUTATION. 275 
 
 to agitate the minds of his truest and firmest friends. 
 Like every heroic man in the crisis of his affairs, he 
 was left alone, to sustain his courage from his con- 
 fidence in God, in truth and the right, and from 
 his willingness to perish, if need be, and leave be- 
 hind him a martyr's testimony for the benefit and 
 instruction of coming generations. Nor this alone ; 
 he was obliged to sustain his friends and supporters 
 by infusing into them his own spirit. 
 
 A letter of his, written some time in May to Spal- 
 atin, will illustrate these remarks. He writes thus : 
 " I beseech you, my dear Spalatin, yield not unduly to 
 fear, nor utterly slay your heart with human cogita- 
 tions. Know that unless Christ moved me on and my 
 affairs, I should have destroyed myself even in my 
 first Disputation on Indulgences: then in my ser- 
 mon on the subject in the vernacular tongue; later 
 in my Proofs and Illustrations and in my Reply to 
 Silvester; and last of all, in my Account of the 
 Transactions at Augsburg, and especially in my 
 journey thither. For what mortal did not either 
 fear or hope that any one of these perils alone would 
 prove my ruin ? Finally, Olsnitzer hath lately writ- 
 ten from the city to the chancellor of our Duke of 
 Pomerania that I have so stirred up all Rome by my 
 Proofs and my Dialogue [Reply to Prierias] that 
 they know not how to restore quiet. Yet they have 
 determined to assail me not by the way of the law, 
 but by Italian practices, (these are his words.) By 
 that I understand poisoning or assassinating. 
 
 " Many things which, if I were elsewhere, I should 
 pour forth against Rome, or rather Babylon, that 
 devastator of the Scriptures and of the church, I 
 repress and restrain, for the sake of the elector and 
 of the university. The truth of Holy Writ and of
 
 276 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1519. 
 
 the church cannot, my dear Spalatin, he discussed 
 without offending this wild beast. You must not, 
 therefore, expect me to be unmolested or secure un- 
 less I renounce theology altogether. Let my friends 
 then think I am beside myself. This matter, if it be 
 of God, shall not have an end, except that, as the 
 disciples and friends of Christ forsook him, so all my 
 friends forsake me ; and the truth too, which saves 
 with its own right hand, not mine, nor yours, nor 
 that of any other man, shall be left to itself alone ; 
 and that time I have been expecting from the begin- 
 ning. That this twelfth proposition was extorted 
 from me by Eck, and that the pope will have plenty 
 of patrons in the approaching disputation, ought not, 
 I think, to appear so evil, especially if we remember 
 the license given to such disputations. In fine, if 1 
 perish, nothing will perish with me. By the grace 
 of Grod, the Wittenbergers have made such proficiency 
 that they do not need me any longer. But what 
 shall I say ? I am unhappy, because I fear I am not 
 worthy to suffer and be put to death for such a cause. 
 That felicity will be reserved for better men, not for 
 such a vile sinner as I am. I have told you that I 
 am at all times ready to withdraw, if my tarrying 
 here seem to draw the illustrious prince into any 
 danger. Death will certainly come at some time. 
 Still, in the Apology already published in Germany, 
 I have sufficiently flattered the Roman church and 
 pontiff, if that can any thing avail." 
 
 To quiet Spalatin, he was obliged to lay before him 
 the plan of his part of the discussion, and specify the 
 particular arguments by which he should fortify him- 
 self in respect to the twelfth proposition on the s\i- 
 premacy of the pope. "I pray you," he says some- 
 what impatiently, "permit us to debate the matter,
 
 IE. 35.] LEIPSIO DISPUTATION. 277 
 
 and be not of that class of men who, not understand- 
 ing the counsels of God, immediately despair for 
 that they do not see by their own counsels how a 
 thing can be accomplished. . . . Do not ask that I 
 reveal my whole plan, which would be but destroying 
 it, but rather pray that Christ may make us seek his 
 glory." 
 
 Before this disputation came on, Luther received, 
 through the Bishop of Brandenburg, a condemnatory 
 document, drawn up by the Franciscan monks of 
 Saxony, at their late meeting in Jiiterbok, in which 
 they pointed out fifteen alleged errors of Luther. 
 These Minorite brethren of the " stricter observance," 
 as they were called, and who vowed ignorance as one 
 of their virtues, Luther exposed in his brief but ter- 
 rible reply, as having poorly observed the rules of 
 Christ in not admonishing a brother privately before 
 publicly condemning him, but as having given good 
 proof that they had sacredly kept the vow of igno- 
 rance. "But not to return evil for evil," he adds, 
 " I will give you your choice, either to retract your 
 rash declarations and restore to me my good name, 
 or let me go forward and publish your document with 
 notes, setting forth your ignorance, which will not 
 turn out for the honour of your order." After re- 
 futing their slanderous declarations, he closes by 
 saying, "I await your speedy answer, that I may 
 know whether you choose to incline your necks, or 
 to hold them aloft and set yourselves against the 
 truth. Be assured I will treat you nobly and show 
 unto all men your wonderful ignorance. Fare yo 
 well, and the Lord give you to be wise and to will 
 what is right. If you wish to be friends, I will be 
 friendly; but if not, do what you have to do, and, 
 believe me, I will not be lacking to my name and to 
 34
 
 278 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1519. 
 
 the word of Christ." The Franciscans wisely pre- 
 ferred peace, and kept silence. 
 
 On the 16th of May, Luther writes both to Spala- 
 tin and to Lange respecting Miltitz. In the letter 
 to the latter he says : " Charles Miltitz hath cited 
 me to Coblentz to appear before the Archbishop of 
 Treves, in the presence of the legate Cajetan. Sweet 
 creature ! He confesseth that he hath not yet received 
 any authority from Rome, and thinketh me stupid 
 enough to come, though cited only by his rashness. 
 You see that everywhere, and from every quarter, 
 and in every manner, they seek my life." To the 
 former he says : " That ridiculous block of a Miltitz 
 [notice the prudence with which he always speaks to 
 Spalatin] confesseth that he hath not yet received 
 any command from Rome, and yet he citeth me. 
 He citeth me, not the archbishop; and then I must 
 appear before the cardinal! Are not the men in- 
 sane?" In this last letter he complains of the in- 
 justice and duplicity of the Duke of Saxony, saying : 
 " Duke George hath twice replied to me, and will 
 not admit me to the disputation, though I have given 
 him assurance that Eck compelleth me, both in his 
 private letters and in his published propositions, to 
 reply to him. Why should he exact so much of me 
 as to require that Eck should write in my behalf, when 
 he did not refuse to yield to Eck, nor require any 
 thing of Carlstadt ? How monstrous ! I send you 
 both of his letters. I am now writing to him a third 
 time. Tell me, I pray you, what you think it best 
 to do." 
 
 In the midst of all this turmoil, the studies of the 
 University of Wittenberg were moving briskly on, 
 and the number of students rapidly increasing. Lu- 
 ther requests Spalatin, May 22d, before taking his
 
 IE. 35.] COURSE OF THE DEBATE. 279 
 
 journey with the elector, to ascertain the views of 
 the latter in respect to the Hebrew professorship. 
 Cellarius, professor of Hebrew at Heidelberg, was at 
 Leipsic, waiting for an answer from Luther, ready to 
 accept the place, if the elector would give him a 
 suitable salary. "A great number of students," he 
 continues, " and notable ones, too, are flowing together 
 here. . . . Our town will scarcely hold them, for 
 lack of houses to serve them." 
 
 SECTION II. Course of the Debate. 
 
 AT length the time for the debate drew near. The 
 duke ordered his palace, called the Pleissenburg, to 
 be prepared for the accommodation of the assembly. 
 In the great hall he caused two desks, facing each 
 other, to be erected for the disputants, the one 
 adorned with a picture of St. Martin, the other with 
 a picture of St. George. Seats for the audience and 
 tables for the clerks were also prepared and embel- 
 lished with tapestry. Eck arrived on the 22d of 
 June, the day before the festival of Corpus Christi, 
 and took part in the celebration, joining the proces- 
 sion, pompously arrayed in a mass vestment and 
 chasuble. Several monks and theologians from In- 
 golstadt and Erfurt accompanied him to Leipsic. He 
 was treated with great distinction by the theological 
 faculty and the city council, with whom he feasted 
 lustily. In a letter, he highly commended their 
 hospitality, as well as the beauty of the Leipsic ladies, 
 for whom Charles V. said he had too great a fond- 
 ness. On Friday, the 24th, the day after the festival, 
 the Wittenbergers arrived, a numerous company. In 
 the first carriage sat Carlstadt, as the chief disputant; 
 in the second, Prince Barnim of Pomerania, then a
 
 280 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1519. 
 
 student, and also, according to ancient usage, rector 
 of the university; in the third, Luther and Melanc- 
 thon. About two hundred students on foot, with 
 spears and halberds, according to Eck's statement, 
 accompanied their professors. Lange, Amsdorf, and 
 several doctors of laws and masters, were in the com- 
 pany. As they were near the Grimma gate of the 
 city of Leipsic, and opposite the Paulinum, where 
 Tetzel then was, Carlstadt had the misfortune to have 
 one of the wheels of his carriage break, and to be 
 thrown out, which some interpreted as an ill omen. 
 The duke from Dresden, and Emser, and the three 
 commissaries of the duke, Pflug, Riihel, and Wiede- 
 bach, were present as early as Saturday. Emser 
 called on the masters in the university and urged 
 them to stand by Eck, and escort him to the palace 
 on Sunday, that a favourable impression might be 
 made upon the duke. Here the commissaries and 
 the parties, after much discussion, came to an under- 
 standing in respect to the manner of procedure in the 
 debate. Each of the parties was to choose a secre- 
 tary. Luther chose J. Agricola of Eisleben; Eck 
 cho*se J. Poliander, who, by the way, was converted 
 to Luther's views by the debate, and went directly 
 to Wittenberg. More than thirty others also took 
 notes of the discussion. From the decision, to be 
 made by certain universities, either party might ap- 
 peal to a general council. 
 
 On Monday morning, (June 27th,) the time set 
 for the commencement of the disputation, a civic 
 guard was sent, with music and flags, to the palace 
 Pleissenburg to preserve order. At seven o'clock 
 in the morning, the disputants met in the Princes' 
 college, where an address was made by Pistoris, of 
 the law faculty. Thence the assembly moved in
 
 M. 35.] COURSE OP THE DEBATE. 281 
 
 procession, two by two, a Wittenberg and a Leipsic 
 master together, quite across the city from north to 
 south to St. Thomas's church, where the duke and 
 two princes were awaiting them. Here mass was 
 held, and the assembly proceeded to the palace, (a 
 few rods to the east,) where Mosellanus, the pro- 
 fessor of Greek, and the friend of Melancthon and 
 Luther, delivered an oration in the name of the duke, 
 admonishing the disputants to be gentle and courte- 
 ous, and to seek for truth rather than victory. After 
 singing the Veni Sancte Spiritus, (Come, Holy 
 Spirit,) the meeting was adjourned for dinner. In 
 the afternoon, after both parties had promised to 
 debate with sincerity and love, Luther meanwhile 
 expressing his astonishment that of the Dominicans, 
 with whom the whole affair of indulgences arose, 
 none were present to take part, Eck and Carlstadt 
 commenced the debate on free-will, which lasted a 
 week, or till July 4. Never was there a more un- 
 equal match ; Carlstadt, learned, modest, slow, con- 
 fined to notes, and opening books and giving hia 
 authorities with exactness ; Eck, self-possessed, quick 
 of memory, imposing, but loose, boisterous, and os- 
 % tentatious. The former accused the latter of quoting 
 'falsely, the latter laughed at the poor memory and 
 tediousness of the former. From the 4th of July, 
 the day of Tetzel's death, to the 8th, Luther debated 
 with Eck on the supremacy of the pope, and now 
 the discussion grew animated, two practised debaters 
 having come together, each of whom was accus- 
 tomed always to bear off the palm. Luther pro- 
 posed to close the discussion there, but the duke 
 urged him to go on and debate on the subjects of in- 
 dulgences, purgatory and the power of the keys, in 
 which Eck hardly made a show of resistance. He 
 
 24*
 
 282 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1519. 
 
 wished to return to his first antagonist, and conse- 
 quently resumed the discussion with Carlstadt on 
 the 15th. But as the duke needed his palace, the 
 disputation was closed, on the 16th, by an oration 
 from a Dr. Lange, of Leipsic, in which he meted 
 out to each disputant his share of praise, the most 
 to Luther, not a little to Eck, and to Carlstadt what 
 was his due. Eck and his Leipsic friends claimed 
 the victory; and if popular favour is to be the 
 standard of judgment, the claim must be admitted. 
 But learned men decided otherwise. Let us now 
 hear Luther's account of the matter, as related by 
 him in a letter to Spalatin, dated July 20, 1519. 
 
 " Concerning that famous debate, I would have 
 written you a long time ago, had I been able. The 
 matter is thus: There are certain men at Leipsic, 
 not over candid and upright, who triumph with Eck ; 
 and have, by their garrulity and vaunting, got a cer- 
 tain kind of glory. But the facts themselves will, 
 in due time, speak and bring all things to light. The 
 selfsame hour that we arrived in Leipsic, before we 
 had alighted from our carriages, a prohibition of the 
 proceedings by the Bishop of Merseburg was posted 
 up, on the doors of the churches. But, by order of 
 the senate, the individual who posted it up was sent 
 to the dungeon, for doing it without their knowledge. 
 Accomplishing nothing in this way, these men next 
 resorted to another sleight, and, at Eck's request, 
 laboured hard with Carlstadt privately to induce 
 him to consent that the discussion proceed without 
 any secretaries to record the arguments. For he 
 hoped to succeed, as he had long been accustomed to 
 do, by dint of voice and gesticulation. But Carlstadt 
 would not consent. As that condition had been 
 agreed upon, he said he should hold them to their
 
 2E. 35.] COURSE OF THE DEBATE. 283 
 
 stipulation. ... At length, to make the matter sure, 
 he was under the necessity of consenting that the 
 records be not published until the judges shall have 
 given in their decision. A new dispute arose concern- 
 ing the selection of the judges ; and Carlstadt found 
 it necessary to yield so far as to allow the judges 
 to be appointed after the debate should be ended. 
 Otherwise the opposite party said they should not 
 proceed. Thus were we brought into a dilemma, 
 and must either stop the proceedings or submit to 
 partial judges. So you see the paltry practices 
 whereby they wrested from us the promised free- 
 dom of discussion. For we know full well that the 
 universities and the Roman pontiff will either not 
 determine the question at all, or else they will de- 
 cide it against us; and that is what our opponents 
 desired. 
 
 " The next day I was called aside, and the same 
 thing was propounded unto me. But not trusting the 
 pope, and being, moreover, dissuaded by my friends, 
 I refused all these conditions. Then they proposed 
 to leave out the pope, and named other universities. I 
 still demanded the promised freedom, [in respect to 
 the disputation,] and since they would not allow it, 
 I refused to take part in the discussion. Now it was 
 rumoured abroad that I was afraid to debate, and, 
 what was yet more untrue, that I would not consent 
 to have any judges. These things were odiously 
 and maliciously repeated, till all our friends were 
 carried away with the rest, and our university was in 
 danger of being brought into reproach. I finally 
 yielded to the advice of friends, and accepted, though 
 not without indignation, the proposals; with this 
 condition, however, that I might appeal from the de- 
 cision; that my cause should not be prejudged, and
 
 284 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1519. 
 
 that the court of Rome should not be included among 
 the judges. 
 
 " At first the disputation was begun with Carlstadt, 
 and continued for a week, on the subject of the 
 freedom of the will. He brought forward his au- 
 thorities, and, with God's help, he stated and main- 
 tained his arguments exceedingly well and abun- 
 dantly. When it came his turn to be assailant, Eck 
 refused [to be respondent,] unless Carlstadt would 
 promise to leave his books at home. He had pro- 
 duced them in order to prove that his quotations 
 from the Scriptures and from the Fathers were cor- 
 rect, and that he did not wrest them, as Eck was 
 found to do. Here a dispute arose, and it was finally 
 determined that the books should be left at home. 
 But who doth not perceive, that, if they were in 
 quest of truth, they would desire rather to have all 
 the books at hand ? Never-did envy and ambition 
 show themselves more openly. At the close, the 
 double-faced man conceded every thing, though at 
 first he had contended earnestly to the contrary. He 
 feigned that he agreed in every thing perfectly, 
 glorying that he had brought Carlstadt over to his 
 side ! 
 
 "The second week he disputed with me. First we 
 closed with each other right earnestly concerning the 
 primacy of the Roman pontiff. . . . Then, toward 
 the end, great stress was laid by Eck upon the 
 Council of Constance, which condemned the opi- 
 nion of Huss, namely, that the papacy was the 
 creature of the emperor. .. . . He also alleged that 
 I was a heretic, and an abettor of the Bohemian 
 doctrines. This sophist is as impudent as he is bold. 
 With that accusation, the people of Leipsic were 
 marvellously pleased, more than with the disputa-
 
 JE. 35.] COURSE OF THE DEBATE. 285 
 
 tion itself. On my part, I brought forward the 
 case of the Greek church for a period of a thousand 
 years, and of the early Fathers, none of whom were 
 ever subject to the Roman pontiff. I did not deny, 
 however, that he was first in honour. I declared 
 openly, and proved by direct and clear passages, that 
 several articles, taught by Augustine, Paul, and by 
 Christ himself, had been condemned. . . . 
 
 "The third week we disputed touching repentance, 
 purgatory, indulgences, and the power of absolution 
 by the priest. For he was not minded to debate 
 with Carlstadt, but directed his aim only at me. 
 Indulgences fell to the ground at once, as Eck gave 
 up almost every thing. Though they were to have 
 been the principal subject of debate, he attempted 
 to maintain them only by way of sport and of jest. 
 It is reported that he said, if I had not denied the 
 power of the pope, he could easily have agreed with 
 me in every thing. . . . He maintained one opinion 
 in the hall and gave out another in the church; 
 and, when he was questioned by Carlstadt, why he 
 was so changeable in his teachings, he replied with- 
 out shame, that what is here discussed ought not to 
 be taught unto the people. 
 
 " When I was through with him, he took up the 
 debate anew with Carlstadt for the last three days, 
 in which he again yielded up and consented to every 
 thing. Thus, in the whole disputation, nothing hath 
 been worthily discussed, save my twelfth proposi- 
 tion. The people of Leipsic neither saluted us, nor 
 visited us; but treated us as enemies; while they 
 thronged about Eck, clung fast to him, feasted with 
 him, invited him to their houses, made him presents 
 of a tunic and a camlet robe, and rode out with 
 him. To be short, they did whatsoever they could
 
 286 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1519. 
 
 to injure us. ... Those who were friendly to us 
 came to us privately. But Auerbach, a man of ex- 
 cellent genius, and the younger Pistoris, invited me 
 to their houses. Duke George himself invited all 
 three of us to his residence together." 
 
 It is here interesting to perceive that Luther was 
 a guest with that very Auerbach whose cellar has 
 become so celebrated in connection with the name 
 of Faust. 
 
 The Leipsic disputation was chiefly useful to the 
 cause of the Reformation, in opening the eyes of 
 Luther himself on the whole subject of the autho- 
 rity of the Roman pontiff, and in drawing public 
 attention to this point. It led to the overthrow of 
 another pillar of the papacy. A few individuals of 
 the papal party were won to the side of Luther ; but 
 most of the people of Leipsic, and of the duke's 
 dominions, manifested, from this time, a deadlier 
 hatred than ever to Luther's doctrines. Many of the 
 vexations which Luther experienced for a year or 
 two to come, were caused by men who were under 
 the Leipsic influence. 
 
 Of the many broils and disputes which grew out 
 of this debate, as they were mostly of a personal 
 character, no particular account can be given in a 
 brief biography. They are described in most of the 
 histories of the Reformation, and to them the reader 
 is referred. These disputes were with Emser, of 
 the court of Dresden, with Duke George, with the 
 Bishop of Meissen, with the Franciscan monk 
 Alveld, and with men at Cologne and at Rome. Lu- 
 ther was almost everywhere denounced as a heretic. 
 Even at the court of the elector, there was much 
 displeasure with him. In these circumstances, the 
 Prince of Dessau, and afterward the Franconian
 
 JE. 35.] WORKS ON PRACTICAL RELIGION. 
 
 287 
 
 knight Schaumburg, and Francis von Sickingen, 
 through Von Hutten, offered him protection, and 
 invited him to their courts or castles. Luther wrote 
 conciliatory letters to the new emperor, Charles V., 
 to the Archbishop of Mainz, and to the Bishop of 
 Merseburg. In Nuremberg, Spengler, a member of 
 the city council, took up the defence of Luther. (Eco- 
 lampadius wrote an anonymous work directed against 
 Eck and Emser, which did admirable execution. 
 Feldkirch and Melancthon joined in the defence, 
 and all together prepared the way for Luther's address 
 to the German nobility, which he wrote about this 
 time, and which was the most magnificent and effective 
 appeal which he ever made to the German nation. It 
 united to his own religious spirit the glowing pa- 
 triotism of a Hutten. A finer specimen of popular 
 eloquence is scarcely to be found in the language. 
 
 SECTION III. Various Works of Luther on Practical Reli- 
 gion ; and his Perilous Situation after the Disputation. 
 
 IDST storms 
 of controversy, 
 where the pole- 
 mic writer, si- 
 tuated as Lu- 
 ther was, must 
 use that adroit- 
 ness, point and 
 wit which are 
 likely to affect 
 the popular 
 mind, there is 
 danger of losing 
 the spirit of hu- 
 
 Luther was not always supe- 
 But as his polemical writ- 
 
 mility and charity, 
 rior to such temptations.
 
 288 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1519. 
 
 ings were but occasional productions, and his works 
 on practical religion, commentaries, sermons, and 
 catechetical writings were very numerous, we should 
 be liable to do injustice to his piety, were we to over- 
 look the latter class of his works, and judge of him 
 exclusively from the former class. Although in re- 
 spect to the great controversy, his heart, as he often 
 says, was full of the matter, and he was only to open 
 his mouth, and it would stream forth spontaneous- 
 ly; still he took greater satisfaction in writing works 
 purely religious for the spiritual improvement of the 
 people. At that period of his life of which we are 
 now treating, he was very active in this kind of labour. 
 
 The study of the Psalms afforded him very great de- 
 light. He had twice delivered a course of lectures on 
 them in the university, and had now recently publish- 
 ed, on the first twenty-two Psalms, what he modestly 
 called Labours on the Psalms, not presuming to pro- 
 nounce it a commentary. Labours indeed they were. 
 " You would not believe," he writes to Spalatin, " how 
 much labour a single verse often makes me." It had 
 been reported to him by Spalatin that the elector once 
 said that sermons full of subtilty and human opi- 
 nions were very cold and weak, but that the Scrip- 
 tures had such a majesty and power as to overcome all 
 the arts of disputation. In the dedication to Frederic, 
 he refers to this incident, and says that the elector had 
 thereby entirely won his heart, that he could not help 
 loving the lovers of the Bible, and hating its enemies. 
 He could not presume to understand and explain all 
 the Psalms. It was much to understand a few, and 
 these only in part. The Holy Spirit reserves much to 
 itself, wishing to retain us in the character of pupils. 
 
 In the same year (1519) in September, appeared 
 his great work, the Commentary on the Epistle to
 
 M. 3G.] WORKS ON PRACTICAL RELIGION. 289 
 
 the Galatians, in which he laid himself out to show, 
 under every possible variety of form, the difference 
 between the righteousness of the law and that of 
 faith by which we are justified. This is the chief 
 work in which the fundamental principles of the 
 Reformation are carefully laid down, a work fully 
 proving that his views were infinitely more scriptural 
 than those of his opponents, but also showing that 
 his own system was disfigured with some excres- 
 cences. 
 
 He next wrote a deeply religious work for the 
 consolation of the elector in his sickness, entitled 
 Tesseradfcas, because it consisted of fourteen chap- 
 ters, seven images or views of affliction, and seven 
 of blessings. Erasmus said this production was 
 highly approved even by those who were violently 
 opposed to the doctrines of the Reformation. 
 
 He also wrote, in the early part of 1520, a ser- 
 mon or popular treatise on Good Works, showing 
 that outward acts of devotion, as prayers, fastings, 
 almsgivings and mortifications, were of no avail, if 
 they were performed without a living faith in Christ. 
 "The Christian's faith and assurance makes every 
 thing precious in the sight of God, which, in others, 
 would be the most hurtful." 
 
 He wrote another work in October of the same 
 year, dedicated to Leo X., on Christian Liberty, in 
 which he maintains and illustrates the statement 
 that "a Christian is a free man, lord over all and 
 subject to no one ; and yet is servant of all and sub- 
 ject to every one ;" containing, (paradoxical as it may 
 sound,) the great truth that Christ has set us free, 
 allowing no man to be lord any longer over our con- 
 science ; and yet that the love of God leads us spon- 
 taneously to do good to all, and to be the servants 
 
 25
 
 290 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1520. 
 
 of all. In the dedicatory epistle, Luther fulfilled, 
 in his peculiar way, the promise made September 
 12th to Miltitz and others, that he would write once 
 more to the pope, assuring him that the assaults he 
 had made upon the papacy were not directed against 
 his person. " Though I have been forced," he says, 
 " by some of thy unchristian flatterers, to appeal in 
 my affairs from thy seat and tribunal to a Christian 
 and free council, yet has my mind never been so 
 alienated from thee that I have not wished well to 
 thee and to thy Roman see. ... I have indeed 
 fallen severely upon certain unchristian teachings, 
 and been pretty nipping against my adversaries, not 
 because of their evil lives, but because of their un- 
 christian doctrines. Of this I do not repent, nor 
 shall I leave off. . . . True it is, I have boldly im- 
 pugned the Roman see, called the Roman court, 
 which neither thou nor any other one can deny, to 
 be worse and more scandalous than Sodom, Gomor- 
 rah, or Babylon ever was ; and, so far as I see, there 
 is no help nor remedy for it. ... For it cannot be 
 concealed from thee that, for many years gone by, 
 from Rome nothing hath gone forth but perdition 
 of soul and body and goods. . . . Thou sittest, holy 
 Father Leo, like a sheep among wolves, like Daniel 
 among the lions, like Ezekiel among the scorpions. 
 ... It were indeed thy proper business and that of 
 the cardinals to stay this evil, but the disease niock- 
 eth at the remedy; the steed and the chariot give 
 no heed to the driver. . . . Behold, the reason and 
 .ground of my setting myself so stiffly against this 
 pestilential see. . . . Were I to retract, it would do 
 no good. He who shall attempt to constrain me to 
 do it, will only make bad worse. Besides, I must 
 iiave no rule and measure laid upon me for inter-
 
 JE. 36.] WORKS ON PRACTICAL RELIGION. 291 
 
 preting the Scriptures : for the word of God, that 
 teacheth freedom, must not be bound." 
 
 The tone of this epistle finds its explanation in 
 the fact, that Luther had already gone so far in con- 
 demning the court of Rome, that he could not now 
 either consistently or conscientiously speak of it in 
 gentle terms. He had, about a week before, pub- 
 lished his work entitled the Babylonian Captivity of 
 the Church, in which he retracted the concessions 
 he had formerly made in respect to the papacy, and 
 declared it to be " the kingdom of Babylon, and the 
 power of Nimrod, the mighty hunter," alluding to 
 the booty or prey taken by Tetzel and other "mighty 
 hunters." If any thing more were wanting to com- 
 plete the rupture, it was supplied by the publica- 
 tion of the bull which Eck had procured at Rome 
 against Luther. 
 
 October 11, Luther wrote to Spalatin : "The 
 Roman bull, brought by Eck hath at length come 
 to hand. ... I hold it in contempt. . . . Not only 
 at Leipsic but everywhere, both the bull and Eck 
 are despised. ... I rejoice with my whole heart 
 that I am made a sufferer for the best of causes, 
 though I am not worthy of a suffering so sacred. I 
 am now more free than before, and I now feel as- 
 sured that the pope is antichrist." 
 
 Although he regarded the bull as genuine, he 
 treated it as if it were spurious, and wrote a work " On 
 the new Bulls and Lies of Eck," and another " Against 
 the Execrable Bull of Antichrist," and a third, called 
 " Defence of all the Articles condemned in the recent 
 Bull of Leo X." A still bolder step was that of 
 burning the bull, decretals and other books in the 
 presence of the students before the Elstcr or eastern 
 "ate of the town. Luther announced the occurrence
 
 292 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1520. 
 
 to Spalatin in the following manner, as though he 
 were a newspaper chronicler of the events of the 
 week. " In the year 1520, the 10th day of Decem- 
 ber, at nine o'clock A. M., were burnt at Wittenberg 
 without the eastern gate, near the Holy Cross, all 
 the books of the pope, the decree, the decretals, the 
 recent bull of Leo X.," and several other works, as 
 Eck's, and Emser's, " in order that the incendiary 
 papists may see that it requireth no great power to 
 burn books, which they cannot refute." 
 
 Notwithstanding Luther's progress and increasing 
 confidence in the truth, and the diffusion of his sen- 
 timents among the educated and intelligent classes, 
 storms f still greater violence from without seemed 
 to be fast gathering against him. The mild and 
 candid Emperor Maximilian had died; the interreg- 
 num during which Frederic was vicar of the empire 
 had also passed away, and the new emperor, Charles 
 V., who was elected the second day of the Leipsic 
 disputation, and whose protection Luther sought in 
 a patriotic but humble letter, showed signs of dis- 
 pleasure and hostility. Duke George of Saxony, 
 the Bishops of Brandenburg, Meissen, Merseburg, 
 and the Universities of Leipsic, Cologne, Louvain and 
 even Paris, became Luther's bitter enemies; and 
 now the pope had excommunicated him, and called 
 on kings and princes to treat him as a heretic, 
 and deliver him up to the papal emissaries. While 
 these perils were coming on, Luther found new and 
 unexpected support in the old chivalric spirit of cer- 
 tain Franconian knights. As early as May 13, 1520, 
 he wrote to Spalatin : " Day before yesterday, I re- 
 ceived a message from Silvester von Schaumburg, a 
 Franconian nobleman, . . . offering me protection, 
 if in any way the elector is endangered on niy ao
 
 M. 36.] WORKS ON PRACTICAL RELIGION. 293 
 
 count. Though I do not despise this, yet will I rely 
 on no protector but Christ, who hath, perhaps, put 
 this into his mind." The knight hoped he would 
 not think of going to Bohemia for safety, " For," 
 he adds, "I, myself, and about a hundred other 
 nobles, whom, with God's permission, I will gather 
 around me, will honourably maintain you and defend 
 you against all danger." 
 
 Francis von Sickingen, the magnanimous and 
 powerful leader of the Franconian knights, repeat- 
 edly sent similar messages to Luther, inviting him 
 to one of his castles a little south of Mainz. Ul- 
 rich von Hutten also, that fiery spirit, who kindled 
 such a popular hatred against the Roman court and 
 Roman tyranny, openly espoused Luther's cause. 
 Luther wished the elector to let the cardinal, who 
 had written to him, know, " that even should they 
 succeed in their abominable measures to drive him 
 from Wittenberg, they would accomplish nothing, 
 save to make bad worse ; for not only in Bohemia, 
 but in the very heart of Germany, are to be found 
 those who can and will, despite their malice, pro- 
 tect me against all their fulminations. . . . With 
 me the die is cast ; I despise alike the frownings and 
 fawnings of Rome. I will never be reconciled with 
 them, nor have part with them, let them condemn 
 and burn my writings as they will." But Luther 
 did not approve of appealing to the sword. He 
 wrote in 1521 to Spalatin : " What Hutten hath in 
 mind you see. I desire not that the gospel be made 
 to prevail by violence and bloodshed, and so I have 
 replied to him. The world hath been overcome by 
 the word; by the word the church hath been sus- 
 tained." 
 
 25*
 
 294 
 
 LIFE OF LUTHER. 
 
 [1520. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 LUTHER AND THE DIET OF WORMS. 
 
 SECTION I. Luther summoned to appear at Worms: and 
 his Journey thither. 
 
 HE new em- 
 peror, Charles 
 V., who was 
 in Spain at 
 the time, of 
 his election, 
 did not reach 
 Germany till 
 toward the 
 close of 1520. 
 Early in 1521 
 he held his 
 first diet at 
 Worms. No 
 business that 
 was to occupy the attention of the diet was beset 
 with so many difficulties as that which related to 
 the claims of the church of Rome. Not only were 
 the religious sentiments of many changed by the 
 writings of Luther, but the German princes and 
 statesmen had long felt the galling yoke of Roman 
 tyranny, and were desirous of freeing themselves 
 both from ecclesiastical rule, and from the enormous
 
 JE. 37.] SUMMONED TO WORMS. 295 
 
 tribute paid under various forms to the church of 
 Rome. 
 
 The papal legate Aleander, and others in the in- 
 terests of the pope, used their utmost influence to 
 have the books of Luther burned by authority of 
 the emperor. The latter had learned that the Elec- 
 tor of Saxony was not pleased with this procedure, 
 that he pronounced it unjust to condemn books to 
 the flames which had not yet been proved to be 
 false or heretical. On the 28th of November, 1520, 
 therefore, Charles wrote to the elector, requesting 
 him to bring Luther with him to the diet of Worms, 
 that he might cause him to be examined before 
 learned and able judges. At the same time, the 
 elector was requested to see that Luther should 
 write nothing against his holiness the pope, or the 
 church of Rome. 
 
 Frederic replied, December 20, that while Luther's 
 books, without being first refuted, had been burnt 
 at Cologne and Mainz, Luther himself might have 
 done something, [burnt the pope's bull and the de- 
 cretals,] so that it would be difficult for him to ap- 
 pear at Worms. At the same time, however, the 
 elector directed his secretary, Spalatin, to write to 
 Luther, inquiring whether he would be willing to 
 go, in case the emperor should insist on it. Luther 
 replied, December 21 : " If I shall be summoned, I 
 will, so far as it dependeth on me, be carried there 
 sick, in case I be not well, sooner than refuse ; for, 
 without doubt, I am called of God, if called by the 
 emperor. If they intend to settle these matters by 
 bare authority alone, as it seemeth, (for they have 
 not probably produced this summons with a view to 
 convince me,) then must the case be commended 
 unto God. He still liveth and ruleth who preserved
 
 296 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1520, 
 
 the three men in the fiery furnace. If he will not 
 keep me, then my head is of little account, com- 
 pared with the ignominious death of Christ, which 
 was an offence to all, and the falling of many. For 
 here we must have no regard to danger or safety, 
 but rather see that we do not betray the gospel, 
 which we have once received, and give it over to the 
 contempt of the wicked, and our enemies have oc- 
 casion to say, that we are afraid to acknowledge what 
 we teach, and to shed our blood therefor, which dis- 
 grace on our part, and proud boasting on theirs, may 
 &od avert. . . . We cannot tell whether by our life, 
 or by our death, more or less danger may accrue to 
 the gospel. You know that divine truth is a rock 
 of offence, set for the fall and rising again of many 
 in Israel. Let it be our only care to pray unto God 
 that the commencement of our emperor's reign be 
 not stained with my blood, or that of any other man, 
 in order to defend wickedness. As I have often 
 said, I would rather perish by the hands of the Ro- 
 manists, than that the emperor and his court should 
 be involved in such an act." 
 
 The Roman party were strongly opposed to Lu- 
 ther's examination before the diet, as it would imply 
 that one already condemned by the pope might still 
 have a trial before a secular tribunal. They had 
 procured a second bull from Rome, in which Luther 
 was unconditionally excommunicated, and they made 
 use of this as an argument to divert the emperor 
 from his purpose, and succeeded so far as to induce 
 him to write again to the Elector Frederic, and say to 
 him, that, unless Luther was prepared to retract, he 
 need not come, and at any rate, that he might come 
 no farther than to Frankfurt, and there await fur- 
 ther orders. But the elector prudently replied, that
 
 JE. 37.] SUMMONED TO WORMS. 297 
 
 he himself was already on his way to "Worms, and 
 that he would there confer with the emperor on the 
 whole matter. Meanwhile, he wrote to Luther, di- 
 recting him to say how far he could comply with 
 the emperor's orders. 
 
 The emperor viewed every thing through a poli- 
 tical medium ; truth and justice yielded to conside- 
 rations of advantage. His advisers wished to mo- 
 derate Luther, in order to make use of him in their 
 negotiations with Rome. The two Roman nuncios, 
 particularly Aleander, an intriguing man, resorted 
 to bribery and every low art, in order to engage the 
 emperor in their interest and secure his power against 
 Luther. The emperor saw here the means of forc- 
 ing the pope to support his policy against France, 
 and determined to sacrifice Luther, but not without 
 first securing every possible advantage. The princes 
 did not enter into these views of Charles, but added 
 their complaints to Luther's in respect to Roman 
 tyranny, and therefore checked the emperor, though 
 they were altogether disinclined to favour Luther's 
 religious doctrines. The transactions at Worms all 
 grew out of these conflicting interests, and form a 
 singular series of intrigues and manoeuvres, in order 
 to reconcile and adjust them so as to secure the 
 ends contemplated in the emperor's policy. Hence, 
 the movements, counter-movements and suspensions 
 which checker and confuse the proceedings of the 
 diet. 
 
 During all these negotiations, in which Luther's 
 safety was involved, he was labouring on at Witten- 
 berg, as zealously and as laboriously as if there were 
 nothing to disturb his mind. He said in a letter to 
 his friend Pellican, at Basle, who was superintending 
 the printing of some of his books published there, "I
 
 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1621. 
 
 am exceedingly occupied with business. I preach 
 twice every day ; I am engaged in writing my Com- 
 mentary on the Psalms; I am working on the pos- 
 tils; I am fighting against the papal bull both in 
 German and Latin, and defending myself against 
 attacks ; not to mention the letters I must write to 
 my friends, and the conferences which I hold at home 
 and elsewhere." When the citation and the safe- 
 conduct from the emperor were brought to Luther 
 by a herald sent to accompany him, Luther was in 
 the very midst of those labours. Hence he apolo- 
 gized to Prince John Frederic, to whom he dedicated 
 his commentary on the song of Mary at the annun- 
 ciation, for sending him only a part of it, saying, 
 " The remainder must be put off till my return ; for 
 you see that, being summoned to the imperial diet, 
 I must drop every thing." Various expressions of 
 his, both at this time and afterward, show that he 
 expected his fate would, in all probability, be like 
 that of Huss, and that he should never return alive 
 to Wittenberg. Still he was not without hope. The 
 straight-forward and honest, the bold and yet skilful 
 movements of Luther, the prudence and increasing 
 solicitude of the elector, the jealousy of the diet 
 against the Roman nuncios and Italian intrigue, and 
 the hesitancy of the emperor, a mere political calcula- 
 tor, to commit himself openly to the pope at the risk 
 of offending the Elector of Saxony and his friends, 
 these were the chief means employed by Providence 
 for the preservation of Luther at this critical junc- 
 ture. The imperial herald, Caspar Sturm of Oppen- 
 heim, reached Wittenberg, March 26th, and Luther 
 commenced his journey about the 2d of April, the 
 council of Wittenberg providing a conveyance for 
 him. Amsdorf, Scheurl, and two or three other
 
 M. 37.] SUMMONED TO WORMS. 299 
 
 friends accompanied him. At Leipsic, he was merely 
 treated to wine by the authorities, which was regarded 
 as a cold reception, the same which he received at 
 the Leipsic disputation. At Naumburg, the burgo- 
 master entertained him and the herald; and a priest 
 sent him a likeness of Savonarola, an Italian reformer 
 and martyr, and exhorted him to stand firmly by 
 the truth, for God would be with him and uphold 
 him. At Weimar, he was hospitably received by 
 Duke John Frederic, brother and afterward succes- 
 sor of the elector. Here he received intelligence 
 that his books had been already condemned at Worms, 
 and saw the messengers who were to publish the im- 
 perial mandate in the cities. The condemnation of 
 Luther, to which the emperor had once assented, 
 was, at the remonstrance of the German princes, put 
 off, and only the seizure of his books was insisted on 
 then. The herald asked him if he wished still to 
 proceed, to which Luther replied in the affirmative. 
 Prince John furnished him with money to defray 
 the expenses of his journey. At Erfurt, Luther was 
 welcomed with great pomp and ceremony. Crotus, 
 then rector of the university, and the poet Eoban 
 Hess, and others, to the number of forty, on horse- 
 back, and a great multitude on foot, came out eight 
 miles from the city to escort him in. The streets of 
 the city were thronged when he entered ; and, at the 
 request of many, he consented to preach in the Au- 
 gustinian cloister, where he had once suffered so much. 
 Here Justus Jonas, formerly a student at Wittenberg, 
 but now professor at Erfurt, joined Luther and his 
 party. At Gotha, also, he yielded to the urgency 
 of the people and preached. At Eisenach he was 
 taken very ill, and did not entirely recover till after 
 he reached Frankfurt, from which place he wrote to
 
 300 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1521. 
 
 Spalatm, April 14th: "We have arrived here, my 
 dear Spalatin, although Satan hath endeavoured to 
 hinder me by more diseases than one. For all the 
 way from Eisenach I was sick, and am still so more 
 than I ever was before. I hear the mandate of 
 Charles is published for the purpose of terrifying me. 
 But Christ liveth, and I will enter Worms in spite 
 of all the gates of hell and the powers of the air." 
 Many undertook to dissuade him from his purpose; 
 his friends did it out of regard to his safety; his ene- 
 mies to avoid discussion before the diet. It was said 
 to him at one time that he would be burned to powder, 
 as Huss was at Constance, to which he answered : 
 " Though they kindle a fire all the way between Wit- 
 tenberg and Worms that shall reach unto the heavens, 
 I will, in the name of the Lord, appear, inasmuch as 
 I am summoned, and come between the great teeth 
 of the behemoth and confess Christ, and let him rule." 
 At the special instance of the emperor's con- 
 fessor, who still, perhaps for good political reasons, 
 hoped to effect a reconciliation, Bucer was sent by 
 Francis von Sickingen from his castle at Ebern- 
 burg, inviting him to meet at that retired place such 
 men as Charles should send to confer with him. 
 But Luther, determined not to be turned aside by 
 frowns or flatteries, and knowing that the time of his 
 safe-conduct would soon expire, replied coolly, " If 
 the emperor's confessor hath any thing to say unto 
 me, he can say it at Worms," and proceeded on his 
 way. At Oppenheim, toward Worms, he received 
 a warning from Spalatin, who was with the elector 
 at Worms, not to venture into the city; to which he 
 made the well-known reply : " If there were as many 
 devils in Worms as there are tiles on the roofs of 
 the houses, I would still go thither." Just before
 
 JE. 37.] BEFORE THE DIET. 301 
 
 the close of his life, referring to this courageous state 
 of feeling, he said : " I was then intrepid, and feared 
 nothing. Grod can make one as it were beside himself. 
 I do not know that I should be so confident now." 
 "To-day," [i. e. April 16,] says an eye-witness, 
 "came Doctor Martin hither, in an open Saxon 
 vehicle, in company with three other persons, namely, 
 a brother* of his, Nicholas Amsdorf, and a Pome- 
 ranian nobleman by the name of Von Suaven. Before 
 the carriage rode the imperial herald on horseback, 
 and in livery with the imperial escutcheon, attended 
 by his servant. Justus Jonas and his servant fol- 
 lowed next to Luther. Many nobles and courtiers 
 went out to meet him. At ten o'clock he entered 
 the city, and more than two thousand persons escorted 
 him to his quarters." He stopped at a hotel called 
 "The German Court," where the elector had pro- 
 vided lodgings for him. Two Saxon nobles of Fre- 
 deric's court, and Pappenheim, the imperial marshal, 
 lodged at the same place with Luther. 
 
 SECTION II. Luther before the Diet; his Return and Capture. 
 
 EARLY the next morning, the marshal Pappen- 
 heim and the herald were sent with an order from 
 the emperor, requiring Luther to appear before him 
 and the diet at four o'clock in the afternoon, to answer 
 to the matters that should then be presented. The 
 interval of several hours was one of intense anxiety; 
 
 * This was his brother Jacob Luther, who was with 
 him also when he was seized and carried to Wartburg. 
 Seckendorf, by an unhappy conjecture, explained the 
 word brother as meaning a monk, and other writers have 
 blindly followed him. So, too, have these writers made 
 Von Suaveii (Latinized, Suabenius,) a Danish, instead of 
 a Pomeranian nobleman. 
 
 26
 
 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1521. 
 
 and it was on that occasion that he made the memo- 
 rable prayer which has been recorded, and is to be 
 found in the histories of the Reformation. 
 
 In order to understand Luther's position before 
 the diet at Worms, we must glance at what had been 
 done there previous to his arrival. January 16, just 
 three months before Luther's entrance into the city, 
 the elector wrote from Worms to his brother John, 
 thus : " Every day, as I am informed, consultations 
 are held against Doctor Martin, to put him under the 
 ban of excommunication and outlawry, and to perse- 
 cute him to the utmost. This, they of the red hat 
 and the Romans with their party, do labour at. But 
 there are many who regard him with favour." Leo X. 
 wrote to Charles V. a letter dated Rome, January 18, 
 but which did not come before the diet till February 
 13, in which he says, that as Luther had failed to 
 appear at Rome to answer to his summons, he, the 
 pope, had declared him a notorious heretic. Having 
 learned through his nuncio that his imperial majesty 
 was inclined to maintain the Catholic faith, he now 
 implored him to issue a general edict that Luther, 
 unless he retract his errors, suffer the penalties due 
 to a heretic. February 13, the nuncio Aleander pre- 
 sented the apostolical brief above mentioned, and 
 seconded its suggestions by an elaborate but haughty 
 speech against Luther, beseeching the diet not to 
 bear with the man, who was calling back from hell 
 Huss and Jerome of Prague, who had been con- 
 demned and burnt. Glapio, confessor of the em- 
 peror, had several interviews with Pontanus, the 
 elector's chancellor, during the month of February, 
 seeking to effect a reconciliation, by inducing Luther 
 to renounce the errors and hard sayings contained in 
 his work on the Babylonian captivity. These errors
 
 JE. 37.] BEFORE THE DIET. 303 
 
 he pointed out, to the number of thirty-two. Grlapio 
 admitted that the Roman party daily belaboured the 
 emperor to carry into effect the suggestions of the 
 papal brief, but that he had thus far manifested an un- 
 willingness to do so. Still we find a draught of an 
 imperial edict against Luther's writings, and against 
 his person, unless he should retract, as early as the 
 10th of February. This draught was laid before 
 the diet, together with the three following questions : 
 1. Whether Luther should be called to have a hear- 
 ing to Worms, or to some other place in the vici- 
 nity. 2. Whether his books, being full of heresy, 
 ought not forthwith to be burned and destroyed. 
 3. Whether, in case he should choose not to appear, 
 or, appearing, would not renounce his errors, he should 
 then be punished as a heretic. 
 
 The diet, near the beginning of March, replied 
 that, having taken the edict and questions laid before 
 them into consideration, 1. They must warn the em- 
 peror of the dangers of attempting by a new edict to 
 quell the excitement produced by Luther's preach- 
 ing and writings; and, 2. They approve of citing 
 Luther to appear at Worms under a safe-conduct, not 
 however to discuss the points at issue, but simply to 
 reply to the questions whether he would retract or 
 not. When Luther was informed by Spalatin of 
 these counsels, he replied that he would not go to 
 Worms for such a purpose as that; he could as well 
 answer the question in Wittenberg as in Worms; 
 that he would never retract. The emperor informed 
 the diet that he should proceed according to their 
 advice. 
 
 After all this, and after Luth'er had (March 26) 
 received his citation and safe-conduct, dated March 6, 
 the emperor, nevertheless, issued his edict against
 
 304 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1521. 
 
 Luther's books, omitting that part which related 
 to his person. This unjust and violent proce- 
 dure, designed to prejudice the popular mind 
 and to terrify the friends of Luther, induced the 
 latter, and particularly Spalatin and the elector, to 
 dissuade Luther from presenting himself for trial 
 after his books were already condemned by the 
 emperor. 
 
 We learn the state of feeling among Luther's 
 friends, from a document of Pontanus, in which he 
 recounts the considerations on both sides in respect 
 to the safety of Luther's presenting himself under 
 these circumstances. The chief objections were, 
 that the cause was virtually prejudged, and that his 
 safe-conduct would be no security, if he should re- 
 fuse to retract, and should therefore be declared a 
 heretic. There were in fact princes who were not 
 ashamed to say that the emperor was not bound 
 to keep his word with a heretic. But the house of 
 Saxony and others rejected such a suggestion with 
 scorn and with threats. The reasons urged by Pon- 
 tanus in favour of Luther's coming were, that the 
 edict itself, though it stated that Luther was cited to 
 answer to the question whether he would retract 
 what he had written or not, still expressly speaks 
 of the safe-conduct to Worms and back again, 
 without conditions or any reference to the kind of 
 answer that should be given; and that Luther's 
 enemies would desire nothing better than to be able 
 to say that he had not confidence to appear for trial. 
 Luther knew the whole case perfectly, and decided 
 with wisdom as consummate as his courage. It was 
 here at Worms that he opened the eyes of many of 
 the rulers of Germany, and actually drove a wedge 
 which split the diet into two religious parties, not
 
 JE. 37.] BEFORE THE DIET. 305 
 
 again for many centuries to be united. The scene 
 which was opened at Worms did not close till the 
 end of the Thirty Years' War, when the Protestants 
 wrung from the Catholics a political equality. 
 
 When the hour arrived, Ulrich von Pappenheim 
 and Caspar Sturm came and conducted him first to 
 the Swan, the quarters of the Elector of the Palati- 
 nate, whence he was conveyed through secret pas- 
 sages to the Guild-hall, to avoid the concourse which 
 had thronged the way from Luther's lodgings t<j the 
 emperor's quarters. Many had climbed upon the 
 house-tops to see Dr. Martin as he passed. As he 
 was about to enter the hall, Freundsberg, a cele- 
 brated military commander, tapped him on the shoul- 
 der, and said, "Monk, monk, thou art about to 
 make a passage and occupy a post more perilous than 
 any which I and many other commanders ever knew 
 in the bloodiest battle-fields. If thou art in the 
 right and sure of your ground, go on in God's name 
 and fear not; God will not forsake thee." Even 
 after he had entered the hall, where, including those 
 in the galleries and windows and about the doors, 
 not less than five thousand were, according to the 
 account of George Vogler, an eye-witness, assembled, 
 many persons ventured to approach him and speak 
 to him words of encouragement, saying to him, 
 " Speak manfully, and be not afraid of them who 
 kill the body, but have no power over the soul." 
 He was instructed by Pappenheim to say nothing 
 but when he was called upon. 
 
 Now the imperial orator, Dr. John Eck, (not the 
 theologian, but the official or secular agent of the 
 Archbishop of Treves,) addressed him, at the empe- 
 ror's order, in Latin, and then in German, saying that 
 he had been called before the imperial diet to an- 
 
 26*
 
 306 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1621. 
 
 swer to these two questions : " First, whether you 
 acknowledge these books [a large pile of which lay 
 on the table] to be yours or not ; secondly, whether 
 you will retract them or their contents, or whether 
 you will adhere to them still." 
 
 Before Luther replied, Schurf, his counsellor, said, 
 " Let the titles of the books be read." Then the 
 official read over the titles, among which were, Ex- 
 position of certain Psalms ; Treatise on Good Works, 
 Explanation of the Lord's Prayer, and others which 
 were not of a polemical character. 
 
 Luther then answered, both in Latin and in Ger- 
 man, " First, I must acknowledge the books just 
 named to be mine, and can never deny them. But 
 touching the next point, whether I will maintain all 
 these, or retract them, seeing it is a question of faith 
 and of one's salvation and of the word of God, which 
 is the greatest treasure in heaven and earth, and 
 deserving at all times our highest reverence, it would 
 be rash and perilous for me to speak inconsiderately, 
 and affirm, without reflection, either more or less than 
 is consistent with truth; for in either case I should 
 fall under the sentence of Christ, ' He that denieth 
 me before men, him will I deny before my Father 
 which is in heaven.' Therefore I beg of your im- 
 perial majesty time for reflection, that I may be able 
 to reply to the question proposed without prejudice 
 to the word of God or to my own salvation." 
 
 Hereupon the diet consulted, and returned a reply 
 through the official, " That although thou mightest 
 have known from the imperial summons for what 
 purpose thou wast cited, and dost not deserve the 
 grant of further time for consideration, yet his im- 
 perial clemency granteth thee one more day." 
 
 Whether we consider the serious nature of the
 
 M. 37.] BEFORE THE DIET. 307 
 
 transaction, or the impression to be made upon such 
 a national assembly, we shall perceive that Luther 
 judged wisely in making such a request. The solemn 
 suspense only heightened the solicitude of the mul- 
 titude to hear the result. 
 
 As he was conducted to his quarters, he received 
 many benedictions from the people, and nobles came 
 to his lodgings and encouraged him. What his 
 feelings were at this moment, we learn from a letter 
 to Cuspinian, in which he says, " I have this, very 
 hour been standing before the emperor and his 
 brother Ferdinand, and been asked whether I would 
 retract my writings. I answered, 'The books laid 
 before me are mine ; but concerning the revocation, 
 I will say what I will do to-morrow/ This is all 
 the time I asked for deliberation, and all that they 
 would give. But, Christ being gracious to me, I 
 will not retract an iota." 
 
 About this time he received letters of encourage- 
 ment from Ulrich von Hutten, the warrior-poet and 
 patriot. He addressed a letter from Ebernburg, 
 April 15, " to his holy friend, the invincible theolo- 
 gian and evangelist. Fight courageously for Christ," 
 he says, " and yield not to wrong, but go forth con- 
 fidently to meet it. Endure as a good soldier of 
 Jesus, and suffer that the gift which is in you may 
 be called out, and be assured that He on whom you 
 have believed can preserve what you have committed 
 to him till that day. I also will take strong hold 
 of the work; but there is this difference in our 
 undertakings, that mine is human, while you, far 
 more perfect, cleave wholly to divine things." 
 
 On the following day, Thursday, the 18th, at four 
 o'clock in the afternoon, the herald called again for 
 Luther and conducted him to the emperor's court,
 
 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1521. 
 
 where, on account of the engagements of 'the princes, 
 he was obliged to stand waiting until six o'clock, 
 with an immense crowd, which was gathered to hear 
 his answer. Tie lamps were already lighted in the 
 council hall. When the princes were ready to hear 
 him, and Luther was standing before them, the offi- 
 cial called on him to answer to the questions laid 
 before him the previous day. Luther made his 
 statement and defence in German, with modesty and 
 calmness, but, at the same time, with a confidence 
 and firmness that surprised those who expected no- 
 thing but a recantation. After bespeaking the in- 
 dulgence of the diet, if, from his monastic and retired 
 habits, he should fail in respect to any of the cus- 
 tomary proprieties of courtly address, he observed 
 that his published works were not all of the same 
 character. In some he had treated of faith and 
 works of piety with such plainness and Christian 
 simplicity, that even his enemies were obliged to 
 confess their harmlessness, usefulness and worth. To 
 retract these would be to condemn the truth which 
 all parties confessed. The second class of his works, 
 were directed against the papacy and the Papists, 
 as corrupting with their teaching and example all 
 Christendom, both in body and soul. No one can deny 
 nor conceal that by the papal laws and teachings of 
 man, the consciences of Christians are held in bond- 
 age, burdened and tormented, and that goods and 
 possessions, especially in Germany, are devoured by 
 their incredible tyranny. They themselves have 
 ordained in their own decrees, that the laws and doc- 
 trines of the pope which are contrary to the gospel 
 and the teachings of the Fathers be regarded as erro- 
 neous. Were he to revoke this class of his books, 
 he would but contribute to the strength of tyranny,
 
 ;E. 37.] BEFORE THE DIET. 309 
 
 and leave open, not only a window, but a door and 
 a gate to wickedness, wider than ever ; and by his tes- 
 timony, especially if extorted by his imperial ma- 
 jesty and the whole German nation, their unchecked 
 tyrannical rule would be strengthened in its foun- 
 dations. The third class of his books were personal 
 and written against those who undertook the defence 
 of Roman tyranny and the overthrow of the di- 
 vine doctrines which he had inculcated. Against 
 these he had, he confessed, been more violent than 
 was becoming. He did not set himself up for a saint, 
 and disputed with his opponents not about his own 
 life, but about the doctrines of Christ. But even 
 these books he could not revoke, because he would 
 thereby give his influence in favour of Roman ty- 
 ranny, which would trample on the people's rights 
 more mercilessly than ever. 
 
 But as he was a man, and not God, he could not 
 do for his books otherwise than Christ did for his 
 doctrines, who, when questioned in respect to them by 
 Annas, and smitten on his cheek by the servant, 
 said, " If I have spoken wrong, then show it to be 
 wrong." "Therefore," said he, "by the mercy of 
 God I beg your imperial majesty or any one else 
 who can, whoever he may be, to bring forward proof 
 against me, and overcome me by the writings of 
 the apostles and prophets. And then, if I am 
 shown to be in error, I will be ready and willing 
 to retract, and will be the first to cast my books 
 into the fire." But we cannot attempt to present 
 even an outline of this address. When it was 
 ended, he was requested, for the sake of the em- 
 peror and his Spanish court and others who did not 
 understand German, to repeat it in Latin. Though 
 exhausted with the effort he had made, he consented
 
 310 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1521. 
 
 to go over the ground again and rehearse the whole 
 matter in Latin. 
 
 When he had finished, the imperial orator accused 
 him of evading the point in question, and demanded 
 that, instead of debating on articles which the councils 
 had long ago settled, he should give a plain and 
 direct answer, whether he would retract or not. To 
 this Luther replied : " Since your imperial majesty 
 and lordships desire a direct answer, I will give one, 
 which has neither horns nor teeth, and it is this: 
 Unless I shall be convinced by the testimony of Scrip- 
 ture, or by clear and plain argument, (for I do not 
 believe either in the pope or in the councils alone, 
 because it is plain and evident they have often erred 
 and contradicted each other,) I am held by those 
 passages which I have cited, and am bound by my con- 
 science and by the word of God, and therefore I may 
 not cannot retract, inasmuch as it is neither safe 
 nor right to violate my conscience. Here I stand, 
 and cannot do otherwise, God be my help. Amen." 
 
 The electors and other members of the diet took 
 the reply into consideration, whereupon Eck, the 
 official of the Archbishop of Treves, took upon him 
 to refute Luther, and to rebuke his immodesty. 
 Luther rejoined, reaffirming and maintaining his 
 positions, and entreated the emperor not to force a 
 man to violate his conscience which was held bound 
 by the authority of Scripture. 
 
 The next day, Friday, April 19, the emperor sent 
 a written communication to the council of state, 
 saying, that as Luther would not yield or move a 
 finger's breadth from his errors, he, the emperor, 
 must follow in the footsteps of his predecessors, and 
 maintain and protect the Catholic religion, and in- 
 flict the penalty upon Luther if he should choose to
 
 JE. 37.] BEFORE THE DIET. 311 
 
 come under the ban. But as a safe-conduct had 
 been granted him, this must not be violated. He 
 must first be allowed to return to his home. The 
 remainder of that day and the whole of the following 
 Saturday were consumed by the diet in deliberating 
 upon this declaration of the emperor. In the mean 
 time placards were stuck up, intimating that not less 
 than four hundred knights had leagued together for 
 the protection of Luther. Von Hutten and Von 
 Sickingen were supposed to be the leaders. 
 
 Monday, the 22d, early in the morning, the Arch- 
 bishop of Treves sent for Luther to come to his 
 quarters and meet several princes there in a friendly 
 conference. It was done, but all to no effect, both 
 parties adhering to their principles. A private in- 
 terview, which immediately succeeded, between the 
 archbishop, Eck and Cochlseus on the one hand, and 
 Luther, Schurf and Ainsdorf on the other, was at- 
 tended with no better success. Several other similar 
 attempts were made to move Luther from his pur- 
 pose, but without effect; and finally he was dis- 
 missed by the emperor with a safe-conduct extending 
 to twenty days, with directions to refrain from agi- 
 tating the minds of the people either by preaching 
 or by writing. Luther submitted to the order with- 
 out opposition, except that he claimed the right 
 freely to confess and to teach the word of God. 
 
 The Elector Frederic was not displeased with the 
 manner in which Luther acquitted himself on this 
 extraordinary occasion. He had, even before Lu- 
 ther's arrival in Worms, expressed a desire to do 
 something to protect him from unreasonable treat- 
 ment. After Luther's address before the diet, the 
 elector said to Spalatin, "The father, Dr. Martin, 
 hath spoken well in Latin and German before the
 
 312 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1521. 
 
 emperor, the princes and the estates. It was a bold 
 step he took." " If it were in my power," he said 
 afterward, "I would gladly procure justice for him." 
 Such feelings led to the project of concealing him in 
 the castle of Wartburg, and putting him under the 
 protection of the commander of that place. The 
 plan of a friendly capture was communicated to Lu- 
 ther the evening before he left Worms, and to his 
 companion Amsdorf, though the time and place were 
 unknown to them. 
 
 A graphic outline of the transactions at Worms 
 is given by Luther in a letter to Albert of Mansfeld, 
 written May 3, at Eisenach, the day before he was 
 taken and carried to Wartburg. After the usual 
 salutation, and an allusion to the count's request 
 that Luther would send by a special messenger an 
 account of the proceedings respecting him, he says, 
 "First, my arrival at Worms was altogether unex- 
 pected. Therefore a prohibition was sent, and I, 
 while under the imperial safe-conduct, was con- 
 demned before I came to the place or had a hearing. 
 Afterward, that I might be quickly disposed of, I 
 was asked whether I would cleave to my books or 
 renounce them. Whereupon I replied as your grace 
 hath, no doubt, already heard. Immediately the em- 
 peror, imbittered against me, issued a severe mandate 
 and sent it to the estates of the empire. . . . Then 
 certain persons were chosen out of the diet to admo- 
 nish me, in a gracious and friendly way, to submit my 
 books to the judgment of the emperor and of the 
 diet. They were the Bishop of Treves, Margrave 
 Joachim [of Brandenburg,] Duke George of Saxony, 
 the Bishop of Augsburg, the Teutonic Master, the 
 Bishop of Brandenburg, Count George of Wertheim 
 and two deputies from the free cities. Then a doctor,
 
 JE. 37.] BEFORE THE DIET. 313 
 
 [Vehus,] chancellor of the Margrave of Baden arose 
 and gave unto me such a fine and well-arranged ad- 
 monition, that I must confess the official of Treves, 
 who spoke before the emperor, cannot hold a candle 
 to him. . . . When they failed to produce any effect 
 upon me, the Archbishop of Treves called me, Dr. 
 Schurf and Amsdorf, and also his official and 
 Cochlaeus, before him apart. But it was an unpro- 
 fitable dispute, and led to no good result. . . . After- 
 ward the Chancellor [Vehus] of Baden and Peu- 
 tinger were sent to me to persuade me to submit my 
 books unconditionally to the emperor. ... I put it 
 to their consciences whether they could advise me 
 to commit myself wholly to the emperor and others 
 who had already condemned me and burnt my books. 
 . . . After this, the Archbishop of Treves sent for 
 me to see him alone. He showed himself in this 
 affair very kind and more than gracious, and would 
 gladly have quelled the difficulty. He set the 
 matter again before me, and I answered as before, 
 for I could not do otherwise, and so he dismissed 
 me. Soon after came the official, with a count, the 
 imperial chancellor, as a notary, saying to me in the 
 emperor's name, that inasmuch as I did not recede 
 from my purpose, I must return with twenty days 
 safe-conduct, and his imperial majesty would after- 
 ward do with me what was proper. I thanked his 
 majesty, and said, 'As it hath pleased the Lord, so 
 it is done, blessed be the name of the Lord.' They 
 enjoined it upon me not to preach or write by the 
 way. I replied, <I will do all that his majesty 
 pleases, but the word of God I will have unbound, 
 as St. Paul says.' Thus I parted with them, and am 
 now at Eisenach." 
 
 Several days before, April 28, while at Frank 
 
 27
 
 314 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1521. 
 
 furt, he wrote to his friend Cranach, the painter : "I 
 shall suffer myself to be taken and concealed, I do 
 not myself know where. And though I would rather 
 suffer death from the tyrants, especially from the 
 furious Duke George, nevertheless I must not despise 
 the counsel of good friends, but must wait for the 
 proper time. 
 
 " My arrival ai Worms was unexpected ; and how 
 the safe-conduct was observed you all know from 
 the prohibition which met me on the way. I had 
 supposed his imperial majesty would have assembled 
 about fifty doctors, and in a fair way have confuted 
 the monk. But only thus much was done. 'Are 
 these books yours ?' 'Yes.' 'Will you retract them 
 or not?' 'No.' 'Away with you then.' blind 
 Germans that we are ! How childishly we act and 
 suffer the Romanists so miserably to make us play 
 the ape and the fool. . . . Greet [professor and 
 burgomaster] Beyer and his wife, and express my 
 warm thanks to the council [of Wittenberg] for my 
 conveyance [to Worms.] . . . Farewell. I commend 
 you all to God, and may he keep the understanding 
 and faith of you all in Christ from the Roman wolves 
 and dragons and their rabble." 
 
 Luther left Worms, Friday, April 26th, at ten 
 o'clock in the morning, and was overtaken at Oppen- 
 heim by the herald, who followed after him. The 
 second day he went as far as Frankfurt, where, the 
 next morning, he wrote the above-mentioned letter 
 to Cranach. The third day he reached Friedburg, 
 whence he sent one communication to the emperor 
 and another to the diet by the herald, whose com- 
 pany, in view of the elector's project, was desired no 
 farther. The fourth day he arrived at .Griinberg, 
 and the fifth at Hirsfeld, where he was received with
 
 Wartburg Castle, and the seizure of Luther on his way from 
 Worms. p. 315.
 
 M. 37.] CAPTURED NEAR ALTENSTEIN. 315 
 
 great pomp. The sixth day, at night, he entered 
 Eisenach, where, the next morning, he dismissed 
 Schurf and his other travelling companions, except 
 Amsdoff j while he himself and Amsdorf, after re- 
 maining another day, turned aside and went to Mora, 
 on the other side of the Thuringian Forest, to visit 
 his uncle and other relatives. The day following, a 
 little beyond Altenstein, he was seized with feigned 
 violence, and conveyed to Wartburg. He might 
 easily have gone to this place when at Eisenach, but 
 that would have divulged the secret. 
 
 In the church records at Schweina, a little south 
 of Altenstein, is found the following entry: "Satur- 
 day, May 4, 1521, between four and five o'clock in 
 the afternoon, Dr. M. Luther passed through this 
 place on his way from Worms, and was taken captive 
 about a mile beyond Altenstein, near Luther's Foun- 
 tain, on the road to Waltershausen, and carried to 
 Wartburg." This is the most romantic part of the 
 Thuringian Forest. Luther had followed the wind- 
 ing mountain road southward to Schweina, and was 
 passing through a sandy hollow at the bend of the 
 road south-east of Altenstein, when the commander 
 of that place, the Knight von Hund, and Berlepsch, 
 the commander of Wartburg, seized him, according 
 to a preconcerted plan. As it was not yet sunset, 
 and as the utmost secrecy was necessary, they left 
 the road and wandered about the forest to the north 
 and west, till they came to a spring and a beech tree 
 in a narrow glen, about a hundred and twenty rods 
 from the castle of Altenstein. Here they sat down 
 and rested, and refreshed themselves with the pure 
 water. The spring is still called Luthersbrunn, and 
 the beech, now six feet in diameter, Luther's Buche. 
 A centennial celebration was held here in 1817.
 
 316 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1521. 
 
 In a letter to Spalatin, dated on the Mountain, 
 [Wartburg,] May 14th, after speaking of " the papal 
 yoke, which the people will no longer bear," and of 
 his leisure time and his studies, he goes on to say: 
 "The Abbot of Hirsfeld received me with a kindness 
 which you would hardly believe. He sent his chan- 
 cellor and his lord of the exchequer out five miles to 
 meet me. He himself received me at his castle with 
 a cavalcade, and accompanied me into the town. 
 Within the walls we were received by the senate. 
 The abbot entertained us [Luther and his com- 
 panions] sumptuously in the monastery, and put me 
 into his own chamber. The next morning they 
 compelled me to preach. It was in vain that I ob- 
 jected, on the ground that it might cost the abbot his 
 regalia, inasmuch as the imperial party might say 
 that it was a violation of public faith, they having 
 forbidden me to preach on the way. I indeed told 
 him I did not consent that the word of God should 
 be bound, and this was true. 
 
 "I preached also at Eisenach; but the timid parson 
 was present with a notary and witnesses, protesting 
 against it, and then excusing himself humbly, saying 
 he did it out of fear of the tyrants which were over 
 him. Perhaps you may hear at Worms [where Spa- 
 latin still remained] that I have herein not kept good 
 faith; but it is not so. That the word of God should 
 be bound was a condition wherein I had nothing to 
 do, nor did I make any such promise ; and even if 
 I had done so, inasmuch as it is contrary to the will 
 of God to make such promise, I should not be bound 
 to keep it. The day following, the abbot accom- 
 panied us as far as to the [Thuringian] forest, and 
 sent his chancellor forward to Berka to prepare a 
 dinner for us.
 
 M. 37.] CAPTURED NEAR ALTENSTEIN. 317 
 
 "At length we entered Eisenach at evening, under 
 the escort of the people, [among whom were many of 
 Luther's youthful acquaintances,] who came out on 
 foot to meet us. In the morning, Schurf and all my 
 other companions [except Amsdorf] went on their 
 way. I went across the mountain to visit my kin- 
 dred, who inhabit that region. Leaving them and 
 proceeding toward Waltershausen, soon after passing 
 the castle of Altenstein, I was seized. Amsdorf 
 necessarily knew that some one was to take me, but 
 was ignorant of the place of my custody. 
 
 " My brother, seeing the knights in season, leaped 
 from the carriage, and, without taking leave of me, 
 went on foot to Waltershausen, which he is said to 
 have reached in the evening, [followed, at length, 
 by Amsdorf and the affrighted driver with the car- 
 riage.] So here I am, my own attire being laid 
 aside, and that of a knight being put upon me, with 
 long hair [as monk, he wore his hair shorn in the 
 form of a crown of thorns] and long beard, so that 
 you would hardly know me. Indeed, I have not for 
 ' some time known myself. Here I enjoy Christian 
 liberty, being set free from all the laws of that 
 tyrant, though I would choose rather, if it were the 
 will of God I should suffer for his word, that Dresden 
 swine [Duke George] should be thought worthy to 
 put me to death for preaching publicly. The will 
 of the Lord be done." 
 
 27*
 
 318 
 
 LIFE OP LUTHER. 
 
 [1521-25. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 FKOM LUTHER'S CAPTURE TO THE CLOSE OF THE PEASANTS' 
 WAR 1521-1525. 
 
 SECTION I. Luther at Wartburg, May 4, 1521, to March 4, 
 1522. 
 
 T was more 
 than a week be- 
 fore Luther ven- 
 tured to write 
 any letters to 
 his friends. On 
 the 12th of 
 May, he wrote 
 one letter to 
 Melancthon and 
 another to Ams- 
 dorf. The one 
 last quoted, giv- 
 ing an account 
 of his capture, was written two days later. To Ams- 
 dorf he says, "I wrote lately to you all, my dear 
 Amsdorf, but, on listening to a better counsellor, I 
 tore the letters in pieces because it was not yet safe 
 to send them. . . . The Lord now visiteth me with 
 severe illness, [arising from costiveness.] But pray 
 for me, as I always pray for you, that God may 
 strengthen your heart. Be courageous, therefore; 
 and, as you have opportunity, speak the word of Grod 
 with boldness. Write to me how it was with you in 
 your journey, [from Altenstein to Wittenberg,] and
 
 M. 37.] AT WARTBURQ. 319 
 
 what you heard and saw in Erfurt, [where a great 
 excitement was created by the attentions paid to 
 Luther on his way to Worms.] With Melancthon 
 you will learn what Spalatin [still at Worms] hath 
 written to me, [concerning the violent proceedings 
 against me.] The day I was torn away from you, 
 I, a new knight, weary from the length of the ride, 
 [about eight miles] came in the dark, nearly eleven 
 o'clock at night, to this mansion. And now I am 
 here in a state of leisure, like one set at large among 
 captives. Beware of the Dresden Rehoboam [Duke 
 George] and of Benhadad of Damascus, [the Elector 
 of Brandenburg,] your neighbour. For a severe edict 
 hath been issued against us. But the Lord shall 
 hold them in derision." 
 
 The Elector Frederic, in order to evade the ques- 
 tions with which the imperial and papal party would 
 be likely to press him, kept himself ignorant for a time 
 of the particular place where Spalatin, by his order, 
 kept Luther in custody. We see, from the foregoing 
 letter, that his keepers dissuaded him from writing 
 so soon to his friends, lest the secret in respect to his 
 place of residence should be betrayed. To Spalatin 
 he wrote, some time after : " I have with difficulty made 
 out to send you this letter, such is the fear enter- 
 tained that it will be found out where I am. There- 
 fore, if you think it will be for the honour of Christ, 
 let it not be known whether I am in the keeping of 
 friend or foe ; for it is not necessary that any besides 
 yourself and Amsdorf should know any thing more 
 than that I am alive." 
 
 This design of concealment explains the indefinite 
 and amusing manner in which he dated his letters. 
 The above letter to Amsdorf, is dated " In the Re- 
 gions of the Air/' that written to Melancthon the
 
 320 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1521. 
 
 same day, " In the Regions of the Birds ;" others, 
 " From my Hermitage ;" " From the Isle of Pat- 
 mos;" "Among the birds, which sing sweetly in 
 the trees, and praise God with all their might, night 
 and day." 
 
 As late as the 10th of June, he wrote to Spala- 
 tin : " It is the will of our gracious prince that my 
 place of abode be not yet made known. Therefore, 
 I do not write to him at all." Cochlseus and others 
 of the Catholic party supposed that Allstedt was the 
 place of his concealment. A few of Luther's inti- 
 mate friends had learned where he was; but in a 
 letter written September 10, we find him saying : 
 " Duke John, the elder, at length knows where I am, 
 but did not know before. My host privately made 
 it known to him. But he will doubtless keep it to 
 himself." 
 
 Luther poured out his whole heart in his first 
 letter to Melancthon, May 12, probably the very 
 first letter written from Wartburg. It is particu- 
 larly interesting as revealing the state of his mind 
 in that singular posture of public affairs. He writes 
 thus : " And what, my dear Philip, are you mean- 
 while doing ? Are you not praying that this with- 
 drawal of myself, to which I have unwillingly given 
 my assent, may turn out for the furtherance of the 
 glory of (iod? I greatly desire to know how it 
 pleaseth you. I fear I shall be accounted as de- 
 serting the field of battle, and yet I could find no 
 way to resist those who desired and advised this 
 course. I desire nothing more than to bare my 
 breast to the fury of my enemies. Here I sit the 
 whole day, with the visage of the church ever be- 
 fore me, and the passage, Psalm Ixxxix. 47 : ' Why 
 hast thou made all the sons of men in vain ?' How
 
 &. 37.] AT WARTBURG. 321 
 
 horrible a form of God's anger is that abominable 
 kingdom of the Roman antichrist ! I abhor my own 
 hardness of heart that I am not dissolved in tears, 
 and that I do not weep fountains of tears for the 
 slain sons of my people. But there is no one to 
 arise and cleave to God, and make himself a wall 
 for the house of Israel in this last day of his wrath. 
 0, kingdom of the pope! worthy of the end and 
 dregs of the world. God have mercy on us. Where- 
 fore, be thou meanwhile instant as a minister of the 
 word, and fortify the walls and towers of Jerusalem, 
 till they shall assail thee. You know your calling 
 and gifts. I pray earnestly for you, if, as I doubt 
 not, my prayer can be of any avail. Do thou the 
 same for me, and let us mutually bear this burden. 
 Thus far I alone have stood in the front of battle. 
 They will next seek for your life." 
 
 In another letter to the same, written May 26, 
 he mentions, that "having composed his mind to 
 quiet studies, he had reluctantly replied to Jacob 
 Latomus," a sophistical theologian of Louvain, who 
 had written in defence of the burning of Luther's 
 books; that he had seen what his friends Faber, 
 (Ecolampadius, Hutten and others, had written 
 against his opponents; that he was himself sur- 
 prised at the boldness of Feldkirch, provost of Kem- 
 berg, in venturing at such a time to show his oppo- 
 sition to the celibacy of the clergy by actually en- 
 tering into wedlock. He is generally represented 
 as the first evangelical or Protestant clergyman who 
 took this step; but two others preceded him in 
 Saxony, and were imprisoned for their temerity. 
 Luther, though his personal situation was agree- 
 able, proceeds to say : " Yet for the glory of God, 
 and for the confirmation of myself and others, I
 
 322 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1521. 
 
 would sooner be burnt over live coals than decay 
 alone half-dead, not to say quite dead. But who 
 knoweth whether, in this as in other cases, Christ 
 will by such means effect a greater good? "We 
 have always been talking about faith and hope in 
 things not seen. Come, then, let us for once make 
 some little trial, especially since it is of God's ap- 
 pointing, and not of our seeking. Even if I perish, 
 the gospel will not perish, in which you are now my 
 superior, and Elisha succeedeth Elias with a double 
 measure of the Spirit, which may the Lord Jesus in 
 mercy grant you. Amen. Therefore, be not sad, 
 but sing unto the Lord songs in the night season, 
 and I will join with you. . . . Let the men of Leip- 
 sic glory, for this is their hour. We must go out 
 from our country, from our kindred, and from our 
 father's house, and for a time sojourn in a strange 
 land. ... I have not given up the hope of return- 
 ing unto you, though I leave it to God to do what 
 is good in his own eyes. 
 
 " If the pope shall fall upon all those who think 
 and feel with me, there will be no want of tumult 
 in Germany. The sooner he does it, the sooner will 
 he and his perish, and I return. God so arouse th 
 the spirit of many and the hearts even of the multi- 
 tude, that it seemeth not likely to me that the thing 
 can be put down by power ; or, if it be put down, it 
 will rise again with ten-fold force." The remainder 
 of the letter, full of special references to the cir- 
 cumstances of his Wittenberg friends, though of the 
 greatest interest to the historian, must be omitted here. 
 
 In another letter he says: "A certain Romanist 
 hath written to the man of a red hat at Mainz: 
 'We have lost Luther, as we desired ; but the people 
 are so excited that I suspect we shall not save our
 
 JE. 37.] AT WARTBURQ. 323 
 
 lives, unless we seek for him everywhere with 
 lighted candles, and bring him back.' He indeed 
 joketh, but what if the joke should turn out to be a 
 serious matter ?" 
 
 The situation of Luther during the ten months 
 of his residence at Wartburg is of a highly ro- 
 mantic character. The heroism he had lately 
 shown, the perilous condition he was in when he 
 left Worms, the mystery which hung about his pre- 
 sent place of abode, all acted with visible effect 
 upon the minds of the people. And now that we 
 are let behind the curtain, his secluded life appears 
 no less extraordinary than the wonderful missiles 
 which, from his unknown retreat, he continually 
 sent forth to the consternation of his adversaries. 
 At one time we find him wandering for amusement, 
 or picking wild berries, along the hill-sides and ra- 
 vines east of the castle, toward St. George's gate, 
 or the south gate of the city. Again, we see him 
 out on a two-days' chase, busying himself with dogs 
 and traps ; but finding, in the hare caught by him- 
 self and wrapt in a garment to preserve him from 
 the dogs which nevertheless seized and destroyed 
 him an image of Satan and the pope murdering 
 souls which others had endeavoured to save. Now 
 he rides in disguise, under the direction of a wary 
 knight, to the neighbouring towns and villages, to 
 Gotha, Erfurt, Reinhardsbrunn, and Marksuhl. At 
 the last-mentioned place, about five miles to the 
 south-west of Wartburg, he saw his friends; but 
 knight George, as he was then called, was not re- 
 cognised in his knight's, dress and long beard and 
 hair. At Reinhardsbrunn, between Altenstein and 
 Gotha, he was conducted hastily away by his guar-
 
 324 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1521. 
 
 dian, when the latter perceived that his ward was 
 known to the people. 
 
 The state of Luther's mind, at this time, was as 
 peculiar as were his external circumstances. He 
 was like a vessel that had outridden the storm, and 
 was now moored by a desolate island. The waves 
 had not so far subsided as not to rock his s bark with 
 some degree of violence. Partly from over-excite- 
 ment and exhaustion, partly from unwonted inacti- 
 vity, and too good living for one of his monastic 
 habits, he suffered painful illness. It is not strange 
 that he should, at times, be very much dejected. He 
 complained of temptations sorer than he had ever 
 experienced. This might all be so. But, when he 
 tells of the devil's making such disturbance and 
 noise about the premises that it was necessary to 
 speak to him, we may well suppose that a little me- 
 dical treatment and the poisoning of the rats would 
 have aided essentially in giving him quiet nights. 
 
 It can hardly be doubted that his present seclu- 
 sion was favourable to his character, both as a Chris- 
 tian and as a reformer. He needed time for reflec- 
 tion. Ever since he left the Erfurt convent, he had 
 been very active, and often much excited by contro- 
 versy. It was well that he could now commune with 
 himself and with his God, and calmly contemplate 
 the scene without. He had necessarily been much 
 occupied with tearing down and destroying what was 
 false ; he now had opportunity to direct his mind 
 steadily to what was true. The work of building 
 up, which was soon to follow, was even more diffi- 
 cult than that of destroying. 
 
 At Wartburg, Luther, by translating the New 
 Testament, made the best preparation for future 
 usefulness. Not only did he hereby put the mighti-
 
 ^E. 37.] AT WARTBURG. 325 
 
 est of Protestant weapons into the hands of all the 
 people, and in that way do immense service to the 
 Reformation, but, what was of no less importance, 
 he obtained that familiarity with the whole of the 
 New Testament, that thorough acquaintance with 
 biblical Christianity, which made it possible for 
 him to escape so many errors, and to incorporate 
 so much truth in his theological system. It is 
 true, indeed, that on the subject of religious liberty, 
 his mind underwent a change. After his return to 
 Wittenberg, and especially after the Peasants' War, 
 he was less inclined than before to the freedom of 
 the individual conscience in the interpretation of the 
 Bible. Still, the progress he made in biblical 
 knowledge and in digesting and arranging his 
 various doctrines, as they had been disconnectedly 
 thrown out in his controversial and other writings, 
 seems to have been almost indispensable to him at 
 this time. 
 
 Though Luther was so occupied with inward 
 struggles and temptations and with the labours of 
 studying the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, he did 
 not withdraw his interest or his view from the for- 
 tunes and the transactions of the religious party of 
 which he had become the leader. With his friends 
 and former associates he kept up a diligent corre- 
 spondence. He requested them to communicate 
 to him all that was going on. He was accurately 
 informed of the excitement that prevailed among 
 the nobles, of the disaffection of the common people 
 toward thefc' ecclesiastical rulers ; of the progress of 
 his doctrines at home and abroad, and of the de- 
 signs and plots of his enemies. In these circum- 
 stances, he was the constant counsellor of his Wit- 
 tenberg and other friends, giving them instructions 
 
 28
 
 326 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1521. 
 
 how to proceed in spreading the truth, and in ward- 
 ing off the attacks of the hostile party. He instructed 
 Amsdorf how to reply to Eraser. He is consulted 
 about the best manner of organizing the Wittenberg 
 Gymnasium, or Grammar-school. He urges Spalatin 
 to compel Melancthon to preach, saying, " How I 
 wish Philip would preach to the people in the Ger- 
 man language, [he did not refuse to lecture on the 
 Sabbath to the students, in Latin.] . . . Since he is 
 called of God, what matters it that he has not been 
 called by the tyrannical bishops ? . . . But I know 
 the temper and spirit of the man, that he will not 
 yield to ray entreaties. Therefore he must be com- 
 pelled by the urgent demand of the whole [Witten- 
 berg] church. Were I at Wittenberg, I should, as 
 I think, move the senate and people to call on him 
 to preach to them in German ; and I greatly desire 
 you should take the matter in hand. You can carry 
 the measure in the senate through the influence of 
 Cranach and Bayer." 
 
 He urged Justus Jonas, who, while at Worms 
 with him, was made professor of canonical law at 
 Wittenberg in place of Pollich deceased, to labour 
 for the overthrow of the authority of the decretals, 
 or laws of the pope. " Be an Aaron," he says to 
 'him, "clothed with sacred vestments, i. e. armed 
 'with the sacred Scriptures. Take the censer of 
 prayer and go out to meet this destroyer. Place 
 yourself in the very midst of the conflagration of the 
 world, kindled by Rome, but soon to be extinguished 
 by the coming of our Saviour whom we expect. 
 Teach your pupils, my brother, that those things 
 which it is your office to teach [the canon law] are 
 to be unlearned, that whatsoever the pope and the 
 papists enact and establish is to be avoided as a
 
 * \ 
 
 JE. 37.] AT WARTBURG. 
 
 deadly poison. Since we are not able to remove 
 this great evil by direct power, and are obliged to 
 perform official service in these sacrilegious Baby- 
 lonish provinces, it only remaineth for us to regard 
 them as the devastators and plunderers of our Je- 
 rusalem." He advised Spalatin to favour the utter 
 abrogation of the canon law. His host, Berlepsch, 
 at Wartburg, had done well, he said, in . treating 
 this law as antiquated, and in prohibiting ecclesias- 
 tical jurisdiction. If the elector and other princes 
 were not prepared to do as much, " let them, at least, 
 take no notice of the courts and judges when they 
 disregard the papal laws, for so will the abuse be in- 
 sensibly corrected." 
 
 Luther's writings during this period were both 
 numerous and important. The principal are those 
 against Latomus, a learned theologian of Louvain, 
 and this was one of Luther's best productions; 
 against the University of Paris, which had given a 
 judgment adverse to his cause; and against Einser; 
 besides treatises on auricular confession, on the celi- 
 bacy of the clergy, on private mass, on the abolition 
 of cloisters, and on communion in both kinds, Com- 
 mentaries on certain Psalms, and Postils on the 
 Gospels. Perhaps the most characteristic of the 
 productions of his pen during this period is the well- 
 known letter which he addressed to Albert, Arch- 
 bishop of Mainz. That prelate, as if triumphing in 
 the decision of the diet of Worms and in th retire- 
 ment of Luther from the scone of conflict, renewed 
 the sale of indulgences at Halle, his favourite resi- 
 dence. Luther, who was fully informed of what 
 was done, felt his blood boil within him as in 1517, 
 when Tetzel was the direct object of his attack. He 
 set himself to compose a tract which should fall like
 
 328 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1521. 
 
 a thunderbolt upon the head of the archbishop. But 
 Spalatin and Melancthon, who had been visited on 
 the subject, in a friendly way, by two distinguished 
 individuals from Albert's court, thought it too bold 
 for the circumstances, and Frederic feared it would dis- 
 turb his relations with the emperor and the Catholic 
 princes ; and the work was not, at that time, printed. 
 Luther reluctantly submitted, but, in place of 
 publishing the pamphlet, he wrote the private let 
 ter above mentioned to the archbishop. If he, 
 the archbishop, thought himself secure because Lu- 
 ther had retired from the scene, and supposed that, 
 by the aid of the imperial authority, he could put 
 down the monk, he would find himself mistaken. 
 He himself would not fail to do what Christian love 
 demanded, in spite of the gates of hell, not to men- 
 tion popes, cardinals and bishops ; and therefore 
 requested him to cease from deceiving and plunder- 
 ing the people, and to act the part of a bishop, and 
 not of a wolf; for it was notorious that indulgences 
 were nothing but sheer knavery and fraud. The 
 prelate would do well to remember what a great 
 tire had been kindled by a little, insignificant spark ; 
 how a despised monk had given the pope himself 
 enough to do, and, contrary to all expectation, car- 
 ried his point so far, that what had been lost could 
 never be retrieved, but, on the contrary, became 
 worse and worse every day, so that Grod's hand must 
 be recognised in the work. The same God still 
 lives, and can resist and overcome a Cardinal of 
 Mainz, though four en perors should undertake to 
 protect him. That Divine hand took delight in 
 breaking down the cedars of Lebanon, and humbling 
 the proud and hardened Pharaohs. The bishop had 
 better be cautious about despising and provoking
 
 JE. 37.] TROUBLES AT WITTENBERG. 329 
 
 that invisible power. " Let not your highness 
 think/' he goes on to say, "that Luther is dead. 
 He will still joyfully trust in the God who hath 
 humbled the pope, and will play a game with the 
 Cardinal of Mainz, which few would expect. ... I 
 give you notice, that, unless the idol be removed, I 
 shall feel bound, out of regard to divine truth and 
 the salvation of souls, to assail your grace as I did 
 the pope, and to speak plainly to a high dignitary, 
 and to place all the abominations practised by 
 Tetzel at the doors of the Bishop of Mainz, and to 
 point out to all the world the difference between a 
 bishop and a wolf. Your grace can hereby know 
 what to do, and how to conduct. ... I await your 
 decision, and expect an answer within two weeks. 
 If within that period none comes, then my book 
 'Against the Idol at Halle' will go to the public." 
 Strange as it may seem, a mild and submissive reply 
 was received, in which the archbishop promised to 
 stop the abuse. He did not care to be immortalized 
 as Tetzel had been. He shrunk from a controversy 
 which would be so little to his credit. The charm 
 of indulgences had been broken ; the eyes of the 
 people had been opened, and the public sentiment 
 fixed for ever in opposition to a practice so vile and 
 contemptible. 
 
 SECTION II. Troubles at Wittenberg, and Luther's Return. 
 
 MEANWHILK sentiments and principles were 
 springing up among the friends and followers of 
 Luther which were destined to make him great 
 trouble. He had broken the bands by which the 
 human mind had been so long fettered, and now 
 men began everywhere to exercise freedom of opi- 
 
 28
 
 330 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1521. 
 
 nion and of speech. Luther himself had not fully 
 considered how difficult it would be to stay the cur- 
 rent after he had loosened the foundations and re- 
 moved a portion of the dam which had hitherto 
 restrained it. How is this freedom to be controlled ? 
 Shall men be free to differ from the reformer him- 
 self? Is there to be no subjection to authority in 
 matters of religion ? Shall differences of opinion, 
 when they exist, be adjusted by learned disputations, 
 with chosen judges to sit in arbitration? or shall the 
 church be made again the ultimate authority; or 
 shall the civil power be brought in as the protector 
 of the true faith ? It is not strange that so difficult a 
 problem should not have been solved by the reform- 
 ers, and that, drifting along on the current of events, 
 they should sometimes be carried in a wrong direction. 
 
 There were two classes of subjects on which se- 
 rious differences of opinion arose, the one relating 
 to what is true, the other to what is expedient. 
 Luther often agreed with his opponents in respect 
 to the former, and differed only in respect to the 
 latter. The majority of the Augustinian monks of 
 "\Vittenberg agreed, in the absence of Luther, to 
 disband. The step was a little too bold even for 
 Luther, though he himself had given the lesson. 
 Many would be shocked at such a wholesale viola- 
 tion of the monastic vow. The monks would rush into 
 wedlock, without either an income or a knowledge of 
 business sufficient to support their households. 
 
 The elector and all his ministers, and the uni- 
 versity and the chapter, after innumerable con- 
 sultations, found it difficult to settle this matter, 
 and still more difficult to manage the monks and 
 others who, in the exercise of their new freedom, 
 had abolished the mass service about the same time.
 
 M. 37.] TROUBLES AT WITTENBERG. 331 
 
 Finally, the subject of church ceremonies and 
 church ornaments, altars and images, led to a con- 
 troversy which ended in open tumult. On all these 
 and kindred points, Carlstadt, who had joined the 
 party of the monk Gabriel Didymus, took a differ- 
 ent view from Luther. He insisted on bringing all 
 things back to the pattern of the primitive church, 
 without regard to men's prejudices, or to conse- 
 quences. This controversy between Luther and 
 Carlstadt is a delicate subject for the historian to 
 dispose of. Men of equal intelligence and piety 
 come to different conclusions in respect to it. So 
 much, however, may safely be said, that Carlstadt, 
 though a learned and undoubtedly a conscientious 
 man, had neither the ability nor the discretion of Lu- 
 ther. He was excitable, somewhat changeable and 
 fanatical, and perhaps ambitious. That his views 
 of reform carried him at times to excess is undeniable. 
 But if, in respect to means and measures, he was 
 too violent, and sometimes erred even when his 
 principles were otherwise right, Luther was some- 
 times wrong in his principles. If the former laid 
 too great stress on the reformation of external 
 abuses, and did not rely sufficiently on well settled 
 principles to work out their own results in due time, 
 the latter went to the other extreme of undervalu- 
 ing outward conformity to primitive Christianity, 
 and of regarding the ceremonies introduced into the 
 church in later times as a matter of comparative 
 indifference. In this last respect, he differed widely 
 from the Swiss reformers. Carlstadt was succes- 
 sively connected with two very different parties, both 
 of which were at variance with the Lutheran church, 
 namely, the Anabaptists and the Zwinglians. We 
 are now concerned with the former only.
 
 332 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1521. 
 
 The ame by which Luther and his associates 
 designated these men was that of " Celestial Pro- 
 phets," or " Zwickau Prophets," a clear indication 
 that their leading characteristic was fanaticism, and 
 that their peculiar views of baptism were regarded 
 as subordinate or incidental. This view is sup- 
 ported by the fact that, for the first three or four 
 years, they made no innovations in respect to this 
 rite as practised by the church, or, at most, in but 
 a few individual cases. The first clear instance on 
 record of re-baptism by them was in Switzerland, in 
 1524, whereas the Zwickau Prophets commenced 
 their movement near the middle of the year 1521. 
 Muncer himself did not re-baptize, nor did his fol- 
 lowers generally, during his lifetime. 
 
 Nor was there any dispute at that time about the 
 mode of baptism, for the Anabaptists not only made 
 no complaints of the practice of the church in that 
 respect, but themselves ordinarily practised asper- 
 sion or pouring, and rarely immersion. 
 
 When, therefore, the men of Zwickau appeared 
 at Wittenberg, in December of 1521, and con- 
 founded and alarmed Melancthon and Amsdorf, 
 and, for a time, carried away with their persuasions 
 Carlstadt and others connected with the university, 
 their main doctrine was, that the people of God 
 should follow an inward light ; that they themselves 
 possessed the spirit of prophecy, and spoke by im- 
 mediate revelation ; that the vain show and cere- 
 monies of the church were all to be abrogated or 
 changed, and the church restored to its apostolical 
 simplicity. They professed to establish a spiritual 
 church, regarding the Catholic church as carnal and 
 corrupt, so that neither baptism, ordination, nor any 
 thing else coming from it, could be recognised by a
 
 JE. 38.] TROUBLES AT WITTENBERG. 333 
 
 Christian. Various extravagances were connected 
 with these views, of which none was more important 
 than their radicalism in respect to civil government. 
 
 Melancthon, Amsdorf and others represented the 
 perilous state of things at Wittenberg to the Elec- 
 tor Frederic, saying they were upon the very verge 
 of a violent insurrection, and, as Luther's authority 
 was appealed to by the insurgents, none but Luther 
 could have power with them. Their proposal to 
 recall Luther did not meet the elector's views. He 
 said he had purposely caused Luther to be conveyed 
 to an unknown place, and kept securely in secret, 
 so that he could truly say to the emperor, if re- 
 quired to deliver him up, that he knew not where 
 he was. Should Luther now make his appearance 
 openly at Wittenberg, he might be seized by his 
 enemies, and he himself, as elector, was subject to 
 the imperial authority, and could do nothing in op- 
 position to it for Luther's protection. Luther, who 
 was informed of all these things, resolved to make 
 the bold experiment of going unprotected to the 
 place of danger, informing the elector of his pur- 
 pose, but giving him no time to prevent the step. 
 
 No wonder that Luther was willing to risk his 
 life and his credit with Frederic, in order to allay 
 the tempest which he saw rising. He feared that 
 these disorders, springing up in the head-quarters 
 of reform, would bring the whole movement, with 
 which he was now identified, into discredit, and 
 prove more fatal to the Reformation than all the 
 opposition of the Papists. It must be conceded that, 
 in his general view of the case, he was substantially 
 in the right. Whether a little more sympathy with 
 the people in their longing for freedom, a little moro 
 relaxation on points either debatable or compara-
 
 334 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1522. 
 
 tively unimportant, would have secured union, ex- 
 cept with a few, as well as victory, and saved the 
 people from the terrible catastrophe into which 
 Muncer plunged them, is a question which no one 
 can decide with certainty. But of this there can 
 be no doubt, that Luther's abilities were equal to 
 the exigency, and that he never manifested more 
 consummate skill in management and discussion, 
 nor a clearer insight into human nature, than on this 
 occasion. 
 
 An incident occurred when he was at Jena, on 
 his way to Wittenberg, which is too characteristic 
 of his humour and of his social nature to be omitted. 
 We have the account in the words of Kessler, of 
 Saint Grail, one of the individuals concerned in the 
 amusing scene. We will quote his language. 
 
 "Though it may seem trifling and childish, I 
 cannot omit mentioning how Martin met me and my 
 companion, when he was riding from the place of 
 his captivity toward Wittenberg. As we were jour- 
 neying toward Wittenberg, for the sake of studying 
 the Holy Scriptures and the Lord knows what a 
 furious tempest there was we came to Jena in 
 Thuringia, where we could not, with all our inquiry 
 in the town, find or hear of any place to lodge for 
 the night, but were everywhere refused, for it was 
 carnival, during which little heed is given to pil- 
 grims or strangers. We, therefore, left the town 
 again, to proceed farther on our way, thinking we 
 might perhaps find a hamlet where we could pass the 
 night. At the gate of the city we met a respectable 
 man, who accosted us in a friendly manner, and 
 asked us where we were going so late. . . . He then 
 asked us whether we had inquired at the Black Bear 
 hotel. . . . He pointed it out to us a little distance
 
 IE. 38.] RETURN TO WITTENBERG. 335 
 
 without the city. . . . The inn-keeper met us at 
 the door and received us, and led us into the room. 
 Here we found a man at the table, sitting alone, with 
 a small book lying before him, who greeted us kindly, 
 and invited us to take a seat with him at the table; for 
 our shoes were so muddy that we were ashamed to 
 enter the room, and therefore slunk away upon a 
 bench behind the door. . . . We took him to be no 
 other than a knight, as he had on, according to the 
 custom of the country, a red cap, small clothes and 
 a doublet, and a sword at his side, on which he 
 leaned, with one hand on the pommel and the other 
 on the hilt. He asked us whence we were, but imme- 
 diately answered himself, ' You are Swiss ; from what 
 part of Switzerland are you ?' We replied, ' St. Gall.' 
 He then said, ' If, as I suppose, you are on your way 
 to Wittenberg, you will find good countrymen of 
 yours there, namely, Jerome Schurf and his brother 
 Augustine ;' whereupon we said, ' We have letters to 
 them.' We now asked him in turn, if he could give 
 us any information about Martin Luther whether 
 he is now at Wittenberg or elsewhere. He said, ' I 
 have certain knowledge that he is not now at Wit- 
 tenberg, but will soon be there. But Philip Melanc- 
 thon is there, as teacher of Greek, and others teach 
 Hebrew.' He recommended to us to study both lan- 
 guages, as necessary above all things to understand 
 the Scriptures. We said, ' Thank God, we shall then 
 see and hear the man [Luther] on whose account we 
 have undertaken this journey.' . . . He then asked 
 us where we had formerly studied ; and, as we replied 
 at Basle, he inquired how things were going on there, 
 and what Erasmus was doing. ' Erasmus is still there, 
 but what he is about no one knoweth, for he keepeth 
 himself very quiet and secluded.' We were much
 
 336 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1522. 
 
 surprised at the knight, that he should know the 
 Schurfs, Melancthon and Erasmus, and that he 
 should speak of the necessity of studying Greek and 
 Hebrew. At times, too, he made use of Latin words, 
 so that we began to think he was something more 
 than a common knight. 
 
 " ' Sir/ said he, * what do men in Switzerland think 
 of Luther?' We replied, 'Variously, as everywhere 
 else. Some cannot sufficiently bless and praise G-od 
 that he hath, through this man, made known his 
 truth and exposed error; others condemn him as an 
 intolerable heretic.' 'Especially the clergy,' inter- 
 rupted he, ' I doubt not these are the priests.' By 
 this conversation we were made to feel ourselves 
 quite at home, and my companion [Reutiner] took 
 the book that lay before him, and looked into it, and 
 found it was a Hebrew psalter. He soon laid it down 
 again, and the knight took it. This increased our 
 curiosity to know who he was. When the day de- 
 clined and it grew dark, our host, knowing our desire 
 and longing after Luther, came to the table and said, 
 ' Friends, had you been here two days ago, you could 
 have had your desire, for he sat here at this table/ 
 pointing to the seat. We were provoked with our- 
 selves that we were too late, and poured out our dis- 
 pleasure against the bad roads which had hindered 
 us. After a little white, the host called me to the 
 door, and said, 'Since you manifest so earnest a 
 desire to see Luther, you must know that it is he who 
 is seated by you. 1 took these words as spoken in 
 jest, and said, 'You, to please me, give me a false joy 
 at seeing Luther.' 'It is indeed he/ replied my 
 host, ' but make as if you did not know it.' I went 
 back into the room and to the table, and desired to tell 
 my companion what I had heard, and turned to him,
 
 jE. 38.] RETURN TO WITTENBERG. 337 
 
 and said in a whisper, ' Our host hath told me that 
 this is Luther.' He, like myself, was incredulous. 
 ' Perhaps he said Hutten, and you misunderstood 
 him.' As now the knight's dress comported better 
 with the character of Hutten than with that of a monk, 
 I was persuaded that he said it was Hutten. [Two 
 merchants now came in, and they all supped toge- 
 ther.] Our host came, meanwhile, to us, and said in 
 a whisper, 'Don't be concerned about the cost, for 
 Martin hath paid the bill.' We rejoiced, not so 
 much for the gift or the supper, as for the honour of 
 being entertained by such a man. After supper the 
 merchants went to the stable to see to their horses, 
 and Martin remained with us in the room. We 
 thanked him for the honour shown us, and gave him 
 to understand that we took him for Ulrich von Hut- 
 ten. But he said, ' I am not he.' Just then came 
 in our host, and Martin said to him, ' I have become 
 a nobleman to-night, for these Swiss hold me to be 
 Ulrich von Hutten.' The host replied, ' You are not 
 he, but Martin Luther.' He laughed and said jo- 
 cosely, ' They hold me to be Hutten, and you say I 
 am Luther; I shall next be Marcolfus,' [a notorious 
 character in the monkish legends.] Afterward he 
 took up a large beer-glass, and said, 'Swiss, now 
 drink me a health;' and then arose, threw around 
 him his mantle, and, giving us his hand, took leave 
 of us, saying, When you come to Wittenberg, greet 
 Dr. Jerome Schurf for me.' ' Very gladly,' said we ; 
 'but whom shall we call you, that he may under- 
 stand us ?' He replied, ' Say only this, he who is to 
 come, sendeth you greeting,' and he will understand 
 it. ... On Saturday, we went to the house of 
 Schurf to present our letters; and when we were 
 conducted into the room, behold we found Martin 
 
 20
 
 338 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1522. 
 
 there as at Jena, and with him Melancthon, Justus 
 Jonas, Nicholas Amsdorf, and Dr. Augustine Schurf, 
 rehearsing to him what had taken place at Witten- 
 berg during his absence. He greeted us, and smil- 
 ing said, l This is Philip Melancthon, of whom we 
 spoke/ Melancthon turned to us and asked us many 
 questions, to which we replied as well as we could. 
 So we spent the day with them with great delight 
 and gratification on our part." 
 
 SECTION III. Luther at Wittenberg again, and his First 
 Encounter with the turbulent Populace. 
 
 LUTHER arrived at Wittenberg on Friday, the 7th 
 of March, and from Sunday the 9th harangued the 
 people eight successive days with overpowering elo- 
 quence. All his skill was put in requisition to save 
 from shipwreck the vessel laden with a freight, con- 
 taining all that was precious to him. In his first 
 discourse, he went back and planted himself upon 
 the fundamental principles of the Christian religion, 
 and, carrying all hearts with him on these points, he 
 next proceeded cautiously, but firmly, to unfold these 
 principles, and to show their application to the case 
 in hand, which he approached with the skill of a 
 master. His main positions were so strong and clear 
 that one was the less disposed to call in question the 
 use he made of them. The following is a sketch of 
 what he said. " First, I maintain that we are all 
 children of wrath, and that all our works, thoughts 
 and feelings are sinful and nothing before God, so 
 that we cannot appear before him with them, how 
 excellent soever and fine they may be. Secondly, 
 that God, of his mere mercy and goodness, hath sent 
 his only-begotten Son into the world, that we might
 
 M. 38.] AT WITTENBERG AGAIN. 339 
 
 believe and trust in him, and, believing, might be 
 free from sin and become the children of God. In 
 these two articles I find no defect or fault in you. 
 They are preached to you pure and uncorrupt. 
 Thirdly, we must have love, and by love serve one 
 another, as God hath done unto us by faith, without 
 which love faith is nothing, as Paul saith to the 
 Corinthians. Here, on this point, dear friends, you 
 are in fault ; for I discover no trace of love in you, 
 but observe that you have been unthankful to God, 
 and that he hath, within these few years, bestowed 
 upon you his treasures of grace in vain. Therefore 
 let us beware lest Wittenberg become a Capernaum. 
 I perceive clearly that you know how to discourse 
 upon the doctrines which are preached unto you, 
 such as faith and also love. But this is no great 
 thing, though you could say much that is good about 
 these virtues. Even the ass can be taught to sing. 
 Cannot you, then, learn so much as to repeat the 
 words of our faith ? But, my dear friends, the king- 
 dom of God standeth not in speech or words, but in 
 power and in deeds. God will have not merely 
 hearers and rehearsers, but followers and doers, who 
 will keej> his words, who will exercise themselves in 
 faith, which worketh by love. For faith without 
 love is nothing worth ; nay, it is not faith, but its 
 semblance only, just as one's face seen in a glass is 
 not the face itself, but its image. Fourthly, we must 
 also exercise patience. For whosoever hath faith, 
 and trusteth in God, and hath love to his neigh- 
 bour, and exerciseth himself therein, he shall not 
 be without persecution. For Satan neither sleepeth 
 nor is at rest, but maketh trouble enough for men. 
 But persecution worketh patience; for if I am 
 neither persecuted nor tempted, I can have little to
 
 340 LIFE OP LUTHER. .[1522. 
 
 say of patience. And patience worketh hope, which 
 springeth up and flourisheth in God, and putteth one 
 not te shame. Thus, by many temptations and per- 
 secutions, faith increaseth and is strengthened from 
 day to day. 
 
 " Such a heart, wherein faith so increaseth, and so 
 many virtues dwell, cannot rest, nor contain itself, 
 but must pour itself out again, and do good to its 
 neighbour as it hath received good of the Lord. 
 Here, my dear friends, each one is . not to do as he 
 hath a right to do, but must relax from his right, 
 and consider what is useful and profitable to his 
 brother, as Paul did, who said to the Corinthians, 
 'I have all power; but all is not expedient;' and, 
 again, 'Though I am free from all men, yet have I 
 made myself the servant of all, that I might win 
 many.' In these words of Paul, we are instructed 
 how we, who have received faith from God, should 
 conduct ourselves toward all, namely, accommodate 
 ourselves to the weakness of our neighbour. For we 
 are not all equally strong in the faith. He who is 
 strong to-day, may be weak to-morrow ; and he who 
 is weak to-day, may be strong to-morrow. Therefore 
 we must not consider our own faith or strength 
 alone, but that of our neighbour, that we may con- 
 descend to him, and not offend him by our liberty. 
 We must not forget how he hath borne with us, and 
 had patience a long time with our weakness. We 
 ought to do likewise unto our brethren, till they also 
 shall become strong; not to storm at them, but treat 
 them kindly, and with all meekness teach them, and 
 not go to heaven alone, but endeavour to bring our 
 brother with us. In this respect, I perceive you 
 have erred, and some of you gone very far. I should 
 not have gone so far, had I been here. The thing
 
 M. 38.] AT WITTENBERG AGAIN. 341 
 
 is right enough in itself, but there hath been too 
 great haste. There are on the other side brethren 
 and sisters who must be brought along with us. All 
 those, therefore, have erred, who have given their 
 consent and aid to doing away with mass ; not but 
 that the act itself was well enough, but that it was 
 done violently, in disorder, and to the offence of 
 others. They did not have recourse to the magis- 
 trates, nor make any inquiries of them beforehand. 
 They had a good knowledge of the Scriptures, but 
 had not the Spirit, else they would not have made a 
 law out of that which is free. Therefore I say, and 
 faithfully warn you, if we pray not earnestly to God 
 and return to our duty, all the wretchedness which 
 the Papists have suffered from us will be returned 
 upon our own heads. For this cause, I could not 
 remain away longer, but felt constrained to come and 
 say this to you." 
 
 This outline of his first discourse may suffice for a 
 specimen of his manner. In his second, he carried 
 out and illustrated the ideas with which he closed 
 the first. In the six remaining discourses, he rea- 
 soned out, one by one, the various points on which 
 he wished to correct the prevailing popular senti- 
 ment. Rarely has it happened that one man, un- 
 aided by power, rather cramped by it, by the mere 
 force of his individual character and personal influ- 
 ence, should be able to stay such a popular excite- 
 ment, which had already carried away all barriers, 
 and shown itself superior to the control of the court 
 and the university combined. 
 
 It is important that, at this critical juncture, 
 when Luther's character was put to so severe a 
 test, the turning point, as it were, of the whole 
 work of the Reformation, we ascertain as accu- 
 
 29*
 
 342 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1522. 
 
 rately as possible the position from which he con- 
 templated the extraordinary scene. 
 
 Happily we have ample means for such an inves- 
 tigation in the various letters written to his friends 
 at the very time of these occurrences. On the day 
 of his arrival, Friday, the 7th of March, he gave the 
 elector, according to request made to him through 
 Schurf, a statement of the reasons which induced 
 him, contrary to his instructions, to leave Wartburg, 
 and appear at Wittenberg. In this letter he says : 
 " I may well suppose it will appear objectionable to 
 you that, without your grace's consent or permission, 
 I should return to Wittenberg again ; for the appear- 
 ance is, that out of it great danger will arise both 
 to your grace, and to the whole country and people, 
 and most of all to me, who, as one that is pro- 
 scribed and condemned both by the pope and the 
 emperor, am every hour exposed to death. But 
 what shall I do? Necessity presseth, and God 
 urgeth and calleth ; it must and will be so ; and so 
 be it in the name of Jesus Christ, who is Lord over 
 life and death. . . . The first reason is, that I re- 
 ceived from the church at Wittenberg a written 
 request, beseeching and begging me to come. Now, 
 as no one can deny that the work was begun by me, 
 and as I am bound to hold myself as the obedient 
 servant of that church to which God hath called 
 me, I could in no way refuse, without renouncing 
 Christian love, fidelity and service. . . . 
 
 " The second reason is, that during my absence 
 from Wittenberg, Satan hath broken in upon my 
 flock, and hath, as all the world exclaimeth and 
 with truth done mischief which I cannot by writ- 
 ing arrest, but must manage by personal presence, 
 with living voice and ear. My conscience would
 
 JE. 38.] AT WITTENBERG AGAIN. 343 
 
 allow no longer hesitation or delay. On this ac- 
 count, I was obliged to disregard your grace's plea- 
 sure or displeasure, and all the world's wrath or 
 favour. For they are my flock, committed to me 
 of God; they are my children in Christ; and there 
 was no longer doubt whether I should come or not. 
 I am bound to suffer death for them, which, with 
 God's grace, I will cheerfully and joyfully do, as 
 Christ requireth in the tenth chapter of John. . . . 
 "The third reason is, that I greatly fear, and 
 alas ! am but too certain, that a wide-spread insur- 
 rection will break out in Germany, wherewith God 
 will punish this nation. For we see that the gospel 
 pleaseth the people much, and they turn it to a 
 carnal account ; they see that it is true, and yet 
 will not make a right use of it. To this end do 
 those contribute who ought to quell such insurrec- 
 tion. They seek to quench the light, but do not 
 consider that they thereby imbitter men's hearts, 
 and drive them to rebellion, so that they act as if 
 they would destroy themselves, or, at least, their 
 children, [the next generation, by civil war,] which 
 God no doubt sendeth as a judgment upon us. For 
 the spiritual tyranny is weakened, for whose down- 
 fall alone I laboured, but now I perceive God will 
 go further with it, and overthrow both the spiritual 
 and the civil rule, as in Jerusalem. I have lately 
 seen that not only the spiritual, but the temporal 
 power must give way before the gospel, whether it 
 be by consent or by constraint, as is clearly taught 
 in all Bible history. Now, God requireth in Eze- 
 kiel, that we should set up ourselves in defence as 
 a wall for the people. Therefore, I have thought it 
 necessary to consult with my friends, to see if we 
 could not ward off, or delay God's judgment."
 
 344 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1522. 
 
 To Spalatin lie wrote the same day: "Satan hath 
 attempted to do much mischief here in my fold, in 
 such a way that it will be difficult to meet the case 
 without offence to both parties. See to it, that no 
 innovation be allowed to be made either by common 
 consent or by violence. By the word alone must 
 error be assaulted, dislodged, overthrown and done 
 away, which our friends here, impelled by Satan, 
 have, in their first zeal, attempted to carry by storm. 
 I condemn as an abomination the papal mass, which 
 is made a sacrifice and a good work, whereby a man 
 is restored to favour with God. But I will not, 
 therefore, resort to force, or persuade one who is 
 without faith, much less compel him to do it away 
 with violence. Only through the word will I con- 
 demn the abuse of the mass. Whosoever will be- 
 lieve, let him believe, and follow unconstrained; 
 and whosoever will not believe, let him disbelieve 
 and go his way ; for no one should be forced to faith, 
 or to any thing pertaining to the faith, but should 
 be drawn to it and won by the word. Then, who- 
 soever believeth without constraint will freely follow. 
 I also reject the images which men worship ; but I 
 do it through the word, not urging men to burn 
 them up, but rather not to put their trust in them, 
 as others have done, and still do. The images will 
 fall of themselves, if the people are instructed 
 through the word, and learn that they are nothing 
 before God. So likewise do I condemn the papal 
 laws about auricular confession, going at stated times 
 to the holy sacrament, praying to saints and fast- 
 ing ; but I do it through the word to free the con- 
 science from these shackles. When that is done, 
 then they can either continue to use them on ac- 
 count of the weak who are still entangled with
 
 JE. 38.] NARRATIVE OF EVENTS. 345 
 
 them, or they can do those observances away, if 
 others are already strong. Thus, charity may pre- 
 vail in these outward works and laws. Now, I am 
 most displeased with our people, (and the populace 
 who are drawn with them,) that they let the word 
 and faith and charity go, and glory that they are 
 Christians, simply because they (not without offence 
 to the weak) can eat meat, eggs, milk, &c., lay hold 
 of the eucharist with their own hands, and omit the 
 fastings and prayers." 
 
 Luther went further, however, than to censure 
 violence instead of persuasion in matters of religion. 
 He condemned the removal of images from the 
 churches, the omission of the mass ceremonies, of 
 the prescribed fastings and prayers, and the touch- 
 ing of the bread and wine, on the part of the laity, 
 with their own hands, because such things, though 
 innocent in themselves, shocked the feelings of 
 many pious persons. If, in these respects, we 
 grant that Luther acted, as he did, not wholly with- 
 out reason, we must also concede that the new prac- 
 tice which he censured in the other party, was nei- 
 ther unnatural, nor altogether unreasonable. High 
 authority could have been pleaded on the other side, 
 as in fact it was pleaded. 
 
 SECTION IV. General Narrative of Events from 1522 to 1525. 
 
 HE who is accustomed to recognise the presence 
 of a superintending Providence in human affairs, 
 will not fail to perceive the hand of God in the pe- 
 culiar direction given to public affairs in Germany 
 about the time of Luther's return to Wittenberg. 
 Luther himself was defenceless, and both the papal 
 and imperial authority was arrayed against him and
 
 346 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1522. 
 
 employed to put in execution the severe edict of 
 Worms. The cause of the Reformation seemed, 
 moreover, to be weakened by the disorders prevail- 
 ing at Wittenberg and in several other towns, and 
 destroying the confidence of men in respect to the 
 tendencies of Luther's great enterprise. 
 
 George, Duke of Saxony, and the Elector of Bran- 
 denburg, were ready to execute that bloody edict, 
 and seize Luther and his associates ; but the great 
 influence of the Elector Frederic, his caution and 
 wisdom had hitherto preserved Luther from a violent 
 death. And now, when the elector's plans were all 
 baffled by what seemed to him the imprudence and 
 rashness of the reformer, and when he could find no 
 plausible ground for refusing, if the pope and the 
 emperor should demand that Luther be delivered 
 into their hands, behold Leo X. was removed by 
 death in December of 1521, and was succeeded by Ha- 
 drian VI., who for nearly two years continued to 
 maintain a new policy entirely against the views of 
 his court; and Charles V. was, meanwhile, so occu- 
 pied in his war with France as not to be able to 
 visit Germany, but was obliged to intrust its go- 
 vernment to his brother Ferdinand. Under these 
 remarkable circumstances, Frederic was relieved 
 from his embarrassment, and Luther could go on 
 undisturbed in his work. 
 
 Though the edict was still nominally in force, yet 
 in most of the middle of Germany the sentiments 
 of the intelligent and virtuous were so on the side 
 of truth and justice that the edict was disregarded. 
 This period, therefore, was the very one in which the 
 public mind was enlisted in the cause of the Refor- 
 mation. The unjust and cruel, but unsuccessful at- 
 tempts of the Catholic princes, instead of terrifying
 
 &. 38.] NARRATIVE OP EVENTS. 347 
 
 men into submission to their authority, had the con- 
 trary effect, and aroused the indignation which al- 
 ways follows an attempt to do violence to the moral 
 sense of the people. 
 
 From this time onward, Luther's labours, at home 
 and abroad, were greater than ever. Wherever a 
 town or even an individual manifested a love for 
 the evangelical doctrines, there Luther was either 
 personally present to aid by public preaching and 
 private conversation, or sent letters of encourage- 
 ment, consolation and counsel. Wherever the radi- 
 cal party spread their doctrines and made disturb- 
 ance, there none but Luther could appear either 
 with safety, or with any hope of success, to quell 
 the difficulty. Wherever the Catholics made an at- 
 tack or exercised cruelty against the converts to the 
 doctrines of the Reformation, there Luther, as the 
 bishop of all such flocks and individuals, was quick 
 to show his sympathy and extend his powerful 
 aid. 
 
 In April, 1522, he went to Zwickau, and was 
 obliged to pass through the dominions of Duke 
 George, at no small hazard, to reduce to order the 
 excited population of that town, where Muncer and 
 his colleagues made their first attempts to revolu- 
 tionize the church and the state. On the way thi- 
 ther, he preached at Borna, and at Al ten burg.* He 
 lodged in Zwickau with the burgomaster, and 
 preached in the town-hall, in the castle, and in one 
 of the churches. It was said that twenty-five thou- 
 sand people from the adjoining towns came to see 
 
 * Borna is fifteen miles, Altenburg twenty-five, and 
 Zwickau forty-five south of Leipsic. Eilenburg is fifteen 
 miles north-east of Leipsic.
 
 ,848 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1522. 
 
 and hear him. On his return, he preached twice 
 at Borna, and then proceeded to Eilenburg, and 
 thence to Wittenberg. 
 
 For similar reasons, he made a journey to Erfurt 
 in October of the same year. The same spirit of 
 speedy, if not violent reform, in respect to doing 
 away with images, mass and the invocation of saints, 
 which had manifested itself at Wittenberg, was 
 early active in Erfurt. After several letters on the 
 subject, Luther, in company with Melancthon, 
 Agricola and two others, visited the place in per- 
 son. The day before reaching it, he preached at 
 Weimar. On approaching Erfurt, Luther de- 
 scended from the carriage, and passed through the 
 gate privately, in order to avoid the crowd which 
 came out to welcome him or to see him. In the 
 evening, which was passed at the parsonage of one 
 of the churches, he was visited by multitudes of 
 persons. He preached there three times the two 
 following days, and then returned to Weimar, 
 where he remained some time, preaching every day. 
 
 Of his numerous writings published in 1522, no 
 particular account can be expected here. Besides 
 writing the interesting letter to the knight, Von 
 Kronberg, son-in-law of Von Sickingen, he had a 
 very violent controversy with Duke George and 
 Henry VIII., of England, or rather with Sir 
 Thomas More. Though these potentates, who un- 
 dertook to dabble in theology and to instruct Lu- 
 ther therein, deserved no better treatment than 
 they received from his hands, Luther himself suf- 
 fered in the estimation of many wise and good men 
 from the intemperate violence, and even ribaldry, in 
 which he freely indulged. 
 
 The history of the diet of Niiremburg, which was
 
 M. 39.] NARRATIVE OF EVENTS. 349 
 
 in session during the whole winter of 1523, while it 
 is too complicated to find a place in a brief biogra- 
 phy, is too important and too closely connected with 
 Luther's fortunes to be omitted altogether. 
 
 The Turks had broken in upon Hungary, and were 
 approaching the frontiers of the German empire. 
 Charles V., who had undertaken to check them, was 
 obliged to hasten to Spain to put down the insur- 
 rections which had sprung up there during his resi- 
 dence in Germany. His brother, Ferdinand, whom 
 he had appointed vicar of the empire, called the 
 diet above mentioned, in the emperor's name, to 
 engage the estates in a war of defence and reprisal. 
 The emperor, in a letter from Valladolid, endea- 
 voured to persuade the pope to contribute from the 
 ecclesiastical funds to support the war, adding as a 
 special inducement, that the same military power 
 might, before being disbanded, be employed to de- 
 stroy the Lutheran sect by the sword. 
 
 Hadrian paid little regard to the emperor's chief 
 object; but resolved to make use of the diet to fur- 
 ther his own ends in eradicating the Lutheran heresy. 
 After taking the preliminary measures, and inviting 
 the co-operation of the princes and even threaten- 
 ing the Elector Frederic, if he should refuse to 
 unite the pope, through his legate, urged the diet 
 no longer to suffer the edict of Worms to remain 
 without effect, but to crush the heresy of Luther 
 by the arm of the civil power, if milder measures 
 did not succeed. To give new weight to his argu- 
 ments, which met with opposition, he confessed the 
 corruption not only of the priests and prelates, but 
 of the cardinals and popes themselves; and pro- 
 mised (with all sincerity) to institute a reformation 
 which should, in a proper manner, accomplish all
 
 350 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1523. 
 
 that Luther undertook to effect in an improper man- 
 ner. This concession and promise, so far from 
 promoting his object, served only to defeat it. The 
 Roman courtiers and prelates desired no such reform. 
 The party which sympathized with Luther turned 
 the confessions to a good account. A committee 
 was appointed to draft a statement, in reply to 
 a communication of the legate, and John of 
 Schwartzenburg, a man of learning and talent, and 
 warmly in the interest of the evangelical party, 
 was chairman of the committee. With great mode- 
 ration and judgment was that document prepared, 
 which stated, that it was impossible to put in 
 execution the edict of Worms, in respect to Luther, 
 so long as the court of Rome, which Luther had 
 justly exposed to contempt, remained in its corrup- 
 tion, and unreformed. It recommended referring 
 the whole matter to a general council, the preachers 
 meanwhile adhering to the doctrines of the ancient 
 church, and Luther and his friends refraining from 
 writing and publishing. With slight modifications, 
 advocated by the Archbishop of Mainz and others, 
 the draft prepared was adopted by the diet, to the 
 great mortification and indignation of the legate. 
 Plaunitz, the deputy of the Elector of Saxony, who 
 was not present, was the chief diplomatist in the 
 interest of Luther, and well did he and Schwartzen- 
 burg concert their measures for baffling the papal 
 counsels. Felitzsch, the ambassador of Frederic, 
 would not yield so much as his associates did, and 
 protested, in the name of his prince, against the 
 prohibition laid upon Luther in respect to publishing 
 his opinions. Luther himself, however, was very 
 well satisfied with the main features of the order 
 passed by the diet, pronouncing it "remarkably
 
 JE. 39.] NARRATIVE OF EVENTS. 351 
 
 liberal and acceptable." Inasmuch as the enemies 
 of Luther interpreted this recess, as it is called, so 
 as to make it appear condemnatory of the cause of 
 the Reformation, and confirmatory of the decision 
 passed at the diet of Worms, Luther addressed a 
 public letter to the vicar and government of the 
 empire, in which he gave a different interpretation. 
 Thus the plans and schemes of the pope and his 
 ministers, to engage the German diet in a crusade 
 against the new heresy, failed utterly of their object. 
 The Protestant writers, who complain of the doings 
 of the diet, do not, perhaps, sufficiently consider 
 how many chances there were of coming to a result 
 incomparably worse, and how much skill and effort 
 it required, in a few, to take such advantage of the 
 circumstances to ward off the evil. 
 
 The result above mentioned was merely negative. 
 Luther and his friends were in the same state of 
 insecurity as before. The elector was often alarmed, 
 and it required all the ability and boldness of 
 Luther to inspire him with confidence. In such a 
 state of things, it was to be expected that the 
 followers of Luther, in Catholic territories, should 
 be bitterly and cruelly persecuted. To this class of 
 sufferers, Luther directed his particular attention. 
 
 Three ladies had been dismissed from the court 
 of Henry, Duke of Saxony, for having read the 
 writings of Luther. Henry himself, who then 
 resided at Freiberg, was favourably disposed toward 
 Luther; but he was forced to this measure by his 
 brother George, the reigning duke. Luther, though 
 a stranger to these ladies, addressed to them [June 
 18, 1523] a consolatory letter, urging them to 
 Christian fortitude and patience. " Submit patiently," 
 he says, " and let Christ work. He will abundantly
 
 352 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1523. 
 
 avenge you of your wrong, and raise you higher 
 than you could wish, if you will only leave the 
 matter, and commit it all to him." 
 
 In July of the same year, he writes to his friend 
 Crotus : " Two brethren have already been burnt at 
 Brussels, and a third has been degraded (as they 
 call it) and sent into some unknown Assyria or 
 Babylon. The papal priests rage with incredible 
 madness against Christ. Some of them write ac- 
 cursed and blasphemous things. This is their obe- 
 dience to the imperial [Nuremberg] edict, referring 
 our dispute to a future council. Thus far, I have 
 kept quiet, [as the edict required ;] but, if they go on 
 thus, I too shall bid adieu to the edict not to burn, 
 imprison, or do any violence for this is not the 
 part of Christians but to defend, by word of 
 mouth and by writing, the glory of the Scriptures, 
 and to expose still further the abominations of the 
 papacy." 
 
 He addressed a letter, worthy of Tertullian or 
 of Cyprian, to the Christians in Holland, Brabant 
 and Flanders, congratulating them " that God is 
 causing his marvellous light to shine again, and 
 that the voice of the turtle-dove is heard, and the 
 flowers appear on the earth." The correspondence 
 of Luther, in the years 1522 and 1523, is very rich 
 in such specimens of Christian sympathy ; the in- 
 stances in which he intercedes for the poor, the 
 afflicted and the outcast, being almost innumerable. 
 At one time, he asks of the elector charity for an 
 aged and feeble monk, who, from conscientious 
 scruples, has abandoned his cell; at another, for 
 nine nuns, who were abandoned by their relations 
 for having laid aside the veil. Now, he takes the 
 part of a pious preacher, who has been driven from
 
 ,. 39.] NARRATIVE OP EVENTS. 353 
 
 his post for having preached evangelical doctrines, 
 or having taken a wife ; and now, he writes letters 
 of encouragement to the handful of believers who 
 venture to confess Christ, in various towns and 
 cities. Besides, his opinions were asked on so many 
 questions, laid before him by princes and nobles, by 
 magistrates and town-councils, by scholars and theo- 
 logians, by ecclesiastics, monks and nuns, on all 
 points connected with the change he introduced in 
 respect to man's ecclesiastical and social relations, 
 that he was often obliged to excuse himself for want 
 of time, and refer them to his writings, to other 
 religious teachers, and to the Bible. 
 
 Hadrian VI., the reforming but narrow-minded 
 pope, lived less than two years after his accession to 
 the apostolical chair. He was succeeded (Nov. 19, 
 1523) by Clement VII., a wily politician of the 
 family of the Medici, whose intriguing policy better 
 pleased the corrupt Roman court. At the next 
 German diet, held in the beginning of 1524, Cam- 
 pegius, the papal legate, and Haunart, the orator 
 sent from Spain by the emperor to represent his 
 views, acted in concert against Luther, as Charles 
 at that time felt the need of the pope's assistance in 
 his war with France. Though their councils pre- 
 vailed in part in the diet, the resistance of the 
 Elector Frederic and some others was so decided, 
 that the danger of Luther was but slightly increased. 
 So far was he from being terrified by the newNu'rem- 
 burg edict, which enforced the edict of Worms, 
 while it provided for the settlement of the religious 
 differences at the next diet to be held at Spire, that 
 he published the two edicts together, with satirical 
 comments, under the title of "Two Irreconcilable 
 and Contradictory Imperial Orders respecting Lu- 
 
 30
 
 354 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1523. 
 
 ther." In the preface, he says, " It is scandalous 
 that the emperor and the princes deal openly in false- 
 hood, and, what is more scandalous still, issue con- 
 tradictory commands, as you here see. I am to be 
 seized and punished according to the decision made 
 at the diet of Worms ; and yet, at a future diet, to 
 be held at Spire, my teachings are to be examined. 
 So I am at one and the same time condemned and 
 referred to a future trial ; and my countrymen are 
 to treat me as an outlaw, and then wait to see me 
 condemned." 
 
 Of the controversies in which Luther was en- 
 gaged at the close of this period, or from 1523 to 
 1525, we will mention only those which tended to 
 check the progress of the Reformation, namely, his 
 controversies with Erasmus on the freedom of the 
 will; with Carlstadt on the real presence in the 
 eucharist; and with Muncer and the peasants on 
 civil government. 
 
 The controversy with Erasmus derived its imme- 
 diate importance from his great personal influence, 
 and from the support he had indirectly given to the 
 cause of the Reformation. Both parties had been 
 eager to claim him, and it was long doubtful which 
 side he would espouse. But, from our point of 
 view, we are led to attach still greater importance 
 to the remoter consequences, those which are con- 
 nected with the subject of the controversy j for, at 
 a subsequent period, both Melancthon and the Lu- 
 theran church abandoned the predestinarian view 
 maintained by Luther, and became converts, in part, 
 to the doctrine advocated by Erasmus. 
 
 Luther had long been suspicious of Erasmus, and, 
 in a letter to (Ecolampadius, (June 20, 1523,) he 
 gave utterance to his impressions of him in these
 
 JE. 39.] NARRATIVE OP EVENTS. 355 
 
 words: "Although I here and there feel his sharp 
 arrows, yet, as he pretendeth not to be my enemy, 
 BO I pretend not to understand his manoeuvres, 
 though I see through him better than he supposeth. 
 He hath accomplished that to which he was called. 
 He hath introduced the languages, and recalled men 
 from their impious studies. Perhaps, with Moses, 
 he is to die in the land of Moab, for, to better stu- 
 dies, which pertain to piety, he doth not advance. 
 I could most earnestly desire that he would abstain 
 from treating of the Scriptures and from his para- 
 phrases; for he is not equal to this task, and only 
 inipedeth his readers in a knowledge of the Scrip- 
 tures. It is enough for him to have pointed out 
 what is evil ; to reveal what is good, and to lead to 
 the land of promise, is, as I now see, more than he 
 can do." 
 
 A letter of his, written in May, 1522, had been 
 injudiciously published, in which he had said: "I 
 knew before that Mosellanus agreed with Erasmus 
 on predestination. But I think Erasmus knoweth 
 less of predestination than the sophistical scholastics 
 knew. Nor do I fear that I shall fall, if I do not 
 change my sentiments. Erasmus is not formidable 
 in this matter, nor is he generally in what pertaineth 
 to Christianity. ... I will not provoke him to 
 combat, nor, if he provoke me once and again, will 
 I immediately resent. Nevertheless it seemeth to 
 me not good for him to try the powers of his elo- 
 quence on me. ... If, however, he will have a hand 
 in the game, he shall see that Christ is afraid neither 
 of the gates of hell, nor of the powers of the air; 
 and I, though a stammerer, will boldly meet the 
 eloquent Erasmus without regard to his authority, 
 name, or favour. . . . Sulute Mosellanus in my name.
 
 356 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1523. 
 
 I am not estranged from him because he followeth 
 Erasmus rather than me. Tell him to be a lusty 
 Erasmian. The time will come when he will think 
 otherwise." 
 
 Keferring to these two letters, he says, (Oct. 1, 
 1523:) "My private letter concerning Erasmus, 
 and another written to (Ecolampadius, have been 
 published, which he taketh very ill. Although I 
 have not a single word to take back, if called to de- 
 fend myself, I am nevertheless not well pleased that 
 letters, written in confidence to intimate friends, 
 should be made public by informers. But the 
 writings of Erasmus will not harm me, if directed 
 against me ; neither will they give me confidence, 
 if they support me. I have one who will defend 
 my cause, though all the world rage against what 
 Erasmus calleth my pertinacity. ... I am resolved 
 not to defend my manner of life and character, but 
 the cause only. Let whosoever will mangle my 
 character as heretofore. ... I am sorrowful and 
 afraid when I am praised, and joyful when re- 
 proached and maligned. If this seemeth strange to 
 Erasmus, I do not wonder. Let him learn Christ, 
 and bid adieu to human wisdom. The Lord en- 
 lighten him and make another man of him." 
 
 Luther knew that the Papists, and particularly 
 the pope himself, had urged Erasmus to come out 
 against him. He was long kept in painful sus- 
 pense, expecting either an open attack or a private 
 expostulation, and yet receiving neither. He finally 
 broke the silence in a letter to Erasmus, holding 
 out the olive of peace, but in a way that did not 
 flatter the vanity of the man who had long been re- 
 garded as an oracle. 
 
 "I have long kept silence," he writes, (April
 
 &. 40.] NARRATIVE OP EVENTS. 357 
 
 1524,) "that you, as the greater and older, might 
 break it. But, having waited so long in vain, 
 Christian charity, I think, compelleth me to make 
 the beginning. First, I will not complain that you 
 have stood aloof from me, in order to be on better 
 and safer terms with the Papists, my enemies. Nor 
 do I take it ill that you have, in some passages in 
 your published works, for the sake of securing their 
 favour or mitigating their wrath, used some bitter 
 and biting expressions relating to me; for I per- 
 ceive that the Lord hath not yet given you the for- 
 titude and courage to join me in cheerfully and 
 boldly meeting those monsters with which I have to 
 contend. I am not one to exact of you what is above 
 your powers and your measure. But I tolerate your 
 weakness, and honour the measure of the gifts be- 
 stowed on you of G-od. The whole world must own 
 that it is a great gift of God in you, and one for 
 which we ought to be thankful, that through you 
 letters have been made to flourish and prevail, to 
 the manifest aid of the study of the Bible. It was 
 never my desire that you should desert or neglect 
 your gift, and mingle in my combats, wherein your 
 genius and eloquence would, indeed, avail much. 
 But, as you lack the courage, it is safer for you to 
 cultivate your own gift. I have only feared this, 
 that my adversaries would persuade you to assail my 
 doctrines, which would compel me to resist you to 
 the face. ... So much did I wish to say, as evi- 
 dence of my candid feelings toward you ; and I desire 
 that a spirit may be given you of the Lord, worthy 
 of your name. But if it should not yet be given 
 you, I beg you, if you can no nothing more, to be a 
 mere spectator of my tragedy, and not join my ad- 
 versaries with your troops, and especially to publish
 
 358 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1524. 
 
 no books against me, as I will publish none against 
 you." 
 
 That so sensitive a man as Erasmus should feel 
 keenly on the reception of this letter is what might 
 be anticipated. He replied with evident emotion, 
 repelling the charge of timidity and dissimulation, 
 and claiming to have served the gospel far better 
 than many infatuated writers who make themselves 
 important under its abused name. The influence of 
 Henry VIII., his patron, being added to that of the 
 papal court, prevailed; and in September, 1524, 
 Erasmus opened his batteries upon Luther, who 
 replied with unsparing severity. Whatever be the 
 merits of this controversy and it was conducted 
 with distinguished learning on the one side, and 
 distinguished ability on the other Erasmus con- 
 fesses that he was influenced not wholly by a love 
 of truth, but also by the fear of his enemies, the 
 monks ; who were exciting against him, as a secret 
 favourer of Luther's doctrines, the ill-will of the 
 court of Rome and of several potentates, whose 
 protection and patronage he could not consent to 
 lose. Here, as everywhere, the otherwise virtuous 
 and well-disposed Erasmus calculated nicely his own 
 personal interest. Thus these two great and, for 
 the most part, good men, became inveterate enemies 
 of each other. Luther never loved those who taught 
 differently from himself. Carlstadt, Erasmus and 
 Zwingle, when they opposed any of his views, were 
 no less heretical than Muncer. This was a fault in 
 Luther's character. 
 
 A few words from Luther's letter to a friend 
 (March 30, 1522) will be sufficient to remind us of 
 his relations to Carlstadt at that time. He there 
 remarks : " I have offended Carlstadt, because I have
 
 JE. 40.] NARRATIVE OP EVENTS. 359 
 
 put a stop to his measures, though I did not con- 
 demn his doctrines, except that I did not approve 
 of his labouring so for mere ceremonies and external 
 forms, while the true Christian teaching, that of 
 faith and charity, is neglected. For, by his foolish 
 manner of preaching, the people were led to think 
 they were Christians from the sole consideration 
 (which is nothing at all) that, in the communion, 
 they partook both of the bread and the wine ; that 
 they handled them; that they did not go to confes- 
 sion ; and that they broke down the images. Behold 
 Satan's malice, in resorting to this new expedient to 
 destroy the gospel I" 
 
 Carlstadt had explained his position thus : " That 
 we are sometimes at variance, is because we do not 
 Btand by the word of God, and think we may, by our 
 reason, devise something that will please him. On 
 this wise are we disagreed on the article of confession. 
 For my part, I have followed the Scriptures, and 
 appeal to my candid hearers. I have also requested 
 the magistrates to forbid, under a severe penalty, 
 preaching any thing which the Scriptures do not con- 
 tain and teach. Death itself shall 'not drive me 
 away from the Scriptures. For I know that nothing 
 pleaseth God but what doth conform to his holy 
 word. . . . Therefore I shall build exclusively on 
 the word of God, not regarding what others teach. 
 I know that I shall offend only those who are not 
 Christians." These words have been pronounced, 
 by historians, haughty and insolent. Had Luther ut- 
 tered them, they would have been pronounced heroic. 
 
 If Carlstadt did not act according to this standard 
 if he was fanatical, envious, or unkind in his op- 
 position to Luther that is quite another matter. 
 Carlstadt was at first compelled by the elector to
 
 360 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1524. 
 
 promise not to preach to the people in the way he 
 had done. After restraining himself about three 
 months, till April, 1522, he resolved to publish his 
 views in opposition to Luther. The latter writes, 
 (April 21,) " I have this day suppliantly entreated 
 Carlstadt in private not to publish any thing against 
 me, for, in that case, I should be obliged to contend 
 with him earnestly. He solemnly affirmed that he 
 would write nothing against me, though the six sheets 
 now in the hands of the rector and judges for exa- 
 mination speak otherwise. Certainly I will not so 
 disregard public scandal as to pass over what he hath 
 written. They are endeavouring to persuade him to 
 retract or to suppress what he hath written ; I shall 
 not urge it." Melancthon writes to Spalatin a few 
 days afterward, "It hath been decided that Carl- 
 stadt's book shall be suppressed." 
 
 It would appear that the intimation made by Lu- 
 ther against Carlstadt's good faith was not at this 
 time justified by the result, for the latter returned 
 to the ordinary discharge of his duties, much to the 
 satisfaction of the former. In January, 1523, Lu- 
 ther speaks of Carlstadt's lectures in most flattering 
 terms. 
 
 For three centuries, Carlstadt's moral character has 
 been treated somewhat as Luther's would have been, 
 if only Catholic testimony had been heard. The party 
 interested has been both witness and judge. What 
 if we were to judge of Zwingle's Christian character 
 by Luther's representations ? The truth is, Carlstadt 
 hardly showed a worse spirit, or employed more 
 abusive terms toward Luther, than Luther did 
 toward him. Carlstadt knew that in many things 
 the truth was on his side; and yet, in these, no less 
 than in others, he was crushed by the civil power,
 
 JE- 40.] NARRATIVE OP EVENTS. 361 
 
 which was on the side of Luther. Luther was so 
 zealous to maintain the doctrine of justification by 
 faith, that he was prepared even to call in question 
 the authority of some portions of Scripture, which 
 seemed to him not to be reconcileable with it. To 
 the Epistle of James, especially, his expressions in- 
 dicate the strongest repugnance. Indeed, so intem- 
 perate was his language in reference to this subject, 
 that we cease to wonder why Carlstadt should com- 
 plain of "the audacity, the unreasonable severity, the 
 violence, the false reasoning, the immodesty and 
 shameless decisions of his friends." " Still," says he, 
 " I will challenge no one, but if I am challenged for 
 the defence of the canon of the Scriptures, though I 
 cannot do it as it should be done, I will contend with 
 all my might." 
 
 He had so far restored the sacrament of the 
 Lord's supper as to distribute the wine as well as 
 the bread to the laity. Luther, " in order not to 
 offend weak consciences," insisted on distributing 
 the bread only, and prevailed. He rejected the 
 practice of elevating and adoring the host. Luther 
 allowed it, and introduced it again. Carlstadt 
 maintained, that "we should not, in things pertain- 
 ing to God, regard what the multitude say or think, 
 but look simply to the word of God. Others," he 
 adds, " say that, on account of the weak, we should 
 not hasten to keep the commands of God; but wait 
 till they become wise and strong." In regard to 
 the ceremonies introduced into the church, he 
 judged as the Swiss reformers did, that all were to 
 be rejected which had not a warrant in the Bible. 
 " It is sufficiently against the Scriptures, if you can 
 find no ground for it in them." Luther asserted, 
 on the contrary, " Whatever is not against the 
 
 81
 
 362 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1524. 
 
 Scriptures is for the Scriptures, and the Scriptures 
 for it. Though Christ hath not commanded ador- 
 ing of the host, so neither hath he forbidden it." 
 "Not so," said Carlstadt, "we are bound to the Bible, 
 and no one may decide after the thoughts of his own 
 heart." 
 
 Carlstadt differed essentially from Luther in regard 
 to the use to be made of the Old Testament. With 
 him, the law of Moses was still binding. Luther, on 
 the contrary, had a strong aversion to what he calls 
 a legal and Judaizing religion. Carlstadt held to the 
 divine authority of the Sabbath from the Old Testa- 
 ment; Luther believed Christians were free to observe 
 any day as a Sabbath, provided they be uniform in 
 observing it. But Carlstadt was also a mystic, fol- 
 lowing an inward light. Hence his sympathy with 
 the Zwickau Prophets. He was a singular com- 
 pound of Zwinglian, Lutheran and Anabaptist in- 
 gredients. 
 
 The most important difference between him and 
 Luther, and that which most imbittered the latter 
 against him, related to the Lord's supper. He 
 opposed not only transubstantiation, but consub- 
 stantiation, the real presence, and the elevation and 
 adoration of the host. Luther rejected the first, 
 asserted the second and third, and allowed the other 
 two. In regard to the real presence, he says : " In 
 the sacrament is the real body of Christ and the 
 real blood of Christ, so that even the unworthy and 
 ungodly partake of it ; and ' partake of it corpo- 
 rally/ too, and not spiritually as Carlstadt will have 
 it." After Carlstadt had been compelled to keep 
 silence, from 1522 to 1524, and to submit to the 
 superior power and authority of Luther, he could 
 contain himself no longer. He, therefore, left Wit-
 
 M. 40.] NARRATIVE OF EVENTS. 363 
 
 tenberg, and established a press at Jena, through 
 which he could, in a series of publications, give 
 vent to his convictions, so long pent up. He also 
 preached in several places in that neighbourhood, 
 but chiefly at Orlamunde, a little above Jena, on 
 the Saale. A furious controversy ensued. Both 
 parties exceeded the bounds of Christian propriety 
 and moderation. 
 
 Carlstadt was now in the vicinity of the Anabap- 
 tist tumults, excited by Muncer. He sympathized 
 with them in some things, but disapproved of their 
 disorders. Luther made the most of this. The work 
 which he wrote against him, he entitled " The Book 
 against the Celestial Prophets." This was uncan- 
 did ; for the controversy related chiefly to the sacra- 
 ment of the supper. In the south of Germany, and 
 in Switzerland, Carlstadt found more adherents than 
 Luther. Banished as an Anabaptist, he was received 
 as a Zwinglian. 
 
 No doubt this circumstance did much toward pro- 
 ducing that intolerant spirit which Luther ever after- 
 ward manifested toward Zwingle and his associates. 
 It is not for us to decide the doctrinal question. 
 It is enough to say that those men were as much 
 entitled to the respect and charity of Luther, as he 
 was to ^their's. We pass over this whole contro- 
 versy, and the numerous colloquies and debates 
 growing out of it, as inappropriate to the character 
 of this work. 
 
 Against the peasants, who, on the one hand, were 
 driven to desperation by the oppression of their 
 rulers, and, on the other, were intoxicated with the 
 new ideas of liberty that had just begun to be pro- 
 claimed, Luther wrote and spoke in terms of unmi- 
 tigated severity. He was a better theologian than
 
 364 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1524. 
 
 politician. He held to the divine right of kings, 
 and, consequently, to the doctrine of passive obe- 
 dience on the part of their subjects. He was justly 
 alarmed lest the fair name of the Reformation 
 should be stained by deeds of violence and blood. 
 
 In Thuringia, particularly, and under Muncer's in- 
 fluence, the political movements were linked in with 
 fanaticism which led to the wildest disorders; though, 
 in the south-west of Germany, the insurgents acted 
 more wisely and intelligently. That Luther should, 
 in these circumstances, employ his pen, and even 
 travel from city to city, to allay the excitement and 
 put down the peasants, is not strange. But that 
 he should proclaim doctrines subversive of all prin- 
 ciples of freedom, and be the means of riveting 
 more firmly the already galling chains of despotism, 
 and of exciting the despots to a bloody revenge, is 
 a matter of regret, if not of wonder. 
 
 The recent revolutions of Germany are very simi- 
 lar to those attempted in the sixteenth century. 
 The cause was as sacred then as it is now : we do 
 not say that the means were justifiable. Certainly 
 the theories of government were extravagant and 
 grotesque. The failure of the undertaking of Von 
 Sickingen and Von Hutten, the tragic scenes of 
 Alstedt, Frankenhausen and Miihlhausen, a^nd the 
 counter-revolution in Suabia, and the character given 
 to the Reformation as hostile to all political revo- 
 lutions, retarded the cause of liberty for three cen- 
 turies. 
 
 Perhaps it is well that it was so. Perhaps there 
 was not, in that age, a sufficient preparation for 
 the enjoyment and preservation of freedom ; and 
 so the want of enlarged, rational and philosophic 
 views of the nature and functions of civil govern-
 
 JE. 38-42.] NARRATIVE OF EVENTS. 
 
 365 
 
 ment, which we observe in Luther, is the less to be 
 regretted. To be, at the same time, a religious and 
 a political reformer is more than can reasonably 
 be demanded of one individual. Of the strict inte- 
 grity and high moral principles of Luther, in all 
 his transactions, both with princes and with pea- 
 sants, during these unhappy times, there can be no 
 question. 
 
 81
 
 366 LIFE OP LUTHER. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 LUTHER'S CHARACTER AS IT APPEARS IN SOME PARTICU- 
 LAR SPHERES OF ACTION NOT INCLUDED IN THE GENERAL 
 NARRATIVE. 
 
 SECTION I. Luther's Marriage and Domestic Life. 
 
 fully con- 
 vinced had Lu- 
 ther been for a 
 long time that 
 a monastic life 
 was an evil, that 
 he published a 
 tract, showing 
 that nuns, who 
 had taken the 
 veil, could with 
 a good con- 
 science before 
 God lay it aside 
 again. The 
 monks were beginning to disband, and it was to be 
 expected that many nuns, who had, by parental in- 
 fluence or authority, taken the rash vow in their early 
 youth, would feel the tedium of their monotonous 
 life and the fetters which robbed them of their 
 liberty, and, consequently, eagerly read those 
 writings which aimed at restoring them to their 
 natural rights, and introducing them unto those 
 366
 
 W F H [F ill IT M E Dfi. 
 Amencan Sunday School Umon
 
 MARRIAGE. 367 
 
 social and domestic relations for which nature de- 
 signed them. A little to the south of Grimma and 
 not very far from Leipsic was the Cistercian nun- 
 nery of Nimptschen, whose inmates were of noble 
 birth. Luther was at Grimma, with Staupitz and 
 Link, in 1516 ; and again he spent some time there 
 in 1519. 
 
 The next year the Reformation was introduced 
 into Grimma. Thus the light that was beginning to 
 shine must have cast some of its rays upon this 
 convent, and Luther's name was well known to the 
 nuns who were there pining away in their solitude. 
 They, at length, entreated their parents and friends 
 to take them from the cloister, and restore them to 
 their homes. But such were their ideas of the 
 sanctity of the monastic life, and of the inviolability 
 of the vow, when once taken, that these entreaties 
 of their children were of no avail. Nothing re- 
 mained but to appeal to the sympathy and humanity 
 of the liberator of the oppressed, to the straight- 
 forward, honest-hearted reformer. He listened to 
 their petition, and formed the plan of sending 
 Koppe, a distinguished and prudent citizen of Tor- 
 gau, to deliver them from their captivity. 
 
 The project was one of great difficulty. It would 
 shock the superstitious multitude, and arouse the 
 wrath of monk and priest. Besides, the journey 
 from Torgau to Nimptschen about sixty miles in 
 a southern direction led through the territory of 
 Duke George, the bitter enemy of Luther, though 
 both these towns belonged to the elector. Koppe was 
 assisted by his nephew and a man by the name of 
 Tommitsch. The plan was put in execution on the 
 evening of April 4, 1523. Tradition says, that, at 
 the time agreed upon, the nine virgins descended
 
 368 LIFE OP LUTHER. 
 
 from the window of Catharine von Bora's cell, which 
 was on the south side of the nunnery, into the court, 
 where Catharine herself left one of her slippers, 
 and were lifted over the wall and put into standing 
 barrels in a wagon, and thus escaped detection. It 
 is said in the Chronicle of Torgau that when an in- 
 dividual, meeting Koppe, asked him what he had 
 there, he replied, " Barrels of herring." April 8, Lu- 
 ther writes to his friend Link, " Yesterday I received 
 from their state of captivity, nine nuns belonging to 
 the Nimptschen convent, among whom were the 
 two Zeschaus and [Magdalene] Staupitz." This 
 last was a niece of Luther's spiritual father, and the 
 two Zeschaus were near relations of Luther's friend 
 of the same name, prior, and afterward also reformer, 
 at Grimma. 
 
 After announcing the same fact in a letter to 
 Spalatin, he says, " But you will ask what I am 
 intending to do with them. First, I will inform 
 their parents, and request them to take them home. 
 If they will not do so, then I will see that they be 
 otherwise provided for. I have already received 
 promises in respect to part, and I will get the rest 
 married, if I can." After mentioning their names, 
 he adds, " These need our compassion, in showing 
 which, we do service to Christ. Their escape is 
 quite wonderful. I beg you to exercise your charity, 
 and, in my name, beg some money of your rich 
 courtiers to sustain them one or two weeks, until I 
 can either deliver them to their parents, or to others, 
 who have given me promises." Luther urged Spa- 
 latin to persuade the elector to contribute some- 
 thing for this object, and promised to keep it secret, 
 that it might not give offence to George and to the 
 Catholic clergy.
 
 MARRIAGE. 369 
 
 This unheard-of adventure, this breaking up of 
 conventual life, and the temporary settlement of 
 the fugitive nuns in Wittenberg, produced an extra- 
 ordinary excitement. No attempt of the priesthood 
 could succeed in concealing it. The example was 
 the more dangerous, as the same discontent pre- 
 vailed in other convents. Soon the abbess of Zeitz 
 and four nuns followed the example ; and six from 
 another, and eight from a third, and sixteen from a 
 fourth, many of whom belonged to the Duchy of 
 Saxony, or the territory of Duke George. The con- 
 sequence was, that Luther was bitterly assailed as 
 being the author of all the mischief. He was spoken 
 against and written against, till he found it neces- 
 sary to reply, which he did to the cost of the op- 
 posing party. He portrayed the darker side of life 
 in the nunnery, spicing his productions with striking 
 narratives of inhumanity and cruelty. He published 
 an account of Florentina of Upper Weimar, who 
 passed through many sufferings before she succeeded 
 in making her escape from a monastery in Eisleben. 
 She had been sent there by her parents at the age 
 of six ; was, without her consent, consecrated, or 
 made to take the veil, at the age of eleven. Feeling 
 discontented, she made her complaints to the abbess, 
 who replied that she must remain a nun for better 
 or for worse. She wrote to Luther ; but the letter 
 was intercepted, and she was kept in a cold prison, 
 in an inclement season, for four weeks. She next 
 wrote to a relative ; this letter, too, was seized, and 
 she was beaten by the abbess and four others till 
 they gave over from fatigue. Luther made an ap- 
 peal to the Counts of Mansfeld, in whose dominions 
 these cruelties were practised, to put a stop to such 
 flagrant abuses.
 
 370 LIFE OP LUTHER. 
 
 Koppe was exposed to popular indignation still 
 more than Luther, for he had performed the daring 
 act of rescue, and was very anxious that his agency 
 in the matter should be kept as secret as possible. 
 Luther thought and felt otherwise, and made the 
 whole transaction known ; and then wrote to Koppe, 
 bidding him lift up his head and not shrink from 
 the honour of so noble a deed. "They, indeed, 
 will say, that the fool Leonard Koppe hath suffered 
 himself to be caught by a condemned heretical monk, 
 and then drove to the place and carried off the nuns 
 and aided them in breaking their vows. . . . But I 
 have made all this known for the following rea- 
 sons;" and then he goes on to justify the transac- 
 tion. 
 
 Luther was not at that time, nor in the following 
 year, (1524,) when he abandoned the cloister him- 
 self, inclined to marry. In a letter to Spalatin, 
 dated November 30, he says : "For what Argula 
 writes respecting my getting married, I give her my 
 thanks. No wonder such things are tattled about 
 me, as many others are in like manner. Thank 
 her in my name, and tell her I am in the Lord's 
 hands as his creature, whose heart he can change, 
 and whose life he can save or destroy at any hour 
 or moment. But with such a mind as I have hi- 
 therto had, and still continue to have, I shall not take 
 a wife ; not because I am by nature averse to matri- 
 mony for I am neither wood nor stone, but I am 
 disinclined to it, because I am every day expecting 
 death as inflicted upon a heretic. I do not wish to 
 obstruct God's work in me, nor rely upon my own 
 heart for comfort. It is my hope that I shall not be 
 permitted to live long." 
 
 But within five months, we find him writing the
 
 MARRIAGE. 371 
 
 following playful letter to Spalatin : "As to what 
 you write me touching my marriage, I would not 
 have you wonder that I, who am so famous a lover, 
 do not marry. Be surprised rather that, since I 
 write so much about marriage, and mingle so much 
 in female society, I am not turned into a woman, 
 not to say married. For I have had three wives at 
 once, whom I loved so desperately that I have lost 
 two of them, who are already engaged to others. 
 The third I just hold by the left arm, and she, too, 
 will be snatched away from me soon. But you, a 
 cold lover, dare not be the husband even of one. 
 Look out that I, with all my reluctance to marry, 
 do not get the start of you, who are already affi- 
 anced, as God is wont to do what you least expect. 
 Without joking, I say this to urge you on in the 
 way you have taken." In another place he says : 
 " Had I become a lover before, I should have chosen 
 Eve von Schonfeld," who was one of the nine nuns 
 above mentioned, and who, at his own suggestion, 
 was married to a medical student, afterward royal 
 physician. What he said jestingly to Spalatin 
 turned out to be true, for Luther was actually mar- 
 ried first. 
 
 Catharine von Bora, having no home to which 
 she could go, was, on her arrival at Wittenberg, re- 
 ceived into the family of a distinguished citizen by 
 the name of Reichenbach, where she showed herself 
 worthy of the paternal interest that had been taken 
 in her, both by him and by Luther. Luther used 
 his influence to form a matrimonial connection be- 
 tween her and Baumgartner, a theological student 
 from Nuremberg, who became a distinguished man, 
 and enjoyed, in a high degree, the confidence of 
 Luther and Melancthon. A mutual attachment
 
 372 LIFE OF LUTHER. 
 
 seems to have existed between the two parties ; but 
 when the young Xiiremberger returned to his native 
 city, the attachment appears to have faded from his 
 memory. Luther, therefore, wrote to him, October 
 12, 1524 : "If you intend to have your Katy von 
 Bora, you must be quick about it, or she will be 
 another's, who is already at hand. Her love to you 
 remaineth unaltered. I should certainly rejoice to 
 see you united to her in wedlock." The acquaint- 
 ance, however, was not renewed. The other indi- 
 vidual referred to was Glatz, pastor at Orlamiinde. 
 For Luther, who had never lost sight of providing 
 for the settlement in life of the nine nuns, had se- 
 lected this individual for Catharine, in case he did 
 not succeed with Baumgartner. But she had a 
 mind of her own, and would listen to no such pro- 
 posal, and, in respect to Glatz, her judgment proved 
 to be correct. She entreated Amsdorf to divert 
 Luther's mind from his purpose, adding, however, 
 by way of conciliation, that if Luther himself, or 
 Amsdorf, were to become suitor, she would make no 
 objection ! 
 
 At first, Luther was not particularly pleased with 
 Catharine, because he " supposed she was proud and 
 haughty." Learning upon a more perfect acquaint- 
 ance, that what had so appeared was in reality a 
 certain womanly dignity and independence, he came 
 to entertain other feelings toward her. " And, 
 thank God," he says, " it hath turned out well : 
 for I have a pious and faithful wife, to whom one 
 may safely commit his heart." He was married to 
 her without much publicity, June 13, 1525, when 
 he was at the age of forty-two, and she at the age 
 of twenty-six. The ceremony was performed by 
 Bugenhagen, in the house of Reichenbach, in the
 
 MARRIAGE. 373 
 
 presence of Professor Apel, Justus Jonas, Cranach 
 and his wife, without the knowledge of his other 
 friends. The cause of concealing his marriage from 
 the elector, Melancthon and others, till it was ac- 
 tually performed, was the alarm it would give them. 
 At a time when the public mind was agitated by 
 the Peasants' War, and when the Catholic princes 
 were greatly imbittered against Luther and even the 
 elector, the marriage of a monk to a nun would, on 
 account of the two-fold violation of the monastic 
 vow, do utter violence to the feelings of the com- 
 munity, and Luther supposed they would endeavour 
 to prevent so daring a step. How offensive such a 
 marriage was to the superstitious sentiments of even 
 good men at that age, may be seen from the remark 
 of Erasmus, who, when he heard of the occurrence, 
 said : "When a monk marrieth a nun, we may ex- 
 pect antichrist will be born." The next day, when 
 it became generally known that the marriage union 
 had been formed, the city government, according to 
 the usage of that age, honoured Luther with a pre- 
 sent of fourteen cans of wine, of different sorts ; 
 and the newly-married pair had the right of free 
 access, for the space of one year, to the wine cellar 
 of the city. A principal ceremony, at that time, 
 was the festival following the wedding, on the occa- 
 sion of conducting the bride to her new home, where 
 a large company were treated to a dinner. The 
 apartment, known as Luther's dwelling, in the Au- 
 gustinian cloister, was undoubtedly the scene of this 
 solemnity. Seven of the invitations sent to differ- 
 ent individuals have been preserved, and give us a 
 view of the peculiar and somewhat awkward posi- 
 tion of Luther, as well as a picture of the times. 
 The first is that written to Chancellor Riihel, Lu- 
 
 32
 
 374 LIFE OF LUTHER. 
 
 ther's brother-in-law, and two other Mansfeld court- 
 officers, and reads as follows: "According to the 
 wish of my dear father, I have taken me a wife j 
 and on account of evil-speakers, and that no hin- 
 drance might be placed in the way, I have hastened 
 the act. It is my wish that the festive occasion of 
 bringing my bride home take place a week from 
 next Tuesday, and that I may enjoy your presence 
 and receive your blessing. Since these are times 
 of commotion [the insurrection of the peasants] and 
 danger, I cannot urge your attendance ; but if you 
 have a desire to come and can do so, and bring with 
 you my dear father and mother, you can easily un- 
 derstand that it would give me great joy, and what- 
 soever [presents] you may receive from good friends 
 for my poverty, will be very welcome." Another 
 invitation, sent to Dolzig, the elector's marshal, is 
 written with characteristic humour. "No doubt," 
 he says, "the strange rumour hath reached you, 
 that I have become a husband. Though this is a 
 very singular affair, which I myself can scarcely 
 believe, nevertheless, the witnesses are so numerous 
 that I am bound in honour to believe it; and I have 
 concluded to have a collation next Tuesday for my 
 father and mother and other good friends, to seal 
 the same and make it sure. I therefore beg you, 
 if it is not too much trouble, to provide venison for 
 me, and be present yourself to help affix the seal 
 with becoming joy." At this time the city pre- 
 sented to Luther several casks of beer; and the 
 university gave a large silver tankard, plated with 
 gold on the outside and inside, weighing five pounds 
 and a quarter. It was purchased in the year 1800, 
 from the heirs, by the University of Greifswald, for 
 one hundred rix dollars.
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE. 375 
 
 Catharine von Bora was born, January 29, 1499, 
 probably at her father's estate, now called Milden- 
 stein, not far from Bitterfeld, between Wittenberg 
 and Halle. We know nothing of her parents ; but 
 Luther often speaks of John von Bora, her bro- 
 ther, who was in the service of Albert of Prus- 
 sia, and afterward in that of Henry, Duke of 
 Saxony. There was once a nunnery in Catha- 
 rine's native place, and she is said to have entered 
 that at first. Her monastic life was probably with- 
 out incident. She appears to have been prominent 
 among the nine fugitive nuns; and Luther's early 
 treatment of her, even before he was pleased with 
 her manners, shows the consideration in which she 
 was held. 
 
 Luther himself often speaks of his marriage as a 
 happy one. True, the sex did not then receive the 
 same delicate regard which is shown it among us at 
 the present time. Luther, too, was a man who told 
 all his private thoughts and feelings ; and it would 
 be strange indeed, if a man of such a temperament 
 should never see nor mention a wife's little imper- 
 fections. He at one time remarks, "Katy is kind, 
 submissive in all things, and pleasing, more so, 
 (thank God,) than I could hope, so that I would not 
 exchange my poverty for the riches of Croesus." 
 The epistle of Galatians was a favourite epistle with 
 him. "It is my epistle/' he says, "to which I am 
 betrothed ; it is my Catharine von Bora." Again, 
 he says, in 1538, thirteen yeys after his marriage, 
 " Even if I were a young man, I would sooner die 
 than marry a second time, knowing what I do of the 
 world, though a queen should be offered me after 
 my Katy." "A more obedient wife," he observes 
 again, "I could not find, unless I were to chisel one
 
 376 LIFE OP LUTHER. ' 
 
 out of marble." And again, "I prize her above the 
 kingdom of France, or the state of Venice ; she is a 
 pious, good wife, given me of God." 
 
 Hers, too, was a happy life. Not only was she 
 the wife of the great man of the age, but of one 
 whose domestic feelings were as tender as his pub- 
 lic character was masculine and strong. From the 
 personal dangers of Luther, and from his frequent 
 illness she had much to suffer. To Spalatin, who 
 had invited him to his wedding, he said, "The 
 tears of my Katy prevent me from coming; she 
 thinks it would be very perilous." He had just 
 excited the fury of some nobles by delivering several 
 nuns from their prison houses. In February, 1526, 
 she went with Luther to visit Carlstadt at Segrena, 
 a little west of Kemberg, where he was then living 
 as a shop-keeper and farmer. Here Carlstadt's wife 
 was born. Luther, who never recovered entirely 
 from the effects of his early austerities, and who 
 was worn down with excessive labours, saw so much 
 trouble spring out of his perpetual controversy on 
 the real presence of Christ in the supper, that his 
 cheerfulness was much abated and his temper some- 
 what soured. It was then that Catharine proved of 
 inestimable value to him. 
 
 In his temporary illness of 1526, and especially 
 in 1527, when it was expected he would leave her a 
 widow with her infant child, she showed remarkable 
 fortitude as well as faith and patience. " You know," 
 he said to her, "that I have nothing to leave you 
 but the silver cups." "My dear doctor," she re- 
 plied, "if it is God's will, then I choose that you be 
 with him rather than with me. It is not so much I 
 and my child that need you, but many pious Chris- 
 tians. Trouble not yourself about me."
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE. 377 
 
 When Luther was depressed, his considerate wife 
 often sent privately for Justus Jonas, whose cheer- 
 ful conversation was known to be a good remedy in 
 such cases. Luther somewhere says, "I expect more 
 from my Katy and from Melancthon than I do from 
 Christ my Lord, and yet I well know that neither 
 they nor any one on earth hath suffered, or can 
 suffer, what he hath suffered for me." Molsdorf, 
 a former member of Luther's household, says, "I 
 remember that Dr. Luther used to say, that he 
 congratulated himself with all his soul, that God 
 had given him a modest and prudent wife, who took 
 such excellent care of his health." "How I longed 
 after my family," says Luther, "when I lay at the 
 point of death in Smalcald ! I thought I should 
 never again see my wife and child. How painful 
 would such a separation have been !" 
 
 When Luther was at Coburg, in 1530, he heard 
 of the illness of his father, and yet his own life was 
 in such peril that he could not safely make the 
 journey to see him. At this, both he and Catharine 
 were much distressed. Soon afterwards, the news 
 of his father's death reached him. "I have heard," 
 he says to Link, "of the death of my father, who 
 was so dear and precious to me." Catharine, to 
 comfort him, sent him a likeness of his favourite 
 daughter Magdalene, then one year old. "You have 
 done a good deed," says Veit Dietrich, Luther's 
 amanuensis, "in sending the likeness to the doctor; 
 for by it many of his gloomy thoughts are dissi- 
 pated. He hath placed it on the wall over against 
 the dining-table in the prince's hall." 
 
 The foregoing are only a few of the evidences of 
 conjugal affection and domestic happiness in the 
 family of Luther, which are to be found in his
 
 378 LIFE OP LUTHER. 
 
 writings and in those of his contemporaries. They 
 have been thought necessary in this connection, on 
 account of the contrary representations which were 
 made hy his enemies, and which have been so often 
 repeated by Protestant writers. That no differences 
 of opinion or of feeling between Luther and his wife 
 ever manifested themselves in an unhappy manner, 
 is more than need be said. This is rarely the lot of 
 humanity, especially where there are those mental 
 qualities which give force and energy to charac- 
 ter, as was the case with them. But aside from 
 these common frailties, found in the great and the 
 good no less than in others, there appears to have 
 been nothing to interrupt the personal happiness of 
 these individuals in each other. 
 
 There are two facts, often overlooked, which lead 
 superficial observers to a false conclusion. The one 
 is the plain and simple honesty which, in striking 
 contrast with modern French manners, characterized 
 the age of the Reformation; and, connected with 
 this, the decided tone in which the husband was 
 then accustomed to speak as the master of the 
 household. The obedience of the wife was a matter 
 of direct and simple reality, and was spoken of as 
 such without circumlocution or ambiguity. In this, 
 Luther should be judged, not by a modern standard, 
 but by that of his age. On any other principle, 
 neither Paul nor Moses would be able to pass the 
 ordeal of modern criticism. The other particular 
 alluded to, is the playfulness and vein of drollery 
 that run through nearly all Luther's correspondence 
 with his intimate friends. Many of his pleasant 
 sallies have been taken in earnest, and thus made to 
 signify what was never intended. It may well be 
 conceded that many of those expressions were half
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE. 379 
 
 in joke and half in earnest. But the man who sets 
 them all down as the serious statements of a formal 
 witness, betrays an utter ignorance of the character 
 of Luther. Thus, when, in his humorous letters, he 
 addresses her as, "my Lord Katy" (meus Dominus 
 Ketha, mea Dominus Ketha, meus Domina Ketha, 
 &c.) he furnished pleasant amusement to his univer- 
 sity friends and the students, some of whom were 
 generally members of his family. He once gave out 
 a similar phrase in German to a student in his ex- 
 amination to translate into Latin, and the answer 
 contained such a ridiculous blunder that it long con- 
 tinued a by-word. Luther closes one of his letters 
 to an old friend by saying, "My lord and Moses 
 [the lawgiver] Katy most humbly greeteth you." 
 He also, in *a letter to his wife, addressed her as 
 "My kind and dear lord and master Katy Lutheress, 
 [Lutherinn,] doctress and priestess at Wittenberg." 
 Stupid, indeed, must he be who construes all these 
 freaks of the reformer's pen into so many serious 
 charges against his wife ! 
 
 If we wish to see his creed in respect to a wife's 
 place in a household, we have it undoubtedly in these 
 words, addressed once to his Katy, as he was fond of 
 calling her : " You may persuade me to any thing 
 you wish; you have perfect control;" to which was 
 added, by way of explanation, " in household affairs 
 I give you the entire control, my authority being 
 unabated." 
 
 Luther was charitable and benevolent, perhaps to 
 a fault, and would have been reduced to absolute 
 suffering but for the frugality and economy of his 
 wife. Some have turned this to her reproach. But 
 what would have been the condition of the family 
 if she too had been above considerations of economy ?
 
 380 LIFE OP LUTHER. 
 
 Luther had reasons for being as far removed as pos- 
 sible from suspicions of selfishness, for the honour 
 of the Reformation, which, in the private life of his 
 companion, had not the same significance and public 
 importance. Of his pecuniary affairs, Luther speaks 
 thus, on different occasions : " I manage my house- 
 hold affairs strangely, and consume more than I 
 receive. I expend five hundred gulden* in the 
 kitchen, to say nothing of clothing, ornaments and 
 alms-giving; while my annual income is but two 
 hundred gulden." "I am a very poor manager of 
 pecuniary matters. By giving to my poor relations 
 and to other persons who make daily application for 
 aid, I am myself made very poor." " As you know, 
 I am oppressed by being obliged to entertain so 
 much company. I have run into debt by my im- 
 providence more than a hundred gulden this year. 
 I have pawned three goblets in one place for fifty 
 gulden. But the Lord, who thus punisheth my 
 imprudence, will deliver me. Besides, Lucas [Cra- 
 nach] and Christian [Aurifaber] will no longer take 
 my name for security, either because they see it is 
 of no use, or think it will all be sponged away from 
 me. So I have given to the former a fourth goblet 
 for twelve gulden, which have gone to that fat 
 Herman. . . . But why is it that I alone am so 
 drained of my money, or rather involved in debt? 
 I think no one can accuse me of penuriousness or 
 avarice, who am so free with what is not properly 
 my own." "I have with my income and presents 
 built and purchased so much, and entertained so 
 many in my house, that I must account it as a won- 
 
 * See page 106.
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE. 381 
 
 derful and singular blessing that I have been able 
 to meet it all." 
 
 Many individuals often remained for several 
 weeks, and even months, in his family. Had it 
 not been for the many presents which he received, 
 especially from the Elector John of Saxony, he 
 could never have become the owner of so many 
 little patches of land. His property, at the time of 
 his death, amounted to about nine thousand gulden. 
 
 His father left him about two hundred and fifty 
 gulden. In 1526, the elector gave him the cloister 
 building, in which he lived, with the adjoining 
 garden, free of taxes, together with twelve brewings 
 of beer annually. This place was sold to the uni- 
 versity by his children, in 1564, for three thousand 
 seven hundred gulden, and made into a college build- 
 ing, to which a new one was added. It was here that 
 those students resided who received the stipends, 
 one hundred and fifty in number. Since 1817, it 
 has been occupied by the Theological Seminary. 
 Luther's garden was made a botanical garden. In 
 1541, he purchased, for four hundred and thirty 
 gulden, the small Bruno House and lot, adjoining 
 the former place. In his will he gave this to his 
 widow for her place of residence. On this spot the 
 new university building above mentioned was erect- 
 ed. He had before purchased a nursery near the 
 swine market, and also a small estate called Wachs- 
 dorf, near the village of Pratau, which last was 
 estimated at one thousand five hundred gulden, and 
 sold to the younger Cranach, the painter, to whose 
 family it continued to belong for about a century. 
 Two years before his death, Luther purchased a 
 garden adjoining the Speck, or celebrated grove of 
 oaks, nearly a mile to the east of Wittenberg, and
 
 382 LIFE OP LUTHER. 
 
 one of the most common places of resort for the 
 students and others. But the most interesting pur- 
 chase was that of the estate of Zollsdorf, two miles 
 from Borna, made in 1540 by Luther for his wife, 
 at the cost of six hundred and ten gulden. The 
 elector agreed to furnish gratuitously any timber she 
 should need for building. To Spalatin Luther writes, 
 November 10, 1540: "Katy now asks for that, of 
 which she spoke with you when you were lately here. 
 She wishes, that when you give the letter to the elec- 
 tor's questor, you will join her in requesting him to 
 give her the oak timbers which she needs." To another 
 person he writes : " Katy has just been in her new 
 kingdom." Two years later, he wrote to Spalatin : 
 " To-morrow, my Katy purposeth to go to Zollsdorf, 
 and will take with her a load of timber, and attend 
 to some other matters." She frequently repaired to 
 this place, and generally passed her time there when 
 Luther was from home. Luther jocosely called her, 
 at times, Catharine Luther von [of] Bora and Zolls- 
 dorf. In the last year of his life, he addressed a 
 letter, when away from home, " To Catharine Luther, 
 the Zollsdorf doctor," (alluding to his own title as 
 Dr. Luther.) It is to be hoped that no one will 
 attempt to make out that Luther reproached his 
 wife for leaving his house and being a quack doctor 
 in a retired village by herself. 
 
 Some persons have represented Catharine as ex- 
 travagant, in expending so much on buildings at 
 Zollsdorf. May it not, with more propriety, be 
 regarded as a proof of laudable enterprise to help 
 support the family, inasmuch as the timber was 
 given her, and her rents were of course increased ? 
 How different from this thrifty, calculating woman 
 does Luther himself appear in the following inci-
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE. 383 
 
 dent ! A student, who had finished his course of 
 study, and was about to leave Wittenberg penniless, 
 came to Luther for a little aid. But Luther's pocket 
 was empty, and his wife, who was present, was as 
 destitute of money. Luther expressed his regret 
 that he was unable to render him any assistance. 
 But as he observed the sadness of the young man, 
 his eye fell on a silver goblet, which he had re- 
 ceived as a present from the elector. He looked at 
 his wife inquiringly, and she returned a look which 
 meant, " No." He, however, took the costly gift, 
 and gave it to the student. The latter refused it, 
 and Katy seized the opportunity of interposing an- 
 other significant look. Luther said, " I have no need 
 of silver cups; take it to the goldsmith, and get 
 what you can for it, and retain the money." 
 
 Their ordinary style of living, when without com- 
 pany, was simple. The wife was economical, and 
 the husband, who had been trained a monk, could 
 almost dispense with food, and frequently ate nothing 
 during the day but bread and salt, and was always 
 content with his favourite dish of pea-soup and her- 
 ring. 
 
 Luther complained of being invited so often from 
 home. He preferred to be more in his own family 
 circle. He loved to sit in his own garden, his wife 
 with her work at his side, and his children enjoying 
 their sports. When he journeyed, his wife accom- 
 panied him, if she could. She was often his com- 
 panion in his study, taking an interest in his writ- 
 ings, and reminding him if he forgot to reply to the 
 letters he received. When he had important works 
 in hand, he chose to seclude himself. On one occasion, 
 when writing his commentary on the twenty-second 
 Psalm, he shut himself up, with nothing but bread
 
 384 LIFE OF LUTHER. 
 
 and salt, for three days and nights, till Catharine 
 was alarmed for him, and caused a locksmith to 
 open the door, and there they found Luther lost in 
 deep meditation. He had a weekly family enter- 
 tainment in singing and playing on instruments, 
 to which other practised singers were invited. 
 Christmas was always a joyful evening in Luther's 
 house. And rarely did a fair go by without fur- 
 nishing something for the gratification of his chil- 
 dren. 
 
 Luther was delighted with his first-born, John or 
 Jonny (Hanschen) as he loved to call him. It was 
 to this darling boy, when he was but four years old, 
 that he addressed, from Coburg, in 1530, the letter 
 which has so often been referred to as illustrating 
 his extraordinary power to adapt himself to persons 
 of every variety of capacity and condition. It is 
 as follows : " Grace and peace in Christ, my darling 
 little son. I am glad to see that you study and pray 
 diligently. Gro on doing so, my Jonny, and when I 
 come home I will bring with me some fine things 
 for you. I know of a beautiful, pleasant garden, 
 where many children go, and have little golden coats, 
 and gather from the trees fine apples and pears, and 
 cherries and plums; they sing and play, and are 
 happy ; they have beautiful little horses with golden 
 bits and silver saddles. I asked the owner of the 
 garden, whose children these were. He replied, 'They 
 are children which love to pray and learn, and are 
 good.' I then said, 'Dear sir, I, too, have a son, 
 whose name is Jonny Luther. May he not also 
 come into the garden, that he too may eat these 
 beautiful apples and pears, and ride ou these fine 
 horses, and play with the boys ?' The man said, 
 ' If he loves to pray and learn, and is good, he shall
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE. 385 
 
 come into the garden, and Philly and Jussy [Philip 
 and Justus] too ; and when they are all together, 
 they shall have fifes and drums and lutes, and all 
 kinds of music, and dance and shoot with their cross- 
 bows.' And he showed me a fine grass plat in the 
 garden for dancing, and there were hanging nothing 
 but golden fifes and drums and fine silver crossbows. 
 But it was early, and the children had not yet dined; 
 and as I could not wait for their dancing, I said to 
 the man, 1 0, my dear sir, I will hasten away, and 
 write all about this to my dear little Jonny, that he 
 may pray and learn diligently, and be good, and 
 then come into this garden. He has an aunt Lene, 
 [Magdalene,] and she must come too.' The man said, 
 ' That is right, go and write to him so.' Therefore, 
 my dear little Jonny, learn and pray well, and 
 tell Philip, [Melancthon's son,] and Jussy, [Justus 
 Jonas's son,] to learn and pray too, and then you 
 may all come together into the garden. And now 
 I commend you to God. Greet aunt Lene and 
 give her a kiss for me. Your dear father, Martin 
 Luther." 
 
 This John Luther was first instructed by his fa- 
 ther and by private tutors, and was then sent to the 
 Latin school at Torgau, and afterward studied law 
 at Wittenberg and Konigsberg, married the daughter 
 of Professor Cruciger, and entered the Prussian ser- 
 vice, and died at Konigsberg at the age of fifty. 
 Luther's second child, a daughter, lived less than a 
 year. Upon her death, he wrote to a friend : " My 
 little daughter Elizabeth is taken from me, and hath 
 left me with a bleeding and almost womanly heart, 
 so sad am I on her account. I never thought the 
 heart of a father was so tender toward his children. 
 Pray the Lord for me." 
 
 83
 
 386 LIFE OF LUTHER. 
 
 His favourite child was Magdalene. She was 
 born in 1529, and died, very pious, at the age of 
 thirteen. The parting scene was very touching. 
 Luther, full of agony, fell on his knees at her bed- 
 side, and prayed earnestly for her. "I love her 
 dearly," he exclaimed, "but as it is thy will, gracious 
 God, to take her hence, I will gladly give her up to 
 be with thee." He then rose and bent over her, 
 and said, " Magdalene, my dear daughter, you would 
 be glad to remain here with your father ; are you 
 willing to depart and go to that other Father?" 
 "Yes, dear father," she replied, "just as God will." 
 He turned away to conceal his tears, and, looking 
 upward, said, " If the flesh is so strong, how will 
 it be with the spirit ! Well, whether we live, or 
 die, we are the Lord's." She fell asleep in his 
 arms. As she was placed in her coffin, he said, 
 "You, dear Lene, how well is it with you!" and 
 again, "Ah, dear Lene, you will rise again, and 
 shine like a star, yea, as the sun." To his sym- 
 pathizing friends, he said: "You should not lament; 
 I have dismissed a saint, yea, a living saint for hea- 
 ven. 0, that we could so die ! Such a death I 
 would willingly accept this very hour." 
 
 His fourth child was Martin. Luther was accus- 
 tomed to moralize over the sports of his children. One 
 day, as Martin was playing with the dog, the father 
 exclaimed, "This boy preacheth God's word by his 
 deeds and acts; for God saith, have dominion over 
 the fishes of the sea, and over the beasts of the field. 
 See how the dog putteth up with every thing from 
 him." At another time, joining his amusements, 
 he said : " Such was our state in Paradise, simple 
 
 and upright, without guile or 1 hypocrisy 
 
 Therefore, such natural sports and jests are the best
 
 AS A PREACHER. 387 
 
 for children." "How must Abraham's heart have 
 beaten when he was about to offer up his son ! He 
 would not mention it to Sarah. .1 might contend 
 against God, if he should make a similar demand 
 upon me." Catharine, with a mother's feelings, 
 said, " I cannot believe that God can desire parents 
 to destroy their children." "And yet," replied 
 Luther, " he could give up his own Son to die on 
 the cross." Martin studied theology, and was mar- 
 ried, but led a private life in Wittenberg in conse- 
 quence of continued ill health, and died childless at 
 the age of thirty-three. Paul Luther, the fifth 
 child, studied medicine, and after being a short time 
 professor in Jena, was court-physician. He married 
 a lady of rank, and left four children. He was the 
 ablest and most distinguished of Luther's sons. So 
 robust was he as a boy, that Luther said of him, 
 " He must fight against the Turks." Through him 
 most of the branches of the family now living have 
 descended. Margaret, the youngest of the family, 
 was married to George von Kunheim, and became 
 the mother of nine children. 
 
 SECTION II. Luther ca a Preacher. 
 
 WE should overlook one of the most essential 
 traits in the character of Luther as a reformer, if 
 we were to omit the consideration of his pulpit 
 oratory. In his university lectures, which contain 
 the earliest germ of his reformatory measures, he 
 laid the foundation of his work, by leaving upon a 
 small but influential circle of young men the im- 
 press of his own mind. By his university disputa- 
 tions, and by frequent conversations, he won over 
 his opponents with a few exceptions, in the theolo-
 
 388 LIFE OF LUTHER. 
 
 gical faculty. By the numerous learned treatises 
 which he had occasion to publish in defence of his 
 Ninety-five Theses, he made known the doctrines of 
 the Reformation to the literary world, both at home 
 and abroad. But his pulpit eloquence was a power- 
 ful auxiliary to all his other efforts in this cause; 
 and, moreover, it carried the Reformation beyond 
 the walls of the university and the barriers of the 
 Latin tongue, (of which the people knew nothing,) to 
 the popular assembly, to the men of all trades and 
 professions. When we consider that he preached 
 almost every day, and several times in a day in the 
 towns and cities through which he passed in his 
 journeys, and that his unsurpassed eloquence always 
 called out throngs to hear him, we shall not be sur- 
 prised that, in his own times, so much public im- 
 portance was attached to his preaching. 
 
 To most men it was a novel spectacle to behold 
 the crowded assembly, eagerly listening to warm and 
 earnest preaching in the native language. Not that 
 the church had been wholly destitute of able evan- 
 
 gslical preachers; for though there was then no 
 hrysostom to charm and enlighten metropolitan 
 audiences; no Basil or Gregory eloquently to main- 
 tain the faith ; no Augustine to be the Edwards of 
 his age; no Bernard to sway the popular masses, 
 and to castigate and subdue princes and even popes; 
 there had been such men as Tauler and Suso among 
 the Mystics, and a few of similar character among 
 the Brethren of the Life in Common, who were truly 
 spiritual preachers, and who discoursed to the people 
 in the native dialect. But these were rare instances 
 of popular and evangelical preaching, and the influ- 
 ence thus exerted was mostly of a local character. 
 The greatest preacher at the close of the fifteenth
 
 AS A PREACHER. 389 
 
 century was, undoubtedly, Geiler of Kaisersberg, 
 who produced extraordinary effects at Strassburg 
 and along the Rhine, by the earnest and captivating, 
 though rude eloquence of his sermons, delivered to 
 great concourses of the people. After his death, in 
 1510, Luther was for a period of about thirty 
 years, not only the most celebrated, but actually 
 the greatest pulpit orator then living. 
 
 The Catholic religion is a religion of show and 
 ceremonies. It aims not so much to unfold the 
 intellectual and rational part of our nature, by means 
 of doctrinal truth, as to excite our wonder at its 
 mysteries; our veneration for the church, the priest- 
 hood and the sacraments; our imagination by its 
 legends of a saintly mythology, and our sensibilities 
 by its gorgeous ritual. Preaching is but an inci- 
 dental appendage to that system; the mass and its 
 attendant ceremonies are the central point of attrac- 
 tion. Luther revived the primitive spirit of Chris- 
 tianity, which demanded that all ceremonies should 
 be subordinated to "the preaching of the word." 
 This was the watch-word of the Protestants the 
 preaching of the pure word of G-od to the people. 
 The altar of the priest gave way to the pulpit of the 
 preacher. Every thing conspired to make Luther 
 an illustrious example of what he taught on this 
 subject. He was of that physical organization 
 which fitted him to command attention. His manly 
 form, his piercing, fiery eye, his penetrating voice, 
 and natural manner and action, were all favourable 
 to eloquence. 
 
 Still deeper were the foundations for distinguished 
 pulpit oratory laid in his mental constitution. His 
 intellect was powerful and acute, sometimes pouring 
 a flood of light around a subject, and sometimes 
 
 33
 
 390 LIFE OP LUTHER. 
 
 astonishing and delighting his audience by the ease 
 and celerity with which he would penetrate through 
 the crust of scholastic learning to the very core of a 
 disputed doctrine, and expose it from an interior 
 point of view. His logical talents, which were of a 
 high order, and which were admirably cultivated by 
 study and discipline, were wonderfully aided by his 
 strong vein of plain and practical sense, bringing 
 him into immediate sympathy with every sound 
 mind, whether cultivated or not. 
 
 There was also a large poetical ingredient in his 
 composition. He had an eye for every thing that 
 was beautiful and attractive in nature. There was 
 not a tone in all nature's harmony which did not 
 find an echo in his heart. Though his poetical 
 compositions are not of the first order, his sermons 
 and other prose writings glow and sparkle with 
 poetic fire. To speak more truly, it is genius, with 
 its nameless attributes, that distinguishes Luther 
 from so many other good preachers. Besides, he 
 was deeply sincere and truly in earnest in all his 
 preaching. He was not a mere professional man, 
 aiming to elevate and adorn his profession. Preach- 
 ing was with him what the military art was with 
 Napoleon, not an end, but a means, valued only by 
 the effect produced. 
 
 Luther had also experienced the power of the 
 truth which he preached, and had, in early life, 
 suffered immeasurably for want of it. Saved, as he 
 was, by its efficacy, he proclaimed it as the only 
 means of salvation to others. The genuine warmth 
 of his own feelings, and the singular capaciousness 
 of his soul for every natural and every pious emo- 
 tion, gave him almost absolute dominion over the 
 emotions of others. The feelings of his heart, and
 
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 AS A PREACHER. 391 
 
 the fact that he always spoke from it, and stopped 
 when his discourse had reached the height of its 
 interest, must he considered as one of the causes of 
 his uniform success. 
 
 But, more than all, it was the gospel, of which his 
 sermons were so full, that gave a divine power to 
 his preaching. He had studied the Bible, and 
 digested its varied truths, as no other man of that 
 age had done. He had translated the whole Bible, 
 and revised the translation frequently ; he had de- 
 livered exegetical or expository lectures in the uni- 
 versity} he had written commentaries; and when 
 he came to preach, he opened a Bible, every verse 
 of which he had carefully studied. In his own 
 peculiar language, "he had shaken every tree in 
 this forest, and never without gathering some fruit." 
 If we add to all this, quickness of memory, self- 
 possession, vivacity, wit, a rare knowledge of human 
 nature, and an unequalled power over the language 
 of the people, charming alike to the ruler, the scholar 
 and the peasant, we can account for it that all the 
 men of the age, friends and foes, pronounced him 
 the prince of pulpit orators. 
 
 It was the preaching of Luther that endeared him 
 to Frederic the Wise, even when he saw his own 
 superstitions unsparingly exposed. It was his 
 preaching that made him as absolute ruler over the 
 people at Wittenberg, as Chrysostom was at Antioch 
 and Constantinople, or Calvin at Geneva. It was his 
 preaching that so often stilled the tumult in the 
 many towns and cities he visited during the first five 
 years after his return from Wartburg. Luther was 
 not, properly speaking, a pastor. He preached 
 statedly for Bugenhagen, the pastor of the city 
 parish in Wittenberg, in 1528 and 1529, while the
 
 392 LIFE OP LUTHER. 
 
 latter was acting as a sort of missionary in Bruns- 
 wick and Hamburg; also from 1530 to 1532, three 
 times a week, (Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays,) 
 while Bugenhagen was acting the part of reformer 
 in Lubeck; and again from 1537 to 1540, while the 
 same pastor was employed in organizing the church 
 in Denmark. The sermons preached at this time were 
 not committed to paper by himself, but were written 
 down by note-takers, after the manner of reporters 
 of the present day. A part of them are now, for 
 the first time, after a period of three centuries, 
 in a course of publication. What are called his 
 Domestic Postils were preached at home to his own 
 household, when he was so ill as to be unable to go 
 to church. His Church Postils were written for the 
 benefit of the churches and of the clergy while he 
 was confined at Wartburg, and when there were few 
 evangelical preachers to be found, and those few 
 were so ignorant of the Bible as to be unqualified for 
 their work. All the rest of Luther's preaching (and 
 the amount was very great) was either occasional, or 
 was limited to the cloister. 
 
 SECTION III. Luther as a Promoter of Education. 
 
 IN Germany the church and the schools have al- 
 ways been connected, and the idea of their separa- 
 tion was not even conceived of till the late revolu- 
 tion. But schools are an essential part of Protest- 
 antism. It admits of no church to think and decide 
 on all matters of religion for its members, no priest- 
 hood to interpose as interpreter of the divine will 
 for the laity, no pope nor council to settle the con- 
 troversy. The reformers, in giving the Bible to 
 the people, and in relying on its grammatical and
 
 PROMOTER OF EDUCATION. 393 
 
 true explanation as the only authority in religion, 
 made the study of the Bible, and whatever other 
 studies are preparatory to it, indispensable. Not 
 only the education of the clergy, but a high degree 
 of intelligence among the people, is involved in the 
 very theory of Protestantism. No man ever felt 
 this more deeply than Luther. 
 
 The education of the young, next to the preaching 
 of the gospel, lay nearest to his heart. In a letter to 
 the elector in the year 1526, he says : " Since we are 
 
 / / / 
 
 all required, and especially the magistrates, above all 
 other things, to educate the youth who are born and 
 are growing up among us, and to train them up in 
 the fear of God and in the ways of virtue, it is need- 
 ful that we have schools and preachers and pastors. 
 If the parents will not reform, they must go their 
 way to ruin ; but if the young are neglected and 
 left without education, it is the fault of the state, 
 and the effect will be that the country will swarm 
 with vile and lawless people, so that our safety, no 
 less than the command of God, requireth us to 
 foresee and ward off the evil." He maintains in 
 that letter, that the government, "as the natural 
 guardian of all the young," has the right to compel 
 the people to support schools. " What is necessary 
 to the well-being of a state, that should be supplied 
 by those who enjoy the privileges of such state. 
 Now nothing is more necessary than the training 
 of those who are to come after us and bear rule. 
 If the people are unable to pay the expense, and 
 are already burdened with taxes, then the monastic 
 funds, which were originally given for such pur- 
 poses, are to be employed in that way to relieve the 
 people." The cloisters were abandoned in many 
 cases, and the difficult question, What was to be
 
 394 LIFE OF LUTHER. 
 
 done with their funds, Luther settled in this ju- 
 dicious manner. How nearly did he approach to 
 the policy now so extensively adopted in this coun- 
 try, of supporting schools partly by taxation and 
 partly by funds appropriated for that purpose ! 
 
 As early as 1520, three years after the beginning 
 of the Reformation, he laid special stress on the ne- 
 cessity of reforming and improving the schools, in 
 his eloquent address to the Christian nobility of the 
 German nation. In 1524, he wrote a remarkable pro- 
 duction entitled " An Address to the Common Coun- 
 cils of all the Cities of Germany in behalf of Chris- 
 tian Schools," from which a few passages may here be 
 extracted. After some introductory remarks, he 
 comes directly to his point, and says to his country- 
 men collectively : 
 
 " I entreat you, in God's behalf and that of the 
 poor youth, not to think so lightly of this matter as 
 many do. It is a grave and serious thing, affecting 
 the interest of the kingdom of Christ and of all the 
 world, that we apply ourselves to the work of aiding 
 and instructing the young. ... If so much be ex- 
 pended every year in weapons of war, roads, dams, 
 and countless other things of the sort for the safety 
 and prosperity of a city, why should we not expend 
 as much for the benefit of the {>oor, ignorant youth, 
 to provide them with skilful teachers ? God hath 
 verily visited us Germans in mercy and given us a 
 truly golden year. For we now have accomplished 
 and learned young men, adorned with a knowledge 
 of literature and art, who could be of great service, 
 if employed to teach the young. . . . Surely it is not 
 meet to neglect this divine favour, and let God 
 knock in vain at our door. He now standeth at 
 the door, and happy shall we be if we open unto
 
 PROMOTER OP EDUCATION. 395 
 
 him. He now greeteth us, and happy is he who 
 returneth the salutation. Let us recall to mind our 
 former wretchedness and the darkness in which we 
 were enveloped. ... If we let this season pass, mani- 
 festing neither gratitude nor interest, there is reason 
 to fear that still greater darkness and misery will 
 come upon us. Beloved countrymen, buy while the 
 fair is held at your door ; gather the harvest while 
 the sun shineth, and the weather is fair. Avail 
 yourselves of the grace and word of God while they 
 are at hand. Know that they are a passing shower, 
 which doth not return where it hath once been. . . . 
 Therefore seize at it, and lay hold of it whosoever 
 can. Idle hands will reap a slender harvest. . . . 
 
 "Why else do we older persons live, but to take 
 care of the young, to teach and train them ? It is 
 not possible that giddy childhood shall provide for 
 its own instruction. Therefore God hath committed 
 them to us who are old and have experience, and he 
 will call us to a strict account. 
 
 " It is, however, a sin and shame that it has come 
 to this, that we must stir up one another to educate 
 our children and the young. Nature impelleth us 
 to do it, as the example of the heathen abundantly 
 showeth. Even the irrational brute traineth its 
 young to what is needful. . . . 
 
 " What though we had and did all else, and were 
 ourselves saints, if, in the mean time, we should neg- 
 lect that for which we chiefly live, the care of the 
 young ? Of all outward sins, I think none greater 
 before God, or more punishable than even this which 
 we commit in respect to children, in that we neglect 
 their education. Alas ! that children are born and 
 left to grow up as they will, with no one to feel 
 anxiety for them, or train them up ! But, you say,
 
 396 LIFE OP LUTHER. 
 
 all this concerneth parents. What have magis- 
 trates and rulers to do about it ? True, but what 
 if parents neglect it ? Who shall attend to it then ? 
 Must they go uncared for, and untaught ? . . . The 
 causes for the neglect of children by their parents 
 are numerous. 
 
 "1. There are those who are so wicked and brutish 
 that they would not educate their children if they 
 could. They leave them as the ostrich doth her 
 young. And yet they grow up among us and live 
 in the same place with us. How can reason and 
 Christian charity allow them to grow up uneducated, 
 to become a poison and pestilence, corrupting a whole 
 town ? . . . 
 
 "2. The greater part of parents are, alas ! unquali- 
 fied, and know not how their children ought to be 
 educated. They themselves have learned nothing 
 but how to gratify their appetites. Therefore there 
 must be those who make it a business to instruct 
 and train children well. 
 
 "3. Even if the parents were qualified, and were 
 also inclined to teach, they have so much else to do 
 in their business and household affairs that they 
 cannot find the time to educate their children. Thus 
 there is a necessity that public teachers 'be provided. 
 Otherwise each one would have to teach his own 
 children, which would be for the common people too 
 great a burden. Many a fine boy would be neglected 
 on account of poverty ; and many an orphan would 
 suffer from the negligence of guardians. And those 
 who have no children would not trouble themselves 
 at all about the whole matter. Therefore it be- 
 cometh rulers and magistrates to use the greatest 
 care and diligence in respect to the education of the 
 young."
 
 PROMOTER OP EDUCATION. 397 
 
 In what estimation he held the teacher's office we 
 learn from his own lips. "The diligent and pious 
 teacher," he observes, "who properly instructeth 
 and train eth the young, can never be fully rewarded 
 with money. If I were to leave my office as preacher, 
 I would next choose that of school-master, or teacher 
 of boys ; for I know that, next to preaching, this is 
 the greatest, best and most useful vocation ; and I 
 am not quite sure which of the two is the better j for 
 it is hard to reform old sinners, with whom the 
 preacher has to do, while the young tree can be 
 made to bend without breaking." 
 
 In pleading so earnestly for public ''Christian 
 schools," Luther by no means overlooked the im- 
 portance of domestic education, but rather insisted 
 on it no less strenuously. He taught that the be- 
 ginning in education must be made at home, and 
 that domestic influences must constantly be em- 
 ployed in support of the discipline of the schools. 
 Indeed, with Luther education consisted not merely 
 in the acquisition of knowledge, but in the formation 
 of character. The former stood in the relation of 
 means to the latter. His views of some of these 
 points mayj^tsily be gathered from the following 
 truthful observations. "Where filial obedience is 
 wanting," he somewhere remarks, "there no good 
 morals, no good government can be found; for, if 
 in families obedience be not maintained, it is in 
 vain to look for good government in a city, or pro- 
 vince, or kingdom, or empire. For the family is- 
 the primary government, whence all other govern- 
 ment and dominion on earth take their origin. If 
 the root be not sound, then neither the tree nor the 
 fruit will be good." " See to it," he says in another 
 place, "that your children are instructed in spiritual
 
 398 LIFE OF LUTHER. 
 
 things, that you surrender them first to God, and 
 then to worldly occupations. But, alas ! this order 
 is commonly reversed. . . . The whole power of the 
 Christian church lieth in the young, and if they are 
 neglected, it will become like a garden that is neg- 
 lected in the spring season." Again, he says, "Are 
 we not unwise ? We can merit heaven or hell in 
 our children, and yet we regard it not. Of what 
 use will your acts of piety be to you, if you neglect 
 the training of your children ? . . . Believe me, it 
 is much more important that you bestow care and 
 attention upon the education of your children, than 
 that you buy indulgences, repeat prayers, perform 
 pilgrimages, or make many vows. . . . Those who 
 knowingly neglect their children, and let them grow 
 up without the nurture and fear of the Lord, are the 
 destroyers of their children." 
 
 In 1530, Luther published a discourse, the ob- 
 ject of which was to enforce the obligation of parents 
 to send their children to school. In this, he says, 
 "God hath given you children and the means of 
 their support, not merely that you may find your 
 pleasure in them, or bring them up for worldly 
 splendour, but he hath strictly commanded you to 
 train them up for his service." 
 
 In 1527, a visitation was made of the churches 
 and schools of the electorate of Saxony, in which 
 more than thirty men were employed a whole year. 
 The result in respect to education was, that "the 
 Saxon school system," as it was called, was drawn 
 up by the joint labours of Luther and Melancthon; 
 and thus the foundation was laid for the magnificent 
 organization of schools to which Germany owes so 
 much of her present fame. The reformers were the 
 fathers of the German system of education, im-
 
 PROMOTER OF EDUCATION. 399 
 
 proved indeed, but never radically changed by their 
 successors for a period of three centuries. The 
 traveller, that visits Eisleben, sees in a flourishing 
 condition the very gymnasium which was esta- 
 blished by Luther as the last act of his life. The 
 school of Pforta, near Naumburg, where a greater 
 number of accomplished classical scholars have been 
 educated than in any other gymnasium or grammar 
 school in the world, had a similar origin. It was in 
 consequence of Luther's counsels that the old mo- 
 nastery of that name, was, with all its funds, con- 
 verted into a learned school. 
 
 In the Saxon schools, founded upon the plan of 
 Luther and Melancthon, the languages took the pre- 
 cedence of all other studies. The forenoon session 
 was two hours every day; the afternoon three, 
 except Wednesdays and Saturdays, when only the 
 musical exercise of one hour was held, as it was 
 every other afternoon. The catechism was taught 
 every Saturday forenoon. Thus, of the twenty-six 
 school hours in the week, eighteen were devoted to 
 the languages, six to music, and two to the subject 
 of religion. There was, however, further provision 
 made for the religious education of the pupils. They 
 went to the village church or to the public chapel 
 every morning, at about five or six o'clock, sung 
 hymns in Latin and German, and read the Scriptures 
 and the catechism aloud, in Latin and then in Ger- 
 man, and repeated prayers. They had a similar even- 
 ing service. Besides, the schools were kept seven days 
 in the week ; or, in other words, there were regular 
 Sunday-schools then, as now, only the teachers were 
 the same as on other days of the week. The pupils 
 were, early on Lord's day mornings, conducted to the 
 church for the matins, as all such morning services
 
 400 LIFE OF LUTHER. 
 
 were called. Next, they had a lesson from the 
 Bible, or the catechism, in the school-room. At 
 eleven or twelve o'clock, they attended on the prin- 
 cipal public service of the day. Sometimes, the 
 younger classes remained at the school-room, where 
 they received religious instruction better adapted to 
 their capacities than that given in the pulpit. The 
 older pupils were carefully examined upon the 
 sermons which they had heard. The order was 
 varied in different schools, as well as the exercises 
 themselves; but the above general statement ia 
 sufficiently accurate to illustrate the way in which 
 the day was passed in the schools. From all this, 
 it will appear that the nineteenth century has made 
 less advance than is commonly supposed upon the 
 sixteenth, in respect to the religious education of 
 the young. In respect to books and organizations, 
 there is a great difference ; in respect to the thing 
 itself, the object sought, the comparison would not 
 be discreditable to the reformer. A volume might 
 be made up of Luther's views of education, begin- 
 ning with domestic training, and ascending through 
 the lower schools to the university; but enough 
 has been said to indicate his comprehensive views 
 in respect to schools. 
 
 SECTION IV. Luther as a Lover of Music. 
 
 ALLUSION has frequently been made in the fore- 
 going account to Luther's musical tastes and talents. 
 He was early known as a melodious singer ; and it 
 was in this capacity that he had won the kind re- 
 gards of Madam Cotta, his first patroness. His last 
 evening before entering the cloister was devoted 
 to musical and social pleasures. It was to be ex-
 
 LOVER OP MUSIC. 401 
 
 pected, therefore, that, when the work of the Re- 
 formation was moving successfully on, sacred music 
 should be called in to its aid : so it was in point of 
 fact. Luther early employed his poetical talents in 
 composing original hymns, and in translating and 
 adapting to his use the better Latin hymns. A 
 version of the Psalms, generally, was never made 
 for public worship in Germany. Of hymn-books 
 the Lutheran church has a plentiful supply; of 
 psalm-books none, though a few psalms were ver- 
 sified by Luther and appended to his collection of 
 hymns. In 1524, the first hymn-book of Luther, 
 accompanied by the music set to the words, in 
 which Walther lent his assistance, was published. 
 Within twenty years from that time, one hundred 
 and seventeen collections of hymns, by Luther and 
 his friends, were printed. "These hymns," he 
 says, in the preface, " are set to music in four parts, 
 for no other reason than because of my desire that 
 the young, who ought to be educated in music as 
 well as in other good arts, might have something 
 to take the place of worldly and amorous songs, 
 and so learn something useful, and practise some- 
 thing virtuous, as becometh the young. ... I 
 would be glad to see all arts, and especially music, 
 employed in the service of Him who created and 
 made them." 
 
 This book, which is so great a curiosity that it 
 was reprinted in 1840, was used in families and 
 social circles and schools, as well as in churches. 
 In the history of the city of Hanover, we read that 
 the Reformation was first introduced there, not by 
 preachers, nor by religious tracts, but by the hymns 
 of Luther, which the people sung with delight. In 
 his second edition, in 1533, he complains that his 
 
 34*
 
 402 LIFE OF LUTHER. 
 
 hymns had been altered, and others published under 
 his name. In this new collection, therefore, he 
 added two to his own hymns (which, at first, were 
 twenty-nine in number) and several old hymns from 
 the Middle Ages, and, finally, fifteen new ones by his 
 friends and contemporaries, remarking, at the same 
 time, in respect to the last, that, of the many which 
 were in circulation, only a few deserved a place in 
 the collection. 
 
 Luther himself composed music for several of his 
 hymns, which was not only good in itself, but 
 agreed beautifully with the sentiment expressed by 
 the words.* The same Walther, mentioned above, 
 says : " I have spent many a happy hour in singing 
 with him, and have often seen the dear man so 
 happy and joyful in spirit, while singing, that he 
 could neither tire, nor be satisfied. He conversed 
 splendidly upon music. Forty years ago, when he 
 was arranging the mass [communion] service in 
 German at Wittenberg, he sent for the elector's 
 old chorister, Rupf, and myself, to confer with us 
 about the music for the Epistles and Gospels. . . . 
 He himself composed tunes for the epistles and 
 gospels, and the words of Christ at the institu- 
 tion of the supper, and sung them to me, and 
 asked my opinion of them. He kept me three 
 weeks at Wittenberg, writing the notes for a few 
 gospels and epistles, till the first German mass 
 was sung in the parish church. I was obliged to 
 stay and hear it, and to take a copy of it with me 
 to Torgau, for the elector, at the doctor's command." 
 We select the following from a large mass of Lu- 
 
 * There appears to be no evidence that " Old Hundred" 
 was composed by Luther.
 
 LOVER OP MUSIC. 403 
 
 ther's sayings in regard to music : " It is a beautiful 
 and lovely gift of God; it hath often so excited 
 and moved me, as to give me a desire to preach. 
 I have always been fond of music. He who under- 
 etandeth this art is the right sort of man, and is fit 
 for any thing else. It is needful that music be 
 taught in schools. A schoolmaster must be able 
 to sing, or I do not think much of him. Music 
 cometh near to theology ; I would not exchange my 
 little knowledge of it for much money. The young 
 should be constantly exercised in this art, for it 
 refines and improves men. Singing is the best of 
 arts and exercises ; it is not of a worldly character, 
 and is an antidote for all contentions and quarrels. 
 Singers are not gloomy, but joyful, and sing their 
 cares away. There can be no doubt that, in minds 
 which are affected by music, are the seeds of much 
 that is good ; and those who are not affected by it, 
 I regard as stocks and stones. . . . Music effecteth 
 what theology alone can effect besides it giveth 
 peace and a joyful mind. . . . Therefore the pro- 
 phets have employed no art as they have music; 
 inasmuch as they have put their theology, not into 
 geometry, or arithmetic, or astronomy, but into 
 music. Hence it cometh, that, by teaching the 
 truth in psalms and hymns, they have joined theo- 
 logy and music in close union."
 
 404 
 
 LIFE OF LUTHER. 
 
 [1525. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE PRINCIPAL EVENTS OF LUTHER'S LIFE, FROM HIS 
 MARRIAGE IN 1525 TO HIS DEATH IN 1546. 
 
 SECTION I. From Luther's Marriage to the Completion q. 
 'he Augsburg Confession in 1530. 
 
 OTH the ene- 
 mies and the 
 friends of Lu- 
 ther had been 
 much aston- 
 ished by his 
 selecting such 
 a time as the 
 very midst of 
 the turmoil of 
 the Peasants' 
 War to cele- 
 brate his mar- 
 riage with a 
 fair nun. His 
 friends censured his imprudence, his foes inter- 
 preted the act to his ignominy. The papal writers 
 represented the great beauty of Catharine von Bora 
 as proving a snare to Luther, while the Protestant 
 writers, in defence of the reformer, detracted quite 
 as much from her beauty as is consistent with the 
 likenesses taken of her by Cranach. 
 
 The death of Frederic, Elector of Saxony, had
 
 M. 41.] DEATH OP FREDERIC. 405 
 
 emboldened the Catholic princes r who hoped that 
 the fall of this pillar of Protestantism would greatly 
 weaken the cause of Luther. The latter, not yet 
 knowing the firmness of the new elector, who proved 
 himself so heroic at the presentation of the Augs- 
 burg Confession to the diet in 1530, thought it pru- 
 dent to attempt a reconciliation with Henry, King 
 of England, and George, Duke of Saxony, the bit- 
 terest of his enemies on the throne, and therefore 
 wrote them respectively very humble letters, which, 
 however, instead of answering their purpose, were 
 received with scorn. 
 
 The year 1527 was one of sadness to Luther. 
 His friends were persecuted, and some of them put 
 to death, and he himself fell into a state of melan- 
 choly and despondency, of which Bugenhagen and 
 Justus Jonas have left us a memorable detailed ac- 
 count. How far all this was the effect of bodily 
 disease and other natural causes, or how far it was 
 a visitation from the evil spirit, as Luther himself 
 believed, it is not our province to determine. About 
 the same time an epidemic, or the plague, as it was 
 termed, raged so at Wittenberg that the university 
 was temporarily removed to Jena. Near the mid- 
 dle of the year 1527, the great work of visitation 
 was begun by Melancthon and others, and ended in 
 1529. The surprising ignorance which Luther 
 found as well among the priests as the people, in- 
 duced him in the following year to write those mo- 
 numents of his genius as a popular and catechetical 
 writer, the Larger and the Smaller Catechism. What 
 he did for schools need not here be repeated. Mean- 
 while, the controversy on the real presence of Christ 
 in the eucharist, between Luther and Zwingle and 
 their respective adherents, had grown so warm and
 
 406 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1525. 
 
 threatened such serious consequences, that Philip, 
 Landgrave of Hesse, a man of enlarged views and 
 enlightened policy, more so perhaps than any other 
 of the Protestant rulers, proposed to have both par- 
 ties meet for friendly conference, and such a meeting 
 finally took place in the Marburg Colloquy, October 
 1, 1529, but to no very good purpose. 
 
 The diet of Spire, which was held in the same 
 year, had come to a decision unfavourable to the 
 interests of the evangelical party, which called forth 
 the Protest that has since given name to the oppo- 
 sers of papal error and corruption. As there were 
 now ominous indications of a combined hostility of 
 the Papal rulers against the Protestants, it was 
 proposed by the latter to enter into a league for 
 mutual defence. Luther opposed the measure, say- 
 ing, "He would rather die ten times than have the 
 consciousness that the gospel preached by him was 
 the occasion of bloodshed ; " a fresh proof that Luther 
 trusted not in the power of the sword, but in the 
 power of truth ; yet what (to human view) would have 
 become of the Protestant states of Germany, if they 
 had followed his views in respect to defensive war? 
 
 Early in the spring of 1530, the elector wrote to 
 Luther and other Wittenberg theologians, inform- 
 ing them that the emperor had called a diet to be 
 held at Augsburg, April 8, at which his majesty 
 was to be present in person. Inasmuch as it was 
 intended to make this diet answer the purpose of a 
 council in settling the difficulties between the reli- 
 gious parties, the elector said : "It is necessary that 
 we have a clear understanding among ourselves, 
 touching the articles to be maintained as well of 
 rites and ceremonies as of faith, so that both we and 
 other members of the diet who have embraced the
 
 JE. 41.] DIET OP AUGSBURG. 407 
 
 pure evangelical doctrines, may know how far we 
 can, with propriety and a good conscience, be a party 
 in the transactions." He directed, therefore, that 
 they draw up such articles as should seem to them 
 best, and appear with them before him at Torgau, 
 on the 20th of March. He also instructed Luther, 
 Jonas and Melancthon to make arrangements to be 
 absent from the university, and to accompany him, 
 together with Spalatin and Agricola, as far as Co- 
 burg, on the way to Augsburg. They entered upon 
 this journey, April 3, and Luther preached on the 
 way at Weimar, Saalfeld, Grrafenthal, Neustadt, and 
 frequently at Coburg. On the 21st, the elector and 
 the rest of the company proceeded to Augsburg, 
 while Luther, for reasons unknown to him, was left 
 behind to remain at Coburg. The elector thought 
 it more prudent to employ the mild and peaceful 
 Melancthon in negotiating with the Papists, having 
 Luther, at the same time, within reach, to be con- 
 sulted whenever it should appear necessary. Luther 
 was accordingly conducted to the electoral palace, 
 situated on a bold eminence, for a residence of nearly 
 six months. He, his companion Dieterich, and his 
 servant Cyriac, resided here alone with no company 
 but the keepers and attendants and occasional visit- 
 ers, and had the whole of the great building which 
 crowns the hill and the fortress to themselves. Be- 
 ing here without books for several weeks, he amused 
 himself in a playful description of a diet held by 
 the birds which congregated about his lofty abode. 
 
 Here the old complaint from which he had suffered 
 so much, that of a roaring noise in his head, especially 
 in his left ear, returned upon him; and, as usual, 
 Satan came with it, armed with the fiery darts of 
 temptation. Notwithstanding Luther's ill health
 
 408 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1525. 
 
 and dejection, he translated the prophetical writings, 
 wrote the well-known sermon enforcing upon parents 
 the duty of sending their children to school, and 
 other treatises, besides a great amount of letters to 
 the elector and to his friends concerning the pro- 
 ceedings of this diet. Though Melancthon was the 
 chief agent in drawing up the Augsburg Confession, 
 and the Apology or defence of it, it was Luther, 
 standing behind the curtain, that exercised control 
 over the minds of the evangelical princes and theolo- 
 gians. As formerly in his Patmos, so here in his 
 Sinai, as he called it, his was the ruling spirit. 
 
 The letters of Luther, from the time of his mar- 
 riage to that of his death, are so numerous and so 
 abound in incident that they serve well as a sub- 
 stitute for a minute journal. It will be proper, 
 therefore, to take advantage of this circumstance, 
 and follow him through some of the scenes already 
 alluded to. 
 
 In a letter to Amsdorf, now pastor at Magdeburg, 
 written June 21, 1525, after saying that the report 
 of his sudden marriage with Catharine von Bora is 
 true, and that he took this step partly in compliance 
 with the wish of his father, partly to confirm his 
 own teaching by example, and partly to show some 
 degree of boldness at a time when everybody is ter- 
 ror-struck, adding, incidentally, that he loves his 
 wife, though he is not enamoured or fired with pas- 
 sion, he thus speaks of the Peasants' War, which was 
 then raging: "Meiningen, Mellerstadt, Neustadt, 
 and Marstadt, with ten other towns, [in the south- 
 west of Saxony,] have surrendered to the elector, 
 and he is restoring peace and order there. It is as- 
 certained that in Franconia, about eleven thousand 
 peasants are slain in three different places, sixty-one
 
 M. 41.] PEASANTS' WAR. 409 
 
 bombs taken, and the citadel of Wirtemberg liberated. 
 The Margrave Casimir [of the house of Branden- 
 burg, which possessed one or two principalities in 
 the vicinity of Bayreuth] is proceeding furiously 
 against his subjects, for having violated their faith. 
 In the duchy of Wirtemberg six thousand have 
 been slain ; in other parts of Suabia ten thousand. 
 The Duke of Lorraine, it is said, hath put to the 
 sword twenty thousand in Alsace. Thus the mise- 
 rable peasants are everywhere cut down. How it is 
 in Bamberg, we shall soon hear. But in Breisgau 
 [Baden] the insurrection is still in progress, and 
 also in the Tyrol, so much so that from Inspruck to 
 Trent all is in a state of commotion, and the 
 Bishops of Brixen and of Trent are put to flight. 
 Duke George is about to hold a conference at Dessau 
 with the Margrave and the Archbishop of Mainz. 
 The report is, that, inflated with his success, he will 
 pursue me. He thinketh me to be like unto Muncer 
 in doctrine. But Christ will bestow his grace. See 
 that he do not make an attack upon Magdeburg." 
 
 In the following letter to the elector (July 20) 
 are some interesting facts relating to Spalatin: 
 "George Spalatin hath informed me that he is 
 called on by your grace to take into farther consi- 
 deration the proposal to make him preacher at 
 Altenburg, and desireth me to write your grace on 
 this behalf. I therefore humbly submit unto you, 
 that I remain of the same opinion as before. For 
 he is a man of learning, a comely speaker, of good 
 manners and morals, and, what affecteth me most, 
 is of a pure and upright heart, and will deal faith- 
 fully with the word of God and with souls. Whether 
 his health is too feeble, the experiment must show." 
 
 To Brismann, of Konigsberg, he writes, Aug. 16 : 
 
 35
 
 410 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1525. 
 
 "If the poison of Carlstadt or Zwingle concern- 
 ing the sacrament reacheth unto you, be on your 
 guard against it. ... Muncer and the peasants have 
 so prostrated the gospel with us, and so aroused the 
 Papists, that it seemeth as if it must all be built up 
 again. For which reason I have testified to the 
 gospel not only by word but by deed, in marrying 
 a nun in the face of my enemies, who are triumph- 
 ing and crying ' lo !' <Io !' that I might not, though 
 old and unsuitable, seem to yield up the ground ; 
 and I shall do some other things, if I am able, 
 which will trouble them and make known God's 
 word. 
 
 "Duke George, the Elector of Brandenburg, and 
 the two Dukes of Brunswick have sworn to each 
 other that they will restore the old order of things. 
 Our Elector John, though much belaboured by 
 George, standeth firm, so that the latter is almost 
 beside himself and bursting with anger. The Land- 
 grave of Hesse is also believed to stand firm, though 
 he hath been visited and urged by the Duke of Bruns- 
 wick, as delegate from the council of princes. The 
 imperial cities are now consulting how they shall 
 stand by the gospel, although threatened by angry 
 princes." 
 
 That the university should not prosper under such 
 circumstances was almost a matter of course. Lu- 
 ther wrote to Spalatin, September 6, not a little 
 alarmed : " The report hath come to our ears that 
 the elector's mind is alienated from our university, 
 and that he is displeased with our movements as 
 unjustifiable. We have great difficulty in keeping 
 our students, who will rush forth at every gate and 
 go into all the world, if these reports are found to 
 be true."
 
 JE. 41.] EXTEACTS FROM LETTERS. 411 
 
 The next week he wrote to the elector : " Although 
 I and all the rest confidently rely on your grace's 
 promise concerning the university, still we per- 
 ceive that you are hindered by other necessary 
 occupations, and particularly by the assembly of 
 the estates. I cannot, therefore, omit to remind 
 you of it, and to beg that you will send some one 
 to us, or write and inform us of your purposes. 
 Otherwise, since many lectures are dropped, and 
 some not being yet paid for are likely to be discon- 
 tinued, there will be reason to fear that we shall be 
 unable to retain the students." 
 
 To his friend Stiefel he wrote, September 29: "I 
 have this night caused thirteen nuns to be removed 
 out of Duke George's dominions, and thus snatched 
 from the raging tyrant the spoils of Christ. Our 
 princes [the elector and his son] have openly es- 
 poused the gospel. Master Eberard [prior of the 
 cloister at Wittenberg] is made Bishop at Altenburg 
 with Spalatin. The income of the monastery we 
 have resigned to the elector, and I live as a private 
 householder, remaining in the monastery." 
 
 On occasion of Spalatin's marriage, Luther wrote, 
 December 6 : " Grace and peace in the Lord, and 
 joy in your sweet wife, also from the Lord. As 
 disagreeable as your marriage is to your Baalitish 
 brethren, [the priests of Altenburg,] so agreeable is 
 it to me. God hath granted me nothing more agree- 
 able, the gospel excepted, than the privilege of hear- 
 ing and knowing that you are a husband. With 
 what feelings and for what causes I was detained 
 from attending your joyful wedding, Master Eberard 
 will explain. I cannot now travel so safely as I 
 could under a prince who had not declared his 
 views. ... I, in my poverty, would have sent you
 
 412 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1525. 
 
 that gold cup which you gave me at my marriage, 
 had I not feared it would offend you. I therefore 
 send you all that remains of those presents, not 
 knowing whether it came from you or not. My 
 affection you will regard as much in a small gift as 
 in a great one." So violent was the opposition of 
 the canons and priests at Altenburg to this infrac- 
 tion of the papal law, requiring celibacy in the 
 clergy, that it was necessary for Luther to request 
 protection for his friend of the elector. 
 
 The following letter to Link of Nuremberg, 
 written near the close of December, shows what 
 different cares and thoughts often occupied Luther's 
 mind : " The King of England, to whom, at the in- 
 stance of the King of Denmark, I wrote an humble 
 and suppliant letter, with pleasant anticipations and 
 good and pure intentions, hath replied to me with a 
 bitterness which showeth that he, like Duke George, 
 rejoiceth at an opportunity for revenge. So impo- 
 tent and womanly are the minds of these tyrants, 
 so sordid and vulgar, that, thanks to Christ, and 
 joy to myself! it is sufficient revenge for me to 
 despise Satan, their god, together with themselves. 
 
 "I rejoice at the promise you make of sending 
 me garden seeds in the spring. Send as many as 
 you can. I desire them, and shall expect them. If 
 there is any thing I can send you in turn, order it 
 and it shall be done. For while Satan and his sub- 
 jects rage, I will laugh and contemplate gardens, 
 which are God's blessings, and enjoy them to hia 
 praise. 
 
 "Because with us barbarians there are no arts 
 nor exercise of the ingenuity, I and my servant 
 Wolfgang have taken up the art of turning. We 
 send you this gold piece, that you may, at your con-
 
 M. 42.] EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 413 
 
 venience, procure some instruments for hollowing 
 and turning, together with two or three screws for 
 the lathe, which any turner will show you. We 
 have instruments here, but we wish to get some 
 more elegant, after your Nuremberg fashion. If 
 they cost more, the money shall be sent, though I 
 think all such things are cheaper with you than 
 with us. Thus, if the world shall be unwilling to 
 support us to preach the gospel, we will learn to 
 live by the labour of our hands, and then, after the 
 example of our heavenly Father, serve the unwor- 
 thy and ungrateful." 
 
 In a similar strain he wrote to Amsdorf, at the 
 beginning of the new year, January 3, 1526 : "By 
 Bruno, the bearer of this, I send you seven florins, 
 my dear Amsdorf, to pay for the butter and dried 
 fish. For though I have lost your letter, I recollect 
 that this is about the amount due you. I wrote to 
 Duke George a very humble and candid letter, and 
 he answered me, according to his character, with that 
 stolidity and rustic ferocity which runs in his Bohe- 
 mian blood. The letter is every way worthy of 
 himself. You shall see a copy of it. It is currently 
 reported that you have taken that Suabian damsel, 
 my former flame, for your wife. It will be odd if 
 you retaliate upon me by such a secret movement." 
 
 Of the use he made of his influence with the 
 elector, we have a good example in a letter, written 
 about the middle of April : " First," says he, " I 
 present a request from a young singer by the name 
 of Holzwart, whom your grace hath supported one 
 year, with the encouragement that you would do 
 better by him, if you could, afterward, as the peti- 
 tion showeth. He appeareth to have good talents. 
 All which is referred to your good pleasure. 
 
 35*
 
 414 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1526. 
 
 " Secondly, a request already made for a nun of 
 Nimptschen, near Grimma, by the name of Alsey 
 Gaudelitz, that she may recover something from the 
 cloister to which she gave much. No answer hath 
 yet been received. 
 
 " Thirdly, God hath sent us two guardians [supe- 
 riors in a monastery] from France. They were 
 plundered on their way, as they were coming hither, 
 to study theology. The pastor and myself are sup- 
 porting them, relying upon your gracious aid, hop- 
 ing you would give them five or six gulden. If 
 you cannot, then we must dismiss them after giving 
 what we can, and, after all, beg it again from your 
 grace. God sendeth us many poor, and we are poor 
 ourselves, and yet are provided for. 
 
 " Fourthly, the request of a pious man, whom I 
 have thought of sending as preacher to Arnstadt. 
 . . . He hath been here three years, and I have 
 helped him what I could ; for what I do is from 
 your grace's bounty, for I have nothing of my own 
 to give. I wish your grace would grant him some- 
 thing, for he possesseth piety, learning and talents, 
 but is poor and destitute, and I cannot do so much 
 for him as is necessary. I refer it to your good 
 pleasure. 
 
 " Finally, I entreat for myself, as formerly, that 
 your grace will not suffer the singing to be so neg- 
 lected. The persons belonging to the choir [boys] 
 are growing up, and the art of music deserveth, 
 moreover, to be sustained by princes and lords. 
 More than enough to support them here is applied 
 elsewhere, without so great need. The monastic 
 funds might usefully, and with the approbation of 
 God, be applied to support such persons. 
 
 " Enough for once ; please receive it graciously."
 
 M. 42.] EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 415 
 
 The history of a certain cup or vessel, presented 
 to Luther, is not only amusing, but strikingly illus- 
 trative of the times and of the character of the par- 
 ties concerned. Luther, in a note to his friend 
 Hausmann, pastor at Zwickau, dated March 27, 
 1526, says: "I thank you for the vessel. I did not 
 expect it would be done up with so much labour 
 and care, for it was well enclosed in a wicker-work 
 of vines. But you excited the desire of my Katy 
 too much, as is wont to be the case with these wo- 
 men. I am delighted with the minerals, but am 
 unwilling to take them away from you. You have 
 others to whom you can give them. If there is any 
 thing else, don't waste it upon my curiosity." In 
 a letter, written about three weeks afterward to 
 Agricola, at Eisleben, recommending a young man 
 about to open a school there, he says : " That vessel 
 from Zwickau, oh ! how changed it is since you saw 
 it, and how beautiful ! But concerning this and the 
 cup presented me by Meinhard, at another time. 
 For of these magnificent things I cannot write to- 
 day, and so briefly." A month later he writes to 
 the same : "I send you that pewter and glass vessel 
 before it finds another owner." And then in a post- 
 script, adds: "Behold, when I was ready to give 
 the letter to the messenger, and looked for the cup, 
 my Katy, that enemy in ambush, had carried it off. 
 I would have got hold of it, but our provosts and 
 plebeians, [probably certain members of the house- 
 hold,] who, perhaps, have taken it in charge, con- 
 spired together and hindered me. It must be put 
 off, therefore, till she gets up from childbed, and 
 when she brings it forth I will seize it for you." 
 The end of the story is given in a subsequent letter 
 to Hausmann : "My chain [wife] tenaciously holds
 
 416 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1526. 
 
 the glass vessel ornamented and presented me by 
 yourself. Otherwise, Agricola of Eisleben would 
 have begged it away from me." 
 
 A day or two afterward, we find him writing to 
 the elector the following request, in behalf of an 
 old schoolmaster of his : " The bearer of this, Mr. 
 Bigand, hath given up his parish at Waltershausen 
 to the town-council, in consequence of an agree- 
 ment, made by yourself, to allow him thirty florins 
 annually from the church funds. Now the money 
 doth not come, perhaps the council have not those 
 funds in charge, and this old man must wander 
 abroad for his living. As he was my school- 
 master, whom it is my duty to honour, I humbly 
 beg your grace not to suffer my old schoolmaster 
 to be deprived of his money, but graciously to 
 aid him, that he may not be left to beg in his old 
 age." 
 
 At the close of a note to his brother-in-law, 
 Riihel, he thus announces the birth of his first-born : 
 "Please say to Agricola, for me, that my dear 
 Katy hath, by the great blessing of God, borne me 
 a son, John Luther, yesterday, at two o'clock, the 
 very day when dat [he gives] standeth in the calen- 
 dar; and that he must not wonder that I storm him 
 so early with this intelligence, for he himself ought 
 to think, about this time, what it is to have sons. 
 Greet the dear mother of your children, and Agri- 
 cola's Elsey.. My sick Katy is the cause of my 
 sending you only this scrawl." Referring to the 
 same event in a letter to Spalatin, he speaks of 
 being a " happy husband, and having, by the great 
 blessing of God, been presented with a son from the 
 best of wives and the most excellent of women;" 
 and closes by saying, " When you come to see us,
 
 IE. 42.] EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 417 
 
 will you still find the old monuments of our friend- 
 ship and intimacy ? I have planted a garden, and 
 built a fountain. Come, and you shall be crowned 
 with lilies and roses." To Agricola he writes again, 
 " I have received your letter, in which you say my 
 mother was hindered from coming to me. Let 
 Christ do what he pleaseth, and it will be well. 
 Little John Luther is doing well, though he is 'a 
 slender child, and hath too little nourishment from 
 his mother." 
 
 As a specimen of his ecclesiastical correspondence, 
 we will present a letter, addressed August 8, 1526, 
 to the Council of Miihlhausen, which was the head- 
 quarters of Muncer's army the previous year : 
 " Grace and peace in Christ, honourable, wise and 
 dear sirs. At the command of our gracious lord, 
 Duke John, Elector of Saxony, I have selected a 
 preacher for his grace to- send to you. That individual, 
 John Mantel, reader in our church at Wittenberg, 
 now cometh to you, who, as far as God giveth unto 
 men to do, will, I hope, take the care of you, as a 
 learned, affable, quiet, pious man. I beg you, 
 therefore, to receive and regard him in a Christian 
 manner, as I doubt not you will. And may Christ 
 graciously look upon you and help you, after all your 
 wretchedness, that rebellion may cease, and that 
 you may learn to follow his pure and holy word. 
 I would gladly have come with him, but our cir- 
 cumstances here would not allow it." 
 
 August 28, he replies to an inquiry of Link, re- 
 specting parental authority, and maintains that it 
 ought always to be asserted, though not always ex- 
 ercised, and then subjoins the following intelligence: 
 " The diet of Spire is held as the Germans are wont 
 to hold diets, with drinking and sports, and nothing
 
 418 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1527. 
 
 more. Here there is nothing new, save that Wit- 
 tenberg is fortified with such great labour, that, 
 comparing the past with the present, you would 
 hardly know it. I am now lecturing on Ecclesiastes, 
 which is stubborn and refuses to be explained, so 
 full is it of Hebraisms and of the obscurities of an 
 unknown tongue ; nevertheless, by the grace of 
 God, I shall break through the obstacles. Pray for 
 me; and farewell, both you and your rib, whom 
 may God bless in her approaching crisis. My son 
 is, by the mercy of God, living and well. Philip 
 [Melancthon,] who is a little better, and would be 
 better still if he could have a respite from his 
 labours, saluteth you." 
 
 An interesting and lasting friendship commenced 
 with the incident referred to in the subjoined note : 
 " April 22. To Frederic, abbot at Nuremberg. 
 Grace and peace. Though we are unknown to each 
 other, I write to you, most excellent sir, because of 
 what Link, my friend, and more than a friend to 
 you, hath done in sending to me, in your name, a 
 brass clock, a most acceptable present. This hath 
 compelled me to become a disciple of our mathe- 
 maticians, to learn the forms and rules of one 
 single clock ; for I never before saw such an one, so 
 little am I acquainted with mathematical affairs. 
 Would that I had the power to respond in like 
 manner to the kindness expressed by this gift; 
 nothing would please me more." 
 
 In other letters, which cannot be quoted, he 
 speaks of having received garden-seeds, ("all of 
 which, except the melons and cucumbers, grew 
 well,") and the turning instrument for which he 
 wrote, together with a quadrant and a wooden clock. 
 " Send me," he says, in another letter, " seeds for
 
 JE. 43.] EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 419 
 
 my garden in as great variety as you can; for, if I 
 live, I will be a horticulturist." 
 
 Many of Luther's letters refer to schools, and 
 show an intense interest in teachers, both in the 
 higher and in the lower, in public and in private 
 schools. A letter written May 2, 1527, to Elsey 
 von Kanitz, requesting her to open a girl's school in 
 Wittenberg, presents the reformer in an interesting 
 light. " My dear friend in Christ/' he says, " I 
 wrote to your dear aunt Anna von Plausig, request- 
 ing her to send you to me for a time ; for I have 
 desired to employ you in teaching young girls, and 
 through you to give an example for others to follow. 
 You shall be in my house and sit at my table, so 
 that you shall have no risk nor trouble. I beg you, 
 therefore, not to decline the proposal." 
 
 Luther and his wife appear to have been tenderly 
 attached to the wife of John Agricola, school- 
 teacher at Eisleben. A letter written to Agricola, 
 in May, 1527, contains expressions of tenderness 
 such as are often found in Luther's correspondence. 
 " It seemeth to us best," he says, at the close, 
 " that your Elsey should come and spend some days 
 with us, for the sake of a change in the climate, 
 [Wittenberg was about seventy miles to the north- 
 east of Eisleben.] Consult together concerning this 
 matter, for we will gladly do whatsoever can in any 
 way be beneficial to the wife who is so ageeable to 
 you, and to the woman who is so sincere and vir- 
 tuous. My Katy, who is troubled again with vomit- 
 ting, nausea, and dizziness of the head, but not 
 very ill, heartily saluteth you and your Elsey. My 
 little Johnny is lively and robust, and eats and 
 drinks like a hero.'' 
 
 This amiable lady appears to have suffered much,
 
 420 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1527. 
 
 and to have become dejected, especially as her hus- 
 band was at that time called from home ; for we find 
 Luther writing to her, June 10th, thus: "Dear 
 Elsey. Grace and peace. I had it in mind lately to 
 write to you, but Mr. Matthes was away before I was 
 aware of it. By this time I suppose your husband 
 hath returned home, so that it is not so ill with you. 
 You must not be so desponding and fearful, but re- 
 member that Christ is near to help you to bear your 
 sufferings. For he hath not so forsaken you as your 
 flesh and blood suggest. Cry unto him earnestly, 
 and be assured he will hear you ; for you know it is 
 his way to help, strengthen and comfort all who 
 desire it. Be comforted then, and consider that he 
 hath suffered more for you than you can ever suffer 
 for him. We will also pray, and pray earnestly, 
 that God will accept you through his Son, and 
 strengthen you in body and in soul. Greet your 
 husband and all yours in our name." 
 
 Luther's heart was full of benevolence, and no 
 opportunity for benefiting the poor was allowed to 
 pass unimproved. The Franciscan cloister, which 
 had been the burial-place for the electoral family 
 time out of mind, was now vacant, the monks having 
 left their cells. The elector had given a part of the 
 grounds and buildings to a man by the name of 
 Burger. Luther wrote to the former : " We have 
 conversed with Burger about it, and he is willing to 
 give the place up for the benefit of the poor, in the 
 hope that you will bestow upon him another in its 
 place. Since, then, the cloister, as the burial-place 
 of princes, cannot be better used . . . than in the 
 service of God and for the relief of the poor, in whom 
 Christ himself is served ; therefore I humbly request, 
 in conjunction with the city-council, that your grace
 
 M. 43.] EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 421 
 
 will grant that the cloister, together with the grounds 
 and buildings of Burger, be given to our Lord Jesus 
 Christ as a retreat and residence for the poor, as the 
 members of his body." 
 
 A melancholy period in Luther's life now ensues. 
 The plague appeared at Wittenberg, and the people 
 fled in terror; the university was removed to Jena, 
 and Luther, overcome in body and in mind, passed 
 through a scene of deepest gloom, agony and despair. 
 He writes to Melancthon, August 2 : " For more 
 than a week I have been tossing in death and hell, 
 so prostrate in body as to tremble all over. Christ 
 hath been almost wholly lost, and I have been agi- 
 tated with the billows and storms of despair and blas- 
 phemy against God. But God, moved by the prayers 
 of the saints,* hath begun to have compassion on me, 
 and hath delivered me from the lowest hell. Pray 
 continually for me, as I do for you. I believe my 
 conflict will concern others as well as myself. The 
 plague is here, we are fully persuaded, but we hope 
 it will be mild and gentle with us, the tender flock 
 of Christ, already afflicted with the hatred of the 
 whole world and our own sufferings, to say nothing 
 of our poverty and other humbling circumstances." 
 Ten days later, he writes to Justus Menius: "Cease 
 not to pray earnestly for me and to comfort me, for 
 this conflict is above my power. Thus far Christ 
 hath been a faithful Saviour, nor do I despair that 
 he will be so for evermore. I have been sick, not 
 only in body, but much more in soul, Satan and his 
 angels have, with the permission of God my Saviour, 
 so vexed and tormented me." To Spalatin he says, 
 in a letter dated August 19th: "The plague hath 
 
 * His Christian friends. 
 30
 
 422 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1527. 
 
 indeed begun here, but it is mild, though with the 
 people there is a wonderful fear and fleeing away, so 
 that I never saw the like of Satan's work before. He 
 rejoiceth that he can so terrify men's hearts as to 
 disperse and ruin this our university, which he, not 
 without cause, hateth above all others. Still, in all 
 this time, there have been but eighteen deaths in the 
 town, including children. In the fisher's quarter 
 [south] it hath raged vehemently; in our quarter 
 
 east] there hath been no death, though all are buried 
 ere. . . . Justas Jonas's little son John is dead. 
 Jonas himself hath gone to his native place, . . . so that 
 Bugenhagen and I are here alone with the chaplains." 
 An evangelical preacher at Halle, George Winkler 
 by name, had been murdered, at the instigation, 
 as some supposed, of the Archbishop of Mainz, who 
 was unwilling that the light should break in upon 
 this favourite residence of his. Luther, though still 
 troubled with fierce temptation, wrote a letter of 
 encouragement to the Christians of Halle : " I have 
 long purposed," he says, "my dear friends, to write 
 to you a letter of consolation for the calamity which 
 Satan hath brought upon you by the murder of the 
 good and pious Master George, thereby depriving 
 you of a faithful preacher, and of the word of God ; 
 but I have in divers ways been hindered, chiefly 
 by my own illness; and though I am not yet 
 through with my difficulties, I can wait no longer. 
 For though we would not be comforted, still it 
 would be wrong to be silent concerning such a scan- 
 dalous and treacherous murder, and so let it pass, 
 and leave the blood, whereby the word of God hath 
 been testified, to be buried in the ground. Therefore 
 I will publish it, and help it to cry unto heaven, so 
 that, as much as in us lieth, such a murder shall
 
 JE. 43.] EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 423 
 
 not keep silence, till God, the merciful father and 
 the just judge, hear it, as he did Abel's ; and take 
 vengeance on the old enemy, murderer and traitor, 
 who hath instigated this act, and cause that the blood 
 of Master George be a seed sown in the earth by 
 Satan and his emissaries, which shall bring forth a 
 hundred fold; so that, instead of one murdered 
 George, a hundred true preachers shall spring up, 
 who shall do Satan a thousand times more harm than 
 one man could do." 
 
 The following letter to Amsdorf has a peculiar 
 interest, as being written on the tenth anniversary 
 of his attack upon Tetzel's indulgences: "Grace 
 and peace. It please th the Lord, my dear Ams- 
 dorf, that I, who have formerly comforted so many 
 others, should myself now be destitute of all com- 
 fort. One thing I ask, and do you ask the same 
 with me, namely, that my Christ do with me what he 
 will, only that he leave me not to be ungrateful and to 
 become his enemy, whom I have heretofore preached 
 and adored with such zeal and fervour, although I 
 have, in the mean time, offended him with many and 
 great sins. Satan seeketh to have another Job given 
 over to him. . . . My house beginneth to be an hos- 
 pital. Anna, wife of Augustine [Schurf,] hath had 
 the plague, but is recovering. . . . For my Katy, 
 who is in critical circumstances, I have great fears. 
 My little John is sick, and hath eaten nothing for 
 three days. . . . Thus we have fightings without, 
 and fears, great fears within; Christ visiteth us. 
 One solace remaineth, which we can oppose to Satan, 
 namely, that we have the word of God for saving 
 the souls that believe, however it may be with our 
 bodies. Commend us to the brethren, and pray for 
 us, that we may patiently bear the hand of the
 
 424 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1527. 
 
 Lord that is upon us, and conquer the power and 
 devices of Satan, whether by our death or by our 
 life. Wittenberg, All-saints' day, the tenth year 
 from the trampling down of indulgences." 
 
 The last day of the year 1527, he says: "We 
 are all well, except Luther himself, who, though 
 well in body, suffereth without from all the world, 
 and within from Satan and all his angels." The fol- 
 lowing letter, in which he playfully rebukes Justus 
 Menius and his other Erfurt friends for not visiting 
 him when he was at Weimar, near by them, brings 
 the author before us again in his old and easy attire : 
 "I expected some of you would come and visit me 
 here, and wonder what could hinder you, since there 
 was no obstacle in the length nor breadth nor height 
 of the way, for the sky and sun were serene above. 
 I will excuse you for this neglect, if you will some 
 time explain to me the reason of such a breach of 
 the laws of friendship, charity and humanity. Er- 
 furt is Erfurt; Erfurt will be Erfurt; Erfurt always 
 was Erfurt. What else can I think or say ? Greet 
 the brethren for me, and your Eve and Abels and 
 Seths." 
 
 We have already had occasion to speak of Nurem- 
 berg as a renowned and refined city, which shone 
 like a bright star in the time of the Reformation. 
 There lived Pirkheimer, the patrician and scholar; 
 there preached Link and Osiander; there was the 
 great Du'rer, the painter, and Eoban Hess, the ele- 
 gant scholar and poet, and Carnerarius, the classical 
 teacher, and Baumgartner and others. Du'rer died 
 April 6, 1528, and his death called forth a beautiful 
 elegy from his friend Hess, a copy of which Luther 
 thus acknowledged : " I have received a second letter 
 from you, together with an Elegy on Diirer, and
 
 JE. 44.] EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 425 
 
 thus, contrary to my expectation, you are in advance 
 of my reply to your former letter. For I had re- 
 solved to reply by the first carrier I should find. As 
 to Du'rer, it is a pious act to mourn over the loss of 
 so excellent a man. But it is yours to pronounce 
 him happy that Christ hath taken him away so well 
 prepared, and by so peaceful an end, from times so 
 turbulent, and to be, perhaps, more turbulent still, 
 lest he, who was worthy of the happiest times, should 
 live to see the most wretched. Let him rest in peace, 
 then, with his fathers. I thank you next for the 
 love which breathes, or rather flames and burns in 
 every word of both your letters. Not that I am 
 worthy of such praise or love, but because I cheer- 
 fully suffer myself to be exalted by the testimony 
 and favour of the good against Satan and his minis- 
 ters, who diligently and incessantly seek my blood 
 and extinguish me, so that I can boast of going the 
 way of Paul, through honour and dishonour, through 
 good report and evil report. . . . Blessed be my 
 Lord Jesus Christ, who hath willed I should be 
 such, not that 1 should boast, but that many through 
 me should be saved from these pestilent spirits. . . . 
 When I see this prayer, which I breathe every hour, 
 fulfilled, I think myself happy; and regard it as an 
 abundant reward of my labours to know that I live 
 only to serve others. I rejoice, therefore, not so 
 much in the praise which you, in your partiality, 
 abundantly bestow, as in the truth to which you 
 testify by your candour and too great affection for 
 me, and thus with great openness and simplicity 
 confess Christ. For what can be more delightful to 
 hear than that you, and others like you, stand strong 
 against Satan by a substantial and pure knowledge 
 of Christ, when so many, whom we hoped would
 
 426 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1528. 
 
 be pillars, fall, and are now worse enemies to us than 
 the Turks ? I therefore pray the Lord Jesus Christ, 
 that he will crown you with his benedictions, and 
 preserve you, with us, perfect and unblamable to his 
 glorious appearing. Of news I have nothing to send 
 you to your emporium, for Nuremberg itself is the 
 eye, as it were, and ear of Germany, which seeth 
 and heareth every thing, a part of which, perhaps, 
 never cometh to our knowledge. Salute your dearest 
 doe, together with your dear fawns. The blessing 
 of the Lord be upon you." How beautifully does 
 Luther here place himself almost within the soul of 
 the Nuremberg poet, and appropriate to himself, for 
 the time being, the qualities of his mind !, 
 
 To a letter to Spalatin, dated Wittenberg, "in 
 the aerial and ethereal house," (in allusion to the 
 name of the owner Luft, which means air,) he 
 appends this postscript : "Pomeranus, [Bugenhagen, 
 of Pomerania,] who goeth to Brunswick, saluteth 
 you, and desireth you to pray for him. Justus 
 Jonas, fighting against the gravel, saluteth you, and 
 desireth you to pray that he may get the victory. 
 Casper Cruciger saluteth you, and desireth you to 
 pray for him that his hopes may be realized ; that is, 
 if you do not understand it, that Duke George may 
 be converted to Christ, or be bruised by Christ. 
 John Mantell saluteth you, recently bereaved of a 
 little son, the same day on which Bugenhagen lost 
 his elder son Michael, having lost his younger son 
 John two weeks before, and desireth you to pray 
 that for one son he may receive many. My Eve, 
 joyful and well, with all of this convivial company, 
 saluteth you, and desireth you to pray for her that 
 her third offspring may come safely to the world." 
 
 The visitation of the churches for the purpose of
 
 JE. 45.] EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 427 
 
 doing away the evils of the papal system, and intro- 
 ducing the evangelical in its stead, continued after 
 several interruptions into the year 1529. In February, 
 Luther, who was still engaged in that work, in which 
 more than thirty men had been employed, wrote to 
 Spalatin the following lines, which give us some 
 idea of the state of the people at that time : " We 
 desire to know what you are doing in the visitation 
 and how you succeed, and we are surprised that you 
 do not mention this in your letter. We, on our part, 
 confer a living when it is necessary; and though it 
 is small, yet it is an aid to the poor pastors to have 
 two acres to cultivate. Furthermore, we strenuously 
 require a contribution from each individual. But 
 the condition of the churches is most wretched ; the 
 peasants learn nothing, know nothing, pray for 
 nothing, do nothing, except abuse their liberty, 
 neither confessing nor communing, just as if they 
 were set free from all religion. For they have 
 neglected their own papal ordinances ; they despise 
 ours; so that the administration of the papal bishops 
 is horrid to contemplate." 
 
 Luther, who believed that all physical evils, 
 bodily pains, diseases, epidemics, earthquakes and 
 calamities of every sort, were produced by a direct? 
 invisible agency of Satan, and who had full faith 
 in astrology, was led by the strange and frightful 
 character of the times, and by singular appearances 
 in the heavens, to believe that the end of the world 
 was at hand. After describing the Northern Lights, 
 as they appeared on a certain evening, he says, 
 "God knoweth what these signify." At another 
 time, referring to the same and to a meteor which 
 was seen at Breslau, and to some other peculiar ap- 
 pearances in the heavens, he says, "I believe these
 
 428 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1529, 
 
 signify that the end of the world is at the door." 
 This opinion is often repeated in his letters, but it 
 is unnecessary to accumulate quotations. 
 
 The following letter to Matthias, Bishop of 
 Dantzic, gives us a more pleasing view : "Reverend 
 father and venerable in the Lord, your letters and 
 present were very agreeable and acceptable to me in 
 the Lord, since I thereby learned that, in your old 
 age and before the end of life, you have been capti- 
 vated and illuminated by the gospel of Christ, which 
 I regard as the miraculous grace of God, knowing 
 as I do how dignitaries of your order are wont to 
 resist the word of God. The Lord Jesus, who hath 
 begun a good work, perfect it. As you have a de- 
 sire to see me, so it would give me in turn great 
 joy in Christ to see your venerable gray hairs con- 
 fessing Christ amidst this herd of hostile dignitaries, 
 who dare to oppose. It is not in my power, how- 
 ever, to go to see you. May God, who is able to 
 do it, grant that we may meet at least once ; and 
 may he mercifully bless and keep you." 
 
 A letter to Amsdorf, dated May 31, 1529, breathes 
 the same pure spirit of love. He there says : " There 
 is nothing new with us which you do not already 
 know. These ministers of the word at Goslar, [the 
 old capital of Hanover,] I send to you, that they 
 may relate to you the condition of the church there. 
 I beg you to receive, and hear them kindly. They 
 seem to be good men, who deserve the favour of the 
 pious; and it is meet for you to know these things, 
 inasmuch as you first laid the foundations of piety 
 there, and have not unsuccessfully built thereon. 
 It will animate these trembling believers to per- 
 ceive our agreement and joy in this matter; and 
 it will confound Satan and his instruments, or, at.
 
 IE. 45.] EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 429 
 
 least, impede them. Therefore cherish and com- 
 fort them in the bowels of Christ. They who dread 
 offences and are so solicitous for peace cannot but 
 have great confidence in Christ." 
 
 To the Christians in jftoslar he wrote in the same 
 spirit, saying, "I rejoice over you from the heart, 
 and pray God, the Father of all grace, to uphold 
 and prosper you in this way." June 14, Luther 
 wrote to Justus Jonas, who was then occupied abroad 
 in the work of visitation thus : " The wall of your 
 house [in the west part of the town] must wait for 
 bricks to be made in the senate's furnace. We have 
 betrothed Dr. Augustin [Schurf 's] sister to [profes- 
 sor] Milich. Bugenhagen writes that he will soon 
 return [from Hamburg,] and when he cometh, I 
 [his substitute as city preacher] can act with you in 
 the work of visitation, if it shall still be necessary. 
 Philip [Melancthon] is wasting away under his 
 anxiety for the church and the state." 
 
 How perfectly overwhelmed Luther was with 
 labours and cares, may be learned from the clos- 
 ing part of a letter to Link, in which he says, " You 
 complain in your last letter that I have not replied 
 to your inquiry. Be not surprised. If you wish 
 for a reply, write and admonish me again. For I 
 am every day so overwhelmed with letters, that my 
 table, benches, foot-stools, desks, windows, cases, 
 boards and every thing are full of letters, inquiries, 
 causes, complaints, petitions, &c. On me falleth the 
 whole weight of the church and the state, as neither 
 the ecclesiastics nor magistrates perform their duties. 
 You at Nuremberg sit and play in Paradise, because 
 you have magistrates who provide all things for you 
 to enjoy in security and peace." 
 
 We find another striking proof that Luther took
 
 430 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1529. 
 
 a deep interest in education, and that his opinion 
 was of great weight on this subject, in the following 
 instructive letter, written to Margrave George of 
 Brandenburg, July 18, 1529. : "I have long de- 
 layed, though unwillingly, to reply to you, for at 
 first I had not the time, when the messenger was 
 here, and afterward I had no way to send. . . . But 
 now I will tell you what Melancthon and my- 
 self, upon mature consideration, think best to be 
 done. 
 
 " First, we think the cloisters and foundations may 
 continue to stand till their inmates die out. . . . 
 Secondly, it would be exceedingly well to establish 
 in one or two places in the principality a learned 
 school, in which shall be taught, not only the Holy 
 Scriptures, but law, and all the arts, from whence 
 preachers, pastors, clerks, counsellors, &c. may be 
 taken for the whole principality. To this object 
 should the income of the cloisters and other reli- 
 gious foundations be applied, so as to give an ho- 
 nourable support to learned men, two in theology, 
 two in law, one in medicine, one in mathematics, 
 and four or five for grammar, logic, rhetoric, &c. . . . 
 Thirdly, in all the towns and villages good schools 
 for children should be established, from which those 
 who are adapted to higher studies might be taken 
 and trained up for the public." 
 
 For a present of garments from the elector, 
 Luther makes this singular acknowledgment, under 
 date of August 17 : "I have long delayed to 
 thank your grace for the clothes and garments 
 which were sent to me. I humbly beseech your 
 grace not to believe those who represent that I am 
 in want. I have, alas ! more, especially from your 
 grace, than I can with good conscience receive. It
 
 &. 45.] EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 431 
 
 is not meet for me, a preacher, to have abundance, 
 neither do I desire it. Therefore, when I perceive 
 your grace's too great liberality to me, I am not 
 without fear ; for I do not wish to be found here in 
 this life among those to whom Christ saith, ' Wo ! 
 unto you that are rich, for ye have received your 
 consolation.' And, furthermore, to speak after a 
 worldly manner, I desire not to be burdensome to 
 your grace, knowing you have so many occasions to 
 give, that you cannot have much to spare ; for, if 
 there be too much, it rendeth the sack. Though 
 the brown cloth would of itself be too much, yet I 
 will, out of gratitude and honour to your grace, wear 
 the black garment also, notwithstanding it is too 
 valuable, so that I would never wear it, if it were 
 not a present from your grace. I beg you, therefore, 
 wait till I complain and ask, so that I may not, by 
 your forwardness to me, be prevented from begging 
 for others, who are far more worthy of such favours. 
 For your grace hath already done too much for me. 
 May Christ graciously and abundantly repay it." 
 
 We must not omit to give, at least one specimen 
 out of a hundred, of Luther's contempt for the 
 Zwinglian party, with what reason the reader can 
 judge. While at Marburg to see if there could be 
 a union formed with that party, he wrote to his 
 wife this charitable letter : " Dear lord Katy, know 
 that our friendly colloquy at Marburg is ended, 
 and that we were nearly agreed in all points, save 
 that the other party will recognise nothing but 
 bread in the supper, and will not admit that Christ 
 is present except spiritually. To-day the land- 
 grave trieth to see if we cannot be agreed, or, 
 if not agreed, that we recognise each other as 
 brethren and members of Christ. He laboureth
 
 432 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1529. 
 
 hard for this; but we want nothing of this brother- 
 ing and fellowship, though we are for peace and 
 good-will. . . . Say to Bugenhagen the best argu- 
 ments were those of Zwingle, ' That a body cannot 
 exist without space ; therefore the body of Christ 
 is not in the bread;' and of (Ecolampadius, 'That 
 the sacrament is a symbol of the body of Christ.' 
 I think God hath blinded them that they could 
 bring forward nothing better. I have much to do, 
 and the messenger is in haste. Say good night to 
 all, and pray for us. We are all safe and sound, 
 and live like princes. Kiss Lene and Jonny for 
 me." 
 
 Luther's father, who had reached to an advanced 
 age, was taken ill, and his sickness was the occasion 
 of a letter from his son, full of tenderness and love. 
 He begins thus : " To my dear father, John Luther, 
 citizen of Mansfeld, grace and peace in Christ Jesus 
 our Lord and Saviour, Amen. Dear father, my 
 brother Jacob hath written to me how that you are 
 dangerously sick. Since the air now is bad, and it is 
 everywhere dangerous, and your time of life is such, 
 I am made very anxious about you. For though 
 God hath given you a firm and strong body and 
 hitherto preserved it, yet your age [probably not 
 less than eighty] giveth me, at this time, anxious 
 thoughts, although, aside from such things, none 
 of us are sure of life, or ought to be. I should be, 
 beyond expression, glad to visit you personally, but 
 my good friends oppose and have dissuaded me, and 
 I myself must remember that I ought not to rush 
 into danger, presuming on God ; for you know what 
 kind of favour I have, from both lords and peasants. 
 It would be the greatest joy to me if it were pos- 
 sible for you and mother to come hither to us, which
 
 JE. 45.] EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 433 
 
 my Katy desireth with tears, as do we all. I have 
 therefore sent [my servant] Cyriac to you to see 
 whether your health will allow you to come. For 
 in what way soever God shall dispose of you, whether 
 for this life, or for another, I desire heartily, as I 
 ought, to be present with you, and, by filial faith- 
 fulness and attention, according to the fifth com- 
 mandment, to show myself thankful unto God and 
 unto you." He then goes on to comfort his father 
 with " those divine truths which God had already 
 given him to know," and to express the desire and 
 hope that God would " carry on to its completion, in 
 the life to come, the work which had been begun 
 in him." " For," he adds, " he hath already sealed 
 in you these doctrines and this faith, and confirmed 
 them by signs, inasmuch as you have with us all 
 suffered much abuse, reproach, scorn, contempt, 
 hatred, enmity and peril." 
 
 Luther has been accused of inhumanity toward 
 the Anabaptists; and when we compare him with 
 the mild Brentz, who opposed putting them to death 
 for their sentiments, and with religious men of mo- 
 dern times, we must, in part at least, admit the 
 charge. But in this he was not alone. Most of the Re- 
 formers, having been brought up in the papal church, 
 were led to countenance, to some extent, her revolt- 
 ing doctrines and practices in respect to those whom 
 she denounced as heretics. They conscientiously- 
 held opinions which would be repudiated by all en- 
 lightened Christians at the present day. Without 
 dwelling on these painful details, we will adduce one 
 brief letter, as giving a fair specimen of Luther's 
 feelings, and thus dismiss the subject. The letter 
 is addressed to Menius and Myconius in 1530. "I 
 am pleased,"- he says, "that you intend to publish 
 
 87
 
 434 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1530. 
 
 a book against the Anabaptists as soon as possible. 
 Since they are not only blasphemous, but also sedi- 
 tious men, let the sword exercise its right over them. 
 For this is the will of God, that he shall have judg- 
 ment who resisteth the power. Let us not, there- 
 fore, think better of these men than Grod himself 
 and all the saints have done." Yes, the saints made 
 themselves like unto God, and assumed the prero- 
 gative, not only of punishing those who were actually 
 guilty of sedition, but of putting to death heretics 
 whose sentiments were judged to be seditious in 
 their tendency. 
 
 The diet of Augsburg, so important in the his- 
 tory of the Reformation, is first alluded to by Lu- 
 ther, in a letter to Justus Jonas, March 14, 1530, 
 in these words : " The elector hath written to us, 
 that is, to you, Bugenhagen, Melancthon and my- 
 self, instructing us to lay all other business aside and 
 come together, and, before next Sunday, prepare 
 whatever is necessary for the coming diet of April 8. 
 For the Emperor Charles will come thither in per- 
 son, as he writeth in his mandate, to adjust, in 
 a friendly manner, all our religious differences. 
 Wherefore, though you are absent, we, the other 
 three, shall do to-day and to-morrow what we can. 
 It will be your duty, in order to comply with the 
 will of the elector, to put your work [of visitation] 
 into the hands of your associates, and be with us 
 here to-morrow. Every thing must be hastened. 
 May Christ breathe upon us, that all things may be 
 done to his glory." 
 
 He says to another friend, April 2 : "I am about 
 %o go as far as Coburg with the elector. Melancthon 
 and Jonas will also go, and we shall wait there till
 
 M. 46.] EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 435 
 
 it shall be known what will be undertaken at Augs- 
 burg." The same day he writes to his young friend 
 Cordatus, who had experienced much trouble at 
 Zwickau, and was now, moreover, afflicted with the 
 loss of a son : "As to what I hear of your purpose 
 to hasten away to the diet, I would say, I disap- 
 prove of it altogether. First, I have not been cited 
 thither, but I am to go with the elector only to the 
 border of his dominions. Secondly, the cause of the 
 gospel will be managed in a very dilatory way, if at 
 all ; for princes are not wont to act with despatch 
 in matters of religion ; and the Turkish question 
 will, moreover, have the precedence there. You 
 might, if you should wish, make a flying excursion 
 thither, at a suitable time, and let your Zwickau 
 men get a little cool and gentle. Salute the com- 
 panion of your grief, and endeavour to rejoice rather 
 in a living Christ than mourn over a son deceased, 
 or rather living, but removed. My Katy and all 
 the family salute you." 
 
 His next letter is dated at Coburg, April 18, 
 and directed to Hausmann, pastor at Zwickau : 
 "Say to Cordatus," he writes, "that we still re- 
 main here, not knowing when we shall proceed far- 
 ther. Yesterday, a messenger and letters reached 
 us, informing us that the emperor was at Mantua, 
 where he was to pass the festival of Easter, tt is, 
 moreover, said, that the Papists are labouring to 
 prevent the meeting of the diet, out of fear that it 
 will pass decisions against them. The pope is angry 
 with the emperor for wishing to meddle with eccle- 
 siastical affairs, and to give the parties a hearing; 
 for they had hoped he would act the part of execu- 
 tioner for them, and restore all things. They wish 
 not to change, nor to lose any thing, nor even to be
 
 436 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1530. 
 
 judged or examined, but simply that we be con- 
 demned or destroyed, and they reinstated, and thus 
 destroyed. So they will go to utter ruin. ... I 
 am commanded by the elector to remain at Coburg, 
 I know not why, while the rest proceed to the diet. 
 Thus, every thing groweth, from day to day, more 
 and more uncertain." 
 
 To Melancthon, after he had left Coburg for 
 Augsburg, Luther writes : " We have come at length 
 to our Sinai, my dear Philip ; but we will make of 
 this Sinai a Zion, and build here three tabernacles, 
 one for the Psalms, one for the Prophets, and one 
 for JEsop, [three works to be prepared for the 
 press.] But this last is temporal. The place is 
 exceedingly lovely and convenient for study, save 
 that your absence maketh it gloomy. ... I pray 
 Christ to give you quiet sleep, and to liberate and 
 keep your heart from cares, that is, from Satan's 
 fiery darts. These things I write because of my 
 leisure, for I have not yet received my desk, papers, 
 &c., nor have I seen either of the keepers. No- 
 thing is wanting to make the solitude complete. 
 That immense building which towers over the whole 
 fortress is all ours, with the keys to all the apart- 
 ments. More than thirty persons are said to take 
 their food here, of whom twelve are night guards, 
 and two watchmen in the different towers. But 
 what of all this ? Why, simply, that I have no- 
 thing else to write." 
 
 A mind like Luther's could not remain inactive, 
 and, for want of other employment, he suffered his 
 fancy to picture to itself a diet of birds, as he saw 
 them congregate before his window, much as he saw 
 persecuting bishops in the huntsmen and hounds 
 while engaged in the chase at Wartburg. The reader
 
 M. 46.] EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 437 
 
 will easily recognise the satire. The sportive letter 
 which we are about to present was addressed to his 
 table companions at Wittenberg, and reads thus: 
 " Grace and peace in Christ, dear friends. I have 
 received your joint letter, and learned how you 
 all are. That you may know, in turn, how things 
 art here, I give you to understand that we, that 
 is, I, Master Veit Dietrich and Cyriac, do not go 
 to the Augsburg diet, though we are attending 
 another one in this place. There is, directly before 
 my window, a grove where the jackdaws and ravens 
 have appointed a diet; and there is such a coming 
 and- going, and such a hubbub, day and night, that 
 you would think them all tipsy. Old and young 
 keep up such a cackling, that I wonder how their 
 breath holds out so long. I should like to know if 
 there are any of these nobles and knights with you, 
 for it seemeth to me that all in the world are gathered 
 together here. I have not yet seen their emperor, 
 but the nobles and great ones are all the time mov- 
 ing and frisking before us; not gayly attired, but of 
 one uniform colour, all black and all gray-eyed. 
 They all sing the same song, though with the pleas- 
 ing diversity of young and old, great and small. 
 They pay no regard to the great palace and hall, for 
 their hall hath the high blue heavens for its ceiling, 
 the ground for its floor, the beautiful green branches 
 for its panelling, and the ends of the world for its 
 walls. They don't trouble themselves about horses 
 and wagons, for they have winged wheels where- 
 with they escape from fire-arms. They are great 
 and mighty lords; but to what decisions they come 
 I know not. But, so far as I can learn through an 
 interpreter, they meditate a mighty crusade against 
 wheat, barley, oats, malt, and all kinds of com and 
 37*
 
 438 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1530. 
 
 grain, and there is here many a hero, who will per- 
 form great deeds. ... I consider all these nothing 
 but the sophists and Papists, with their preachers 
 and secretaries, and must have them all before me 
 thus at once, that I may hear their lovely voices and 
 their preaching, and see how useful a class they are, 
 to devour all that the earth briugeth forth, and cackle 
 for it a long while." 
 
 Perhaps Luther and his family were nowhere more 
 intimate than with the family of Jonas. The wife 
 of this friend of Luther seems to have been the one 
 to whom all domestic anxieties and interests were 
 freely unbosomed by Luther and his household. 
 On the 24th of April, 1530, while at Coburg, mid- 
 way between her, at Wittenberg, and Jonas, now at 
 Augsburg, he wrote to her as follows : "Dear friend, 
 I have read your letter to your husband, and was 
 glad to learn that God hath given you a more cheer- 
 ful mind touching your delicate situation, and the 
 injury which has befallen your house. Your hus- 
 band is not so cheerful, but is very anxious for you, 
 and is quite angry and scoldeth about the breaking 
 of the wall, and is as near to being offended with Mr. 
 Blank as your house is near to his. But be not 
 troubled ; there will be no difficulty about the house, 
 for an arrangement is already made to remedy the 
 evil. . . . You will, I think, be blessed with a 
 daughter, they have now become so seldom and are 
 so shy, a single house not being large enough for 
 them; just as their mothers can hardly get along 
 with a husband and the whole world besides. Salute 
 your dear [son] Justus, the grandmother, and accept 
 a salutation for yourself." The child alluded to 
 died in May, while the father was still at Augsburg. 
 The following letter to Melancthon on the occasion
 
 JE. 46.] EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 439 
 
 explains itself: "I have directed this letter to be 
 delivered to you separately, for there was no other 
 way of broaching the matter to Justus Jonas. See 
 that in the gentlest way possible he be informed of 
 the loss of his infant child. His wife and servant 
 have written to him that the child is ill, but in 
 language removed from all ideas of death. My wife 
 writeth that she was present when it died. It was 
 with the same disease that carried off her little Fre- 
 deric. ... I was unwilling to write to him about 
 it, lest his sorrow should be too great; and I wish 
 to keep it back from him, and write him another 
 time. Perhaps this is the hour when our gospel is 
 also in child-birth; but we will, when the sorrow is 
 over, rejoice that a man is born into the world. If 
 our word is true, which the rage and fury of our 
 enemies sufficiently declare, our cause is safe. . . , 
 Do you, therefore, solace the man, who so sinketh 
 in worldly trouble, that he may be able to rejoice 
 while we are sad." A few days later, he writes a 
 letter of condolence to Jonas, full of tenderness, 
 saying, among many other things, "You have many 
 great blessings to set over against this calamity," 
 and then mentions the excellent character of his wife. 
 Luther's engagements and state of mind were such 
 that he was disinclined to see so many visitors as 
 were constantly calling upon him. "Yesterday," 
 says he to Melancthon, under date of June 2, "John 
 Reineck of Mansfeld [his old school companion at 
 Magdeburg] and George Homer were here; and 
 to-day Argula von Staufen. As I perceive that this 
 place will be too much frequented, I am determined, 
 after the manner of your Stromer, to pretend to go 
 away, or actually go for a single day, that the report 
 may go out that I am no longer here. Do you and
 
 440 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1530. 
 
 your friends, therefore, tell people not to call on me 
 so much. I wish to be secluded." 
 
 Near the end of May, Luther's father died. With 
 what feelings he received the intelligence we may 
 best learn from his own words in a letter to Melanc- 
 thon: " To-day," he there remarks, "John Reineck 
 hath written to me that my dearest father departed 
 this life, Sunday, the 29th of May. This death hath 
 plunged me into deep sorrow, being affected not 
 only by nature, but by the most tender love, for 
 through him my Creator gave me whatsoever I am 
 and have. And though what he writeth to me, 
 namely, that ( strong in the faith of Christ, he sweetly 
 fell asleep/ nevertheless my sorrow for him and the 
 memory of his most delicious intercourse shake my 
 whole frame. ... I now succeed next in the family 
 name, and am the senior Luther in my family. . . . 
 It is right and fit that I, a son, should mourn for 
 such a father, ... by whose sweat I was supported 
 and made whatsoever I am. I rejoice that he lived 
 in these times, when he could behold the light of 
 truth." 
 
 At a later period when, for four days, he could, as 
 he says, neither read nor write, he chanced to find in 
 the ditch a mutilated piece of music in three parts. 
 He corrected and altered it, added a fourth part, and 
 composed words for it, and sportively sent it to his 
 friend, Agricola, to show to his chorister as the song 
 with which the emperor and his brother were greeted 
 on their entrance into Augsburg. He amused him- 
 self by seeing whether he could thus mislead the 
 chorister, and, to make the attempt the more suc- 
 cessful, he requested Agricola to praise the piece. 
 
 During Luther's absence, a student by the name 
 of Weller became private tutor to his son John, now
 
 M. 46.] EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 441 
 
 four years old. To him Luther wrote, June 19 : 
 "I have received your two letters, both of which 
 are very agreeable, but the last by far the most so, 
 because, in it, you write concerning my John, say- 
 ing that you have become his teacher, and that he 
 is a sedulous and diligent pupil. I wish I could 
 make you a suitable return, but what I cannot, may 
 Christ repay. Master Dietrich hath signified to me 
 that you have a spirit of melancholy, which is very 
 hurtful to a young man." 
 
 If we consider what the habits of our fathers 
 were, as compared with those of most Christians of 
 the present day, in respect to temperance, we shall 
 hardly expect to find Luther or any man of that age 
 conforming to all our stricter views or practices in 
 this regard. There was indeed a society formed 
 among the noblemen of Austria against drunken- 
 ness and profane swearing in the year 1517. But 
 it was only when a member drank more than seven 
 glasses of wine at one dinner that he was regarded 
 as a transgressor, and was then to pay the fine of a 
 horse. Luther drank wine and beer habitually, but 
 with moderation. He one time apologizes to some 
 young men present for taking wine in the evening, 
 by saying that old men sometimes need it to induce 
 sleep. At Coburg, he wrote, June 19, to a friend : 
 "I am well and live splendidly, save that I have 
 for a month had, not a tinkling, but a thundering 
 in my head, whether it be from the wine, or whether 
 Satan thus playeth his game with me. I have 
 finished Ezekiel, and now shall proceed to translate 
 the other Prophets. Be diligent both you and the 
 church in praying for the elector. Pray for him 
 and for the whole diet, and be assured that prayer 
 is not in vain. The power thereof is manifest and
 
 442 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1530. 
 
 great." This was the time that tested the character 
 of the Elector John, and well did it pass the ordeal. 
 An expression of Luther's, the following January, 
 states more explicitly one cause of his illness. 
 "The Wittenberg beer/' he says, "hath not yet 
 conquered the disease of the head contracted at 
 Coburg by the old wine. I must therefore moderate 
 my labours, and give my head its Sabbaths, a great 
 evil to me and to the printers." He was then 
 superintending the printing of the various works 
 prepared at Coburg. 
 
 Although Luther approved of Melancthon's 
 draft of the Augsburg Confession, and said of it, 
 in a letter to the elector, "It pleaseth me exceed- 
 ingly well. I know not what improvement or 
 change to make, nor would any alteration of mine 
 be in place, for I cannot step so softly and gently;" 
 yet he disapproved of Melancthon's caution and pru- 
 dence as excessive. Therefore he writes to Jonas, 
 (June 20 :) "I greatly and wonderfully exult in the 
 abundant grace of God, in that our elector is of so 
 firm and calm a mind. I think our prayers for him 
 have been heard. . . . This my joy is increased as I 
 learn that you also are confident in God against this 
 fury of Satan, [the violent proceedings of the diet.] 
 Melancthon is swayed by his philosophy, and by 
 nothing else; for he will have the whole matter in 
 his own hand. ... I would not have it in mine, nor 
 would it be best. I have had much in my own 
 hand, and lost it all, and saved nothing. But what 
 I have put out of my hands, [and into the hand of 
 the Lord,] that have I secured and saved. ... I have 
 here [in Coburg] become a new pupil of the deca- 
 logue, and am making myself a boy again, and 
 learning it by heart. ... I begin to consider the
 
 JE. 46.] EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 443 
 
 decalogue as the logic of the gospel, and the gospel 
 as the rhetoric of the decalogue ; and Christ as 
 having all that is in Moses, though Moses hath not 
 all that is in Christ." To Brentz, he expressed his 
 feelings (June 30) more fully in regard to Melanc- 
 thon's over-much solicitude. "From your letters, 
 and from those of Melancthon and others, my 
 Brentz," he observes, "I perceive that you are all in 
 like manner troubled by that idolatrous diet. It is 
 the example of Melancthon that so affecteth you. For 
 he is anxious for the public peace and tranquillity, 
 and that piously too ; but his zeal is not according 
 to knowledge. Just as if our forefathers by their 
 care and solicitude made us what we are, and not 
 rather the counsel of God alone, who will be Creator 
 after us, as he was before us. He will not die with 
 us, or cease to be God, governing the thoughts of 
 men. . . . These things I write to you and to others 
 that, by the persuasion of Briick, [Pontanus,] or 
 some other one of you, Melancthon may cease to 
 desire to be ruler of the world, that is, to excruciate 
 himself. If I should die, or be slain by the Papists, 
 I shall still mightily defend our posterity, and be 
 revenged upon those ferocious beasts enough, and 
 more than I desire; for I know that there will be 
 one to say, ' Where is thy brother Abel ?' and he 
 will make them fugitives in the earth. ... If there 
 is a God, we shall live not only here, but where he 
 liveth also. And if this is so, what, I ask, are all 
 these furious threats of idols, which are already, not 
 barely mortal, but dead? He who created me will 
 be the father of my son, the husband of my wife, 
 the ruler of the people, the preacher of the parish, 
 and will be, after I am dead, more and better than 
 I am while alive."
 
 444 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1530. 
 
 The important and yet delicate relations which 
 the two reformers, Luther and Melancthon, sustained 
 to each other, are perhaps nowhere more apparent 
 than in the letter of the former to the latter, written 
 June 29, 1530. Neither the gentle influence of 
 Melancthon upon Luther, nor the invigorating, em- 
 boldening influence of Luther upon Melancthon, 
 could safely have been dispensed with. But, at this 
 time, unfortunately, both were in a state of nervous 
 excitement and irritability. 
 
 "I have read your rhetoric," says Luther, "by 
 which you excuse your silence to me. In the mean 
 time, I have written to you twice, explaining the 
 cause of my silence. To-day I have received your 
 last letter, in which you admonish me of your labours, 
 perils and tears, so that I seem unworthily to add 
 sorrow to sorrow by my silence, as if I were ignorant 
 of these things, or were sitting here upon a bed of 
 roses, not bearing your cares with you. Unless 
 your letter had reached me last night, ... I should 
 have sent you a messenger at my own expense. . . . 
 I have received your Apology, [the Augsburg Con- 
 fession,] and wonder what you wish or desire, what 
 and how much is to be conceded to the Papists. 
 How much is to be yielded to the elector, if he is 
 in danger, is another question. For myself, more 
 than enough is already conceded in the Apology; 
 and if they refuse this, I see not how any thing 
 more can be conceded, unless I can see better rea- 
 sons and clearer passages of Scripture than I have 
 yet seen. I am occupied with this subject day and 
 night, thinking, revolving, reasoning and surveying 
 the whole Bible, and my assurance in our doctrine 
 increaseth, and I am more and more confirmed, so 
 that, God helping me, I will suffer nothing more to be
 
 JE. 46.] EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 445 
 
 taken from it, come what may. ... I am not pleased 
 with your saying in your letter, that you 'follow 
 my authority.' I do not wish to be, or to be called 
 an authority in this cause ; and even if it could be 
 so explained, I do not like the term. If it be not, 
 at the same time, equally your cause, I am unwilling 
 it should be said to be mine and imposed upon you. 
 If it be mine, I will act for myself. ... It is the 
 result and issue of this cause that troubleth you, 
 because you cannot grasp it. If you could grasp it, 
 I would have nothing to do with it, much less be 
 the author of it. God hath put it into that chapter 
 which is not included in your rhetoric nor philo- 
 sophy. That chapter is called faith, in which are 
 placed all those things 'which are not seen and do 
 not appear ;' and if any one attempt to render them 
 visible, apparent and comprehensible, as you do, he 
 will have troubles and tears as the reward of his 
 labour, such as you now complain of, notwithstand- 
 ing all our persuasions. 
 
 " Postscript. After closing my letter, the thought 
 hath occurred to me, that I might seem to you not 
 to have replied specifically to your inquiries, how 
 much and how far we should concede to our oppo- 
 nents. But your inquiries are general ; you do not 
 signify what and how much you think will be de- 
 manded of us. I am ready, as I have always said, 
 to concede every thing, if only the gospel be left 
 free unto us. But any thing repugnant to the gos- 
 pel, I cannot concede." 
 
 He also said, "I wish I could be allowed to come 
 to you ; I burn with desire to conie unbidden and 
 uninvited." The elector knew why he would have 
 Luther not so far from the diet as Wittenberg, nor 
 so near as Augsburg. 
 
 38
 
 446 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1530. 
 
 The first paragraph of the above letter is well 
 interpreted by another, written in a more playful 
 mood, the day after, to Spalatin. Five long letters 
 to his friends at Augsburg, to Brentz, to Spalatin, 
 to Agricola, to Melancthon, and to the elector, bear 
 date June 30. To Spalatin he writes : "You said 
 you would not suffer yourself to be called dilatory 
 in correspondence, and yet you are obliged to do 
 so. You promised me and the Wittenberg friends 
 that you would write abundantly by the messenger 
 of Jonas and of Dr. Apel, so that we might both 
 expect and fear a whole forest of letters, which 
 should be more obstreperous than my jackdaws. 
 But when the messenger came, bringing letters 
 from Jonas alone for Wittenberg, I said, 'Do you 
 bring any letters for me?' Reply, 'No.' 'How 
 is it with the men there?' Answer, 'Well.' Of 
 this case I have just made complaint to Melancthon. 
 Afterward came a messenger on horseback sent to 
 Torgau, with letters from the elector. I asked him, 
 'Do you bring any letters for me?' Reply, 'No.' 
 ' How is it with the men there ?' Reply, ' Well.' 
 Then, when a wagon was going to Augsburg with 
 flour, I wrote again to Melancthon, and that returned 
 bringing no letters. Now I began to have gloomy 
 thoughts, and to suspect you wished to conceal 
 something from me. A fourth person came. I asked 
 him, 'Do you bring me any letters?' Reply, 'No.' 
 ' How is it with the men there ?' Answer, ' Well.' 
 I will not tell you how often our questor has, in the 
 mean time, had letters from his brother Falkenstein, 
 while we have been kept for more than three weeks 
 hungering and thirsting by the favour of your 
 silence. From his letters have I been obliged to 
 learn what I would know. Now I ask tf you
 
 .33. 46.] EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 447 
 
 would not call me a dilatory correspondent, if I 
 were to do so to you. I confess I was offended 
 and alarmed, knowing, as I did, the anxiety of 
 Melancthon and the trials of the elector. . . . But 
 enough of this. Do not dispute, nor think any 
 more about it." 
 
 If we desire still more light on this temporary 
 ruffling of the feelings of the two reformers, it 
 can be found in the letters of Melancthon and 
 others. On the 25th of June, he wrote to Luther: 
 "The letter in which you complain of my silence 
 givcth me great pain. I have written very fully 
 every week. I know not how it happeneth that 
 this evil should be added to the great and distress- 
 ing cares which I have in this place, namely, that I 
 should be judged so much in fault that you will not 
 write to me." The next day, he wrote to Veit 
 Dietrich, [Vitus Theodorus :] " I cannot express how 
 much it distresseth me that, in your letter, you say 
 the doctor is so angry with me that he will not even 
 read my letters. You know how I am situated, and 
 in what peril we all stand. We here are in greatest 
 need of his counsel and consolation. I have, there- 
 fore, hired a special messenger to take this letter, 
 that I may appease him and make some inquiries. 
 I have left it unsealed, in order that you may read 
 it and repeat it to him, if he will not read it." The 
 letter to Luther commences thus: "I am here in a 
 wretched state of anxiety and in perpetual tears. 
 Besides this, a strange consternation hath to-day 
 seized my mind on reading Dietrich's letter, in 
 which he saith you are so angry, &c. ... I will 
 not, my father, exaggerate my sorrow to you ; but I 
 beg you to consider what is niy condition, and what 
 are my perils, where I have no solace but in your
 
 448 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1530. 
 
 consolations. Every day the sophists and monks 
 are flocking to the emperor to imbitter him against 
 me. The bishops already hate me. Friends, if I 
 ever had any, are now away. Alone and deserted, 
 I am here struggling with great dangers. I entreat 
 you to consider either me, who follow your author- 
 ity in the most important matters, or the public, 
 and not refuse to read my letters and reply, both 
 that you may govern my conduct and comfort me." 
 Osiander wrote to his Nuremberg friends, July 4, 
 saying, among other things : " Melancthon, worn out 
 and exhausted with many labours, vigils and cares, 
 is sometimes troubled with melancholy and almost 
 desperation, without any good reason, which greatly 
 dejecteth most of our party. I soon perceived, and 
 learned from others, that he hath a natural inclina- 
 tion to melancholy. In such a state of mind, he 
 thinketh, speaketh, writeth and acteth, which doth 
 not help our cause, so that he must be watched and 
 chided, that he do nothing which will make us all 
 repent. Luther, knowing this, took occasion to 
 write pungently to him, and to exhort others to 
 chide him." Melancthon thanks Luther, July 8, 
 for answering his letters, and from that time the 
 current of good feeling flows clear again. 
 
 Luther had just finished his commentary on the 
 118th Psalm, which he dedicated to Frederic, 
 abbot at Nuremberg, of whom mention has been 
 already made. In the dedicatory epistle, dated 
 July 1, he says : " Venerable and dear friend and 
 patron, I have desired to manifest my gratitude for 
 your love and favour ; but, in worldly estate, I am 
 a poor beggar ; and had I ever so much, your condi- 
 tion is such that I could effect but little. I have, 
 therefore, turned to my wealth, my treasure, and
 
 JE 46.] EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 449 
 
 taken from it my favourite psalm. I have put my 
 thoughts upon it on paper, because I had so much 
 leisure here in my desert, and because I wished, at 
 times, to rest and relieve my mind from severer 
 labours, namely, the complete translation of the 
 Prophets, which I hope soon to finish. These 
 thoughts of mine I have desired to dedicate and 
 present to you, having nothing better to give. 
 Though some may regard it a profuse and, perhaps, 
 useless expectoration, yet I am sure it containeth 
 nothing evil or unchristian. For it is my psalm, 
 the one I love. Though all the psalms and the 
 whole Bible are very dear to me, as my only conso- 
 lation and life, still I am wonderfully attached to 
 this psalm, so that I may call it mine. For it hath 
 often done me great service, and helped me out of 
 many sore troubles, when neither emperors, kings, 
 sages, nor saints could have helped me. I value it 
 more than I should the favour, wealth and power 
 of the pope, the Turks, the emperor and all the 
 world ; and I would not exchange this psalm for 
 them all together." 
 
 To Spengler he thus describes the device which 
 he had decided to have for his seal : " First, a black 
 cross in a heart of the natural colour, to remind me 
 that faith in him who died on the cross saveth us. 
 . . . Though the cross is black, mortifieth and 
 giveth pain, still it leaveth the heart in its own 
 colour, doth not destroy nature, doth not kill, but 
 maketh alive. . . . Such a heart is enveloped in a 
 white rose, to show that faith giveth joy, comfort 
 and peace. It is set in a white rose, and not a red 
 one, because it giveth peace and joy not las the world 
 giveth. . . . This rose is placed in an azure field, 
 to signify that such spiritual joy is the beginning of 
 as*
 
 450 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1530. 
 
 future heavenly joy, already .apprehended and in- 
 cluded in hope, but not yet manifest. In the azure 
 field is a gold ring, to signify that the bliss of heaven 
 is everlasting, and the most precious of all posses- 
 sions, as gold is the most precious metal." 
 
 SECTION II. From the Diet of Augsburg in 1530 to Luther's 
 Death in 1546. 
 
 THE purpose for which the emperor had sum- 
 moned the diet was not answered. On his part, 
 there was to be seen nothing of that clemency men- 
 tioned in his summons, but, on the contrary, a close 
 adhesion to the papal party, and a menacing seve- 
 rity toward the Protestants, and most of all toward 
 the Elector of Saxony. But the latter, together 
 with Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, manifested a 
 firmness and courage superior to all such intimida- 
 tions. Indeed, the excessive violence of the empe- 
 ror and the severity of the decision of the diet, both 
 bound the Protestant princes more closely together, 
 and provoked an opposition,' which, when organized 
 at successive conventions at Smalcald, became too 
 powerful to be despised, and the emperor, at last, 
 saw the necessity of coming to an agreement with 
 them. At the Nuremberg pacification, in 1532, 
 articles were agreed upon and signed by both par- 
 ties. 
 
 The course pursued by Luther during this busy 
 period of two years, in which he was consulted in 
 respect to all the public measures adopted by the 
 Protestant statesmen, was somewhat peculiar, pre- 
 senting a singular compound of opinionated perti^ 
 nacity and of submissive compliance. In his un- 
 charitableness toward the Zwinglian party, he per- 
 sisted so far as to exclude them from any participa-
 
 .flS. 47-63.] WANT OP CHARITY. 451 
 
 tion in the Protestant cause, neither admitting them 
 as associates at Augsburg, nor as members of the 
 Smalcald confederacy for mutual protection and 
 defence. The Landgrave Philip, who sympathized 
 with Zwingle in his view, exhausted all his influence 
 upon Luther, in endeavouring to persuade him that 
 the differences of opinion which prevailed respecting 
 the Lord's supper were not so fundamental as to 
 require the utter rejection of the Swiss churches. 
 But it was all in vain. Luther's pious abhorrence 
 of their doctrines was as deeply and as immovably 
 fixed in his mind as was that against the Anabaptists. 
 On the other hand, he maintained that the Pro- 
 testant rulers had no right to combine together for 
 mutual defence, if the emperor should make war 
 upon them for their religion. When the Saxon 
 jurists decided, that, according to the constitutional 
 principles of the empire, the electors and other 
 princes had, clearly, the right to protect themselves 
 against the illegal encroachments of emperors, Lu- 
 ther merely admitted that it might be so according 
 to the civil law; but adhered to his original opinion 
 in a theological point of view. But what is still 
 more strange, he resisted nearly all the statesmen 
 of his own party, who insisted, that, not only those 
 who had already embraced the Protestant doctrines, 
 but those who should hereafter embrace them, 
 ought to have their rights secured in the articles of 
 pacification with the emperor. Luther said it was 
 but reasonable that the emperor should insist 
 on excluding the latter from the benefits of the 
 articles of agreement. If men will not come out 
 and show themselves openly in times of danger, 
 they are not entitled, he maintained, to the quiet 
 and security acquired by others at their peril, and
 
 452 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1630-46, 
 
 so he prevailed against the landgrave, who main- 
 tained the contrary. However great we may admit 
 the urgency to have been to secure a peace with 
 the emperor, and to avoid a religious war, the prin- 
 ciple here avowed by Luther savours little of that 
 brotherly love which is an essential part of true 
 religion. 
 
 The emperor was obliged to be often absent from 
 Germany, in order to attend to his affairs in Spain 
 and Italy. As he had taken decided ground against 
 the Protestants, and as the dukes of Bavaria were 
 jealous of the house of Austria, it seemed neces- 
 sary to the emperor to have some one on whom he 
 could rely to protect his interests in Germany dur- 
 ing his absence. The Elector of Saxony was, 
 properly, the vicar of the empire ; but he was the 
 leader of the Protestants, and a league between 
 them and the disaffected Catholic dukes of Bavaria 
 might endanger the emperor's interests. Charles 
 decided to secure the coronation of his brother 
 Ferdinand as King of Rome, the effect of which 
 would be to make him successor to the imperial 
 throne, thus establishing his own family in power, 
 and excluding the rival Bavarian family ; and also 
 to place the government of Germany in Ferdi- 
 nand's hands, whenever he himself should have 
 occasion to be absent. Luther, with less wisdom 
 and less knowledge of political affairs than the 
 advisers of the elector, advocated the propriety of 
 yielding this point to the emperor, greatly to the 
 grief of the elector. 
 
 The latter part of Luther's life is not susceptible 
 of the same treatment as the former. It has less 
 unity, and must either be presented without a very 
 consecutive chain of events, or must be spread out
 
 JE. 47-63.1 DEATH OF HIS MOTHER. 453 
 
 * 
 
 into a general history of the times, so widely as to 
 lose the character of a biography. The choice 
 between the two courses cannot, in the present 
 work, be doubtful. Leaving, therefore, the tenor 
 of general history, we revert to the narrative of 
 events of a more personal character. 
 
 The irregular and harsh proceedings of the ma- 
 gistrates of Zwickau, in relation to the clergy of 
 the place, were doubly wounding to Luther's feel- 
 ings. He was grieved that such an example should 
 be set to the newly-organized churches; and he 
 almost regarded it as a personal injury that the 
 pastor, Hausmann, his confidential friend, should 
 be treated with such indignity. He, therefore, 
 used his influence with the elector in favour of 
 Hausmann's removal from " the beastly inhabitants 
 of Zwickau" to a people of a more congenial spirit; 
 and the result was, the settlement of his friend in 
 Dessau, where he enjoyed the confidence of the 
 princes of Anhalt. 
 
 In the same year, that is, in 1531, Luther was 
 afflicted by the death of his mother. He was not 
 able to visit her in her last illness, but wrote her 
 an affectionate letter to confirm her faith and to pre- 
 pare her mind for the event that was near at hand, 
 and closed by saying, "All the children and my 
 Katy pray for you. Some of them weep, and 
 some eat and say, ' Grandmother is very sick.' The 
 grace of God be with us all." 
 
 The next year was made one of sadness to Luther 
 by the death of the Elector John, surnamed the 
 Constant. He went to Schweinitz, a summer resi- 
 dence a few miles to the east of Wittenberg, for the 
 purpose of indulging in the chase, and was taken 
 suddenly ill. Luther, Melancthon and Schurf ar-
 
 454 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1530-46. 
 
 rived a short time before his death. " Alas I" said 
 Luther, " how a great prince dieth here alone, 
 without the presence of a son, relative, or friend to 
 witness his departure ! The physicians say he died 
 of the cramp. Just as children are born without 
 sorrow, live without sorrow, and die without sorrow, 
 so will our dear prince, at the last day, come to him- 
 self, as if fresh from the chase in the Lochau 
 Forest, and will not be conscious of what happened 
 to him." His son, John Frederic, then in his 
 twenty-ninth year, succeeded him. Though a firm 
 and faithful friend of the Reformation, and already 
 conversant with public affairs, he had not the high 
 qualities of wisdom and firmness which characterized 
 his predecessors, Frederic and John. 
 
 Many of Luther's letters, written about this pe 
 riod, were letters of consolation to the afflicted, the 
 tempted and the persecuted, or of warning to rulers 
 and magistrates against disturbers of the public 
 peace, particularly the Anabaptists, who were be- 
 ginning, at Munster and other places, to lift their 
 heads again. In 1533 and 1534, he was employed 
 in preparing a new edition of his hymns, in com- 
 pleting his translation of the Bible, in comforting 
 and aiding Christians who had been banished from 
 Leipsic by Duke George, and in other labours of 
 piety and charity. 
 
 Luther, from the beginning of his public career 
 as a reformer, had always desired and demanded 
 that a general and free council of the church should 
 be held, before which both religious parties might 
 bring their complaints for adjudication. The Ger- 
 man diets had joined with Luther in this request, 
 and even the emperor promised that such a council 
 should be held. But the Roman pontiffs had op-
 
 JE. 47-G3.] GENERAL COUNCIL PROPOSED. 455 
 
 posed the project, or, if they seemed to yield, they 
 required that it be held in Italy) be constituted and 
 organized by the pope, and, moreover, that it decide 
 tfie questions submitted to it by the traditions and 
 usages of the church. The Protestants, on the con- 
 trary, demanded that the council should be held in 
 Germany, where the troubles existed; that it should 
 not be subject to the authority of the pope, but that 
 he, as one of the parties, should be subject to the au- 
 thority of the council ; and that its decisions should 
 be formed, not according to human traditions, but ac- 
 cording to the word of God. Charles V., on his way 
 to Spain in 1532, had an interview with the pope, 
 Clement VII., on the subject, in consequence of which 
 a papal ambassador and an imperial orator appeared 
 with the proposal before the elector at Weimar, but 
 were referred by him to the assembly of Protestant 
 princes to be held the year following at Smalcald. 
 At that meeting they received answer, as stated 
 above, that the council must be held in Germany, 
 that the pope must not be both party and judge, and 
 that the Scriptures, and not human opinions, must be 
 ultimate authority. 
 
 Two years later, in 1535, the project was renewed 
 by Paul III., Clement's successor, and the elector 
 asked the opinion of Luther whether any other 
 answer should be given to the pope than that given 
 before. Luther replied that he believed the whole 
 matter to be a mere feint, and therefore was not dis- 
 posed to trouble himself about the conditions. Lu- 
 ther had good reasons for such an opinion, for the 
 previous proposal for a council on the part of the 
 pope was undoubtedly made for no other purpose 
 than that of preventing a German diet which, he 
 feared, would meet to act on the same subject, at
 
 156 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1530-46. 
 
 that unfavourable time, when the Protestant power 
 was strong. The papal legate, Vergerio, came, in 
 this instance, to Wittenberg, to hold an interview 
 with Luther himself, and the morning after his 
 arrival invited Luther and Bugenhagen to break- 
 fast. Early in the morning, Luther sent for a barber 
 to prepare him for the occasion, who, when he had 
 come, said, " How is it that you wish to be shaved 
 so early." " I am to go," replied Luther, " to the 
 legate of his holiness the pope, and I must adorn my- 
 self, so as to appear young ; and the legate will then 
 say to himself, ' Zounds ! is Luther so young, and 
 yet hath done so much mischief? What then will 
 he yet do?' " When his head was dressed, he put 
 on his best clothes, and laid his jewel, set in gold, 
 around his neck. The barber said to him, "Doctor, 
 that will be offensive to them." " For that reason 
 I do it," said Luther ; " they have conducted offen- 
 sively enough toward us ; and we must manage in 
 this way with those serpents and foxes." " Go, then, 
 doctor," said the barber, " in God's name, and the 
 Lord be with you, that you may convert them." 
 "That," said the doctor, "I shall not doj but it 
 may be that I shall read them a good lesson, and 
 let them go." He then mounted the carriage with 
 Bugenhagen and drove off to the castle, to the 
 legate. On the way, he smiled and said to his com- 
 panion, " Here go the German pope and Cardinal 
 Bugenhagen ; these are God's instruments and ar- 
 tillery." ' 
 
 On arriving at the place, he was announced and 
 immediately admitted and kindly received, and he 
 greeted the legate in turn, but not with the high- 
 sounding titles which were formerly used on such 
 occasions. They soon began to speak of a council,
 
 JE. 47-63.] INTERVIEW WITH THE LEGATE. 457 
 
 and Luther said, "You are not in earnest about 
 holding a council ; it is only a trick ; and if you 
 were to hold one, it would concern itself only about 
 cowls, shorn heads, meats, drinks, and such-like 
 foolish things, and others still more useless, which 
 we know, at the outset, to be nothing. But of faith 
 and justification, and other useful and weighty mat- 
 ters, such as how believers may be united in spirit 
 and in faith, you do not wish to confer, nor would 
 it be for your interest. . . . But if you desire to 
 have a council, very well : have one, and I will 
 come, though I should know you would burn me at 
 the stake." "Where?" answered the legate. "In 
 what city will you have the council ?" " Where you 
 please," was the answer, " at Mantua, or Padua, or 
 Florence, or wheresoever you please." "Will you 
 come to Bologna?" said the legate. " To whom does 
 that place belong?" inquired Luther. "To the pope." 
 " Gracious Lord, hath the pope got his clutches on 
 this city, too ! Well, I will come," said Luther. 
 The legate added, " The pope would not refuse to 
 come to you at Wittenberg." " Well, then," said Lu- 
 ther, " let him come j we should like to see him." 
 " How would you like to see him," replied the legate, 
 "with an army or without?" "Just as best pleas- 
 eth him," said Luther; "we will be ready for either." 
 Then the legate asked, "Do you consecrate priests?" 
 " To be sure," said Luther, " for the pope will not 
 consecrate or ordain any for us. Here you see a 
 bishop, (pointing to Bugenhagen,) whom we have con- 
 secrated." After the interview was over, and when 
 the legate was seated upon his horse, he said to Luther, 
 " See that you are prepared for the council." Luther 
 replied, " I will come, sir, with this neck of mine." 
 Through the influence of the Landgrave of Hesse 
 
 39
 
 458 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1530-46. 
 
 and Bucer, who were extremely desirous for the 
 union of the two Protestant parties, efforts were 
 made in 1534, 1535, and 1536, to agree upon arti- 
 cles of concord relating to the eucharist. The cities 
 of Strasburg, Augsburg, Ulm, and Esslingen in 
 particular, which were situated in the south-west of 
 Germany, along the borders, between the Luthe- 
 ran influence on the one side, and the Zwinglian 
 on the other, were inclined to the extreme views of 
 neither party, and were anxious that both should 
 agree on some common intermediate ground. A 
 convention was finally held at Wittenberg, May, 
 1536, for the purpose, and Luther succeeded in 
 bringing the Upper Germans, as they were called, 
 to subscribe to his views. 
 
 Toward the close of the year 1536, as the pope 
 had proposed to the Protestants to hold a general 
 council, the theologians of Wittenberg were directed 
 by the elector to draw up articles in respect to it, 
 which might be presented to the convention about 
 to be held on that subject at Smalcald. This is the 
 origin of the Smalcald Articles. Luther, Melanc- 
 thon, Bugenhagen and others from Wittenberg at- 
 tended this convention, which resulted in a refusal 
 on the part of the Protestants to participate in the 
 council. Luther and his companions, who went by 
 the way of Grimma, Altenburg and Weimar, ar 
 rived at Smalcald, near the south-western border of 
 Saxony, the 7th of January, 1537. The first week 
 he had little to do, and complained that business 
 proceeded so slowly. The second, he suffered so 
 severely from the stone that he did not expect to 
 live to return home. The elector, Melancthon, 
 Spalatin and Myconius were often at his bed-side. 
 The elector said to him : " If, contrary to our hopes,
 
 JE. 47-63.] DECLENSION OF AGRICOLA. 459 
 
 it be the will of God to take you from us, be not 
 concerned about your wife and children, for they 
 shall be my wife and children." Getting no relief 
 for more than a week, he decided to be removed 
 from Smalcald, as medicines could not be procured 
 there. At Tambach, he experienced relief; but 
 while at Gotha he had a return of his excruciating 
 pains, and six stones, one of nearly the size of a 
 bean, passed from him. He was able to proceed to 
 Erfurt, and then, after a pause, to Weimar. At Al- 
 tenburg, he stopped at the house of Spalatin. Me- 
 lancthon wrote afterward from Grimma that Luther 
 had some rest and could take a little food ; and, after 
 a little more than two weeks from the time of leaving 
 Smalcald, he reached home in extreme weakness. 
 
 The following year was imbittered by one of the 
 severest trials which Luther had been called to en- 
 dure. Agricola, of Eisleben, one of his dearest 
 and most confidential friends, led on, perhaps, by 
 some of Luther's unguarded and unadvised expres- 
 sions, became an avowed Antinomian, and maintained 
 that Christians had nothing to do with the law of 
 God, but were to concern themselves simply with 
 Christ crucified. The enemies of Luther rejoiced 
 in this new schism, and maintained that it was the 
 legitimate fruit of his doctrines. He wrote six 
 elaborate disputations in the course of four years to 
 disprove the positions of Agricola, and took from him 
 the license to preach which he had formerly given him. 
 
 For twenty years, ever since the Leipsic Disputa- 
 tion in 1519, Duke George had been among the 
 bitterest of Luther's enemies. He imprisoned and 
 put to death Luther's followers, and at one time 
 banished eight hundred souls from Leipsic. But, 
 Connected as his territories were with those of the
 
 460 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1530-46. 
 
 elector, it was impossible to keep them free from the 
 influence of the Reformation. Even his brother 
 Henry, who held his court at Freiberg, favoured the 
 evangelical doctrines. Finally, Prince John, son 
 of the duke, on whom he relied for the maintenance 
 of the Catholic faith after his death, died before 
 him, and afterward another son ; and the Protestant 
 Henry was the next heir to the throne. Just at 
 the time that a dangerous league of Catholic princes 
 was expected to open an attack upon the Protestants, 
 George, a leader among them, suddenly died, and 
 all their plans were destroyed in a moment. 
 
 Luther and his associates were now called upon 
 by Duke Henry of Saxony to introduce the Refor- 
 mation into his dominions, beginning at Leipsic. 
 Luther preached his first sermon on this occasion, 
 May 24, 1539, in the -chapel of the same palace 
 where, twenty years before, he had held his debate 
 with Eck. This was in fulfilment of his own pre- 
 diction: "I see, that Duke George will not cease 
 opposing the word of God and the poor Lutherans. 
 But I shall live to see him and his whole family 
 perish, and shall one day preach God's word in Leip- 
 sic." The next day, when he preached in St. Nicho- 
 las' church, there was such a crowd that all the 
 space about the pillars and railings and passages 
 was full, and many stood out of doors and heard 
 him through the windows. The hearers fell upon 
 their knees, and with tears thanked God that the 
 day of their deliverance had come ! 
 
 It was at the close of the same year, that the un- 
 happy consultations commenced about the bigamy 
 of the Landgrave of Hesse. Luther and Melancthon 
 were involved in inextricable difficulties by the false 
 principles on which they suffered themselves to act.
 
 M. 47-63.] INEFFECTUAL CONFERENCES. 461 
 
 That they acted hypocritically, out of fear of offend- 
 ing the landgrave, as has often been said, is hardly 
 credible ; that they were misled by their ill-advised 
 casuistry, is but too evident. Nothing was ever 
 thrown into their teeth with more bitterness and scorn 
 by the Catholics, than their secret approval of this 
 flagrant violation of Christian morals. A sufficient 
 apology for their conduct in the unhappy affair can- 
 not be given. It so wore upon Melancthon's feel- 
 ings as to bring on a sickness which came very near 
 proving fatal. 
 
 Conventions, conferences and diets were still held, 
 during the next succeeding two or three years, at 
 Smalcald, Worms, Ratisbon and Spire, to settle the 
 difficulties between the Catholics and Protestants; 
 but Luther, who was tired of these useless endea- 
 vours, excused himself from attending them, and 
 the task was imposed upon Melancthon and others, 
 whom Luther aided by his counsels. The last years 
 of Luther's life were rendered cheerless, partly by 
 the death of many dear friends, and partly by the 
 unhappiness which sprung up between himself and 
 the living. These events will be sufficiently pre- 
 sented in the extracts from his letters which follow. 
 
 Although more than thirteen hundred octavo pages 
 of letters were written by Luther after his return 
 from Coburg in 1530, only a small part of them 
 relate to his private history. The remainder are 
 connected with public transactions, of so complicated 
 a character, that a full explanation of them would of 
 itself constitute a general history of Germany for 
 the times. Only a few selections, therefore, can, in 
 accordance with the plan of this work, find a place 
 here. 
 
 The third letter written after his return to Wit- 
 
 39*
 
 462 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1530-46. 
 
 tenberg was addressed to Amsdorf, his confidential 
 friend. In this he says : " In complaining unto me 
 of my silence, most excellent Amsdorf, you do but 
 furnish me with an occasion of justly expostulating 
 with you for yours, which hath been so obstinate 
 and persevering. For when you did know of my 
 solitude, you were not only wanting in commisera- 
 tion, so as not to comfort me with your letters, but 
 you added grief to grief, by afflicting me with 
 perpetual silence. And now you even add to your 
 sin by gratuitously reproving and censuring me for 
 a fault, not my own, but yours. You compel me 
 to suspect that you have meanwhile, perhaps, been 
 made Archbishop of Magdeburg and Primate of 
 Germany, so that you easily forget me in my poverty, 
 and proudly censure me. Hence it cometh, I think, 
 that you complain of my calling the Archbishop of 
 Mainz 'most reverend father/ lest I may thereby 
 detract somewhat from your honour; though I only 
 used the language of courts, in which even ferocious 
 demons are called 'gracious lords.' In one thing 
 you gratify me, namely, in approving the books I 
 have published this summer. More I could not 
 write, by reason of my poor health; and on those 
 which were written, only half, or a little more, of 
 the time I was in my solitude, stolen with difficulty 
 from sickness, could be employed. The printers 
 proceeded with a pace equally slow, for they still 
 have in press two books written long ago. Of the 
 rest I will speak when you come to visit me, which 
 I hope will be very soon, in order that we may re- 
 fresh ourselves in each other's company, before we 
 are separated for ever. For I feel that I am fast 
 growing old, at least, am losing my strength. A
 
 JE. 47-63.] EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 463 
 
 messenger of Satan hath severely buffeted me. The 
 Lord be with you in grace and truth." 
 
 The name of Jerome Weller has already been 
 mentioned as a tutor to Luther's son, and as a young 
 man of fine talents, but of melancholy disposition. 
 His brother Peter was also a friend of Luther, and 
 even lived in his house. To the former, in a state 
 of despondency, Luther, whose experience well quali- 
 fied him for the office, wrote the following words of 
 encouragement, under date of November 6, 1530: 
 "My dearest Jerome, you ought to consider that 
 this temptation of yours is from the devil ; and that 
 he thus vexeth you because you believe in Christ. 
 For you see how secure and joyful he lets those be 
 who are most hostile to the gospel, as Eck, Zwin- 
 gle and others. . . . You ought to rejoice in this 
 temptation of the devil, because it is a sure sign that 
 God is propitious and merciful to you. You will 
 say, 'The temptation is heavier than I can bear,' and 
 will fear lest it so prostrate and oppress you that you 
 will fall into desperation and blasphemy. I know this 
 art of the devil : whom he cannot by the first assault 
 lay prostrate, he endeavoureth assiduously to harass 
 and debilitate, that he may fall and confess himself 
 vanquished. Wherefore, as often as this temptation 
 cometh upon you, take care that you do not debate 
 with the devil, or indulge in these deadly cogitations. 
 For this is but to believe the devil, and to yield 
 to him. But rather boldly despise these cogitations 
 suggested by the devil. In this kind of temptation 
 contempt is the best and easiest means of overcom- 
 ing the devil. Laugh your adversary to scorn, then, 
 and seek for a companion or friend. Flee solitude, 
 for he then lieth in wait for you, and catcheth you 
 when you are alone. This devil is overcome, not by
 
 464 LIFE OF LUTHER. [153CM6. 
 
 resistance and disputation, but by ridicule and con- 
 tempt. Indulge, therefore, in playfulness and face- 
 tiousness with my wife and others, and by that means 
 delude those diabolical machinations, and be of good 
 cheer. This temptation is more needful to you than 
 your meat and drink. I wish to relate what hap- 
 pened unto me when I was about your age. When 
 I first went into the monastery, it happened that I 
 was always falling sad and melancholy, nor could I 
 lay this sadness aside. Wherefore I consulted Dr. 
 Staupitz, and confessed to him, whom I love to men- 
 tion, and disclosed to him what horrid and terrific 
 cogitations I had. He said : ' You know not, Mar- 
 tin, how useful and necessary this temptation is to 
 you. For God doth not so exercise you in vain; 
 you will see that he will employ you to do great 
 things.' And so it hath turned out. For I am be- 
 come (this I may justly say of myself) a great doctor, 
 which at that time, when I was under the temptation, 
 I would never have believed. So, beyond all doubt, 
 will it be with you. You will become a great man. 
 See that you be of good heart, and be assured that 
 such words, coming from the lips of learned and great 
 men, are a sort of oracle and divination." 
 
 To Veit Dietrich, now in Coburg, he writes: "I 
 have succeeded to the labours of Bugenhagen, [the 
 city pastor;] I preach, lecture [in the university,] 
 am distracted with causes to be decided, and am busy 
 in writing letters, so that I can do no more. Salute 
 all in my name. I must seize time by force, if I 
 would do any thing out of my line of duties. My 
 head still roareth, especially in the morning." 
 
 As pastor, he had occasion to perform new duties, 
 one of which, relating to a breach of promise, we 
 find represented in the following official letter : " I,
 
 JE. 47-63.] EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 465 
 
 Martin Luther, doctor of the Holy Scriptures, and 
 preacher at Wittenberg, do you, Brosius Heinrich of 
 Dittersdorf, to wit, that the honourable lady Anna, 
 widow of Wetzel of Zernegal, hath appeared before 
 me, and entered complaint that you promised her 
 proper marriage, and was therefore publicly affianced 
 to her; and, notwithstanding this, have abandoned 
 her, and refused to fulfil, according to promise and 
 duty, (which are binding before God and all the 
 world,) to consummate the marriage with the afore- 
 said lady. Wherefore she hath called upon me, as 
 pastor, for the time being, at Wittenberg, to protect 
 her in her rights. In place, therefore, of the pastor, 
 I hereby peremptorily summon and cite you to ap- 
 pear before me and others, who have such things in 
 charge, here at Wittenberg, to hear said complaint, 
 and whatever else is right and proper." 
 
 The deliberation of Luther with his young friend 
 Jerome Weller, in regard to his marriage celebra- 
 tion, is not without interest to us. " I have learned 
 with satisfaction," says Luther in a letter to him, 
 " that you have become a man, and have obtained a 
 companion. . . . May Christ bless you and your 
 spouse, and grant that you may always live together 
 with kindness and affection. I do not entirely ap- 
 prove of your plan for the wedding. You know the 
 difficulty under which we labour here because of our 
 market, so that neither I nor my Katy can coa- 
 ceive how, in such a destitution of all things, we 
 can provide a suitable dinner for such a multitude. 
 I would not like to leave any stain upon your 
 honour or mine. I think it would be better to cele- 
 brate the marriage in Freiberg, [Weller's residence,] 
 or, if that cannot be done, to take leave of your 
 friends there with a splendid entertainment for as
 
 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1530-46. 
 
 many as would be convenient, and then come hither 
 with a small company, as Cruciger, Dr. Briick and 
 others did, and prepare a collation or dinner of two 
 or three tables. ... If you were to invite all the 
 university and the families of the professors, and 
 others, who could not on my account be omitted, 
 you would need nine or twelve tables. You remem- 
 ber that on receiving your doctorate, you invited the 
 men without their wives and children, and yet seven 
 or eight tables were filled." In another letter, he 
 says such a public wedding in Wittenberg would 
 cost one hundred gulden. 
 
 In January of 1537, Luther wrote to his son 
 John, who was at school, these affectionate and judi- 
 cious lines : " Thus far, my dearest John, your 
 studies and the letters you have written please me. 
 If you go on thus, you will not only gratify me, a 
 tender father, but will chiefly benefit yourself in not 
 becoming degenerate. Wherefore proceed diligently 
 as you have begun. For God, who commandeth 
 children to obey their parents, promiseth blessings 
 to obedient children. See that you regard this 
 blessing only, and that you do not allow yourself to 
 be misled by bad examples. For the same God 
 threateneth disobedient children with cursing. Fear 
 God, then, who blesseth and curseth, and who, 
 though he delay his promises and threatenings to 
 the destruction of the wicked, fulfilleth them soon 
 enough for the salvation of the good. Fear God, 
 then, and listen to your parents, who desire nothing 
 but your good, and flee base and evil conversation. 
 Your mother heartily saluteth you, as also aunt 
 Lene, with your sisters and brothers, who also all 
 look forward to your happy career and the end of 
 your studies. Your mother biddeth you salute your
 
 M. 47-63.] EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 467 
 
 preceptor and his wife. If they wish to come with 
 you this carnival or vacation, very well, though I 
 shall be absent. Aunt Lene desireth it very much. 
 Farewell, my son ; learn and practise the counsels 
 of good men. The Lord be with you." 
 
 The Smalcald convention was held in February 
 of this year. A few words from Luther's letters 
 will sufficiently represent to us the character of that 
 convention, and the feelings which he cherished in 
 respect to it. "Although, my dear Jonas," he writes 
 to him from Altenburg, "this letter, as I suppose, 
 will not come to hand immediately, nevertheless I 
 desire to say that I hope you are by this time re- 
 covered from the gravel, and that my prayers are 
 heard. It is rumoured that the holy legate, [Peter 
 Vorst,] Bishop of Aix, is on his way from Nurem- 
 berg to visit our prince. This hath been written to 
 him from Coburg, whereunto he replied, that the 
 legate must come to Smalcald, if he desired to see 
 him. . . . The imperial chancellor, Matthias Held, 
 will be there. The convention will, perhaps, be 
 greater than either party expected. God grant that 
 it may be a true council. ... I miss your company 
 exceedingly. Visit my family, and also the Pome- 
 ranian Rome [the family of Pomeranus, or Bugen- 
 hagen] and its Quirites, [citizens.] We are well 
 and happy, and have been sumptuously entertained 
 by the prince in his castles at Grimma and Alten- 
 burg. We had hoped to be guests of that old 
 Pylades [true friend] and Theseus, [namely, Spa- 
 latin;] and therefore amused ourselves, after our 
 manner, which you know, in making Latin verses 
 on him. 
 
 "I wish to write to you while I have leisure; for 
 after a little time we shall be engaged in delibera-
 
 468 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1530-46 
 
 tion. . . . Many think there will not be as many 
 men at the council of Mantua as here, though there 
 may be more mules, asses and horses, with riders 
 like themselves. . . . Yesterday the Landgrave of 
 Hesse and the Duke of Wirtemberg made a splendid 
 entry into the city. To-day, the princes are in secret 
 council, while we are at leisure, and can write. 
 What will be done I do not know, nor can I divine. 
 Yesterday Spalatin preached ; to-day I shall do the 
 same before the princes, in the lofty and spacious 
 parish church, which is so large that our voices will 
 sound like that of a mouse in it. The place and the 
 climate are healthy, and we are well. You only are 
 missed. You would like to see so many great men, 
 and to be seen among them. Yesterday I suffered 
 from the gravel." The dangerous illness, already 
 described, immediately ensued. 
 
 In May, 1538, he wrote to Duke Albert of Prus 
 sia, on the Vistula, in behalf of his brother-in-law, 
 ,rho wished to enter again into the service of that 
 excellent prince. "My brother-in-law," he says, 
 "John von Bora, who was formerly in your service 
 at Memel, [near the borders of Russia,] hath de 
 sired me to write to you. He was forced to stay 
 away from you long, to marry and settle on his 
 estate, in order to hold possession of it^ but hath 
 never wished to abandon your service, He hath 
 always spoken in your praise, and desired to be in 
 your employ; and now it is his request that you 
 will take his long absence in good part, which was 
 caused only by the necessity of securing his own 
 and his brother's estate." This brother of Catharine 
 von Bora, Luther's wife, is often mentioned by Lu- 
 ther in his letters. In 1539, failing of an appoint- 
 ment in the service of Duke Albert, he was made
 
 JE. 47-63.] EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 469 
 
 overseer of a Benedictine nunnery in Leipsic, by 
 Henry, Duke of Saxony. Afterward he obtained 
 from the Elector John Frederic, a small estate, a 
 little south of Altenburg, which he retained from 
 1545 to 1560. 
 
 Not long after writing the letter quoted in part 
 above, he wrote the following lines to a judge in 
 Torgau : " ' Serve the Lord with fear, and be in- 
 structed, ye judges of the earth.' These words 
 should be the judge's daily motto ; and it is, I think, 
 yours. For you are such a pious and Christian 
 judge, as all who know you testify. I thank you, 
 my dear Judge Antony, that you gave your assist- 
 ance to Margaret Dorste, and did not allow the 
 nobles to take away her property and her very blood. 
 You know that Dr. Martin is not only a theologian 
 and a champion of the faith, but a defender of the 
 rights of the poor people, who come to him from all 
 quarters to get help before magistrates, so that he" 
 would have enough to do, if he had no other busi- " 
 ness. But Dr. Luther loveth to serve the poor, as 
 do you also; for you fear the Lord ; you love Christ ; 
 you study the word of God, and still learn your 
 catechism daily no less than the children in the 
 school. Christ, the Lord, will remember this of 
 you. But, dear Judge Antony, it was not enough 
 for you to listen to my request and entreaty, and to 
 give me pleasing intelligence of your love and readi- 
 ness to grant my request, but you must honour me 
 with a present with a whole cask of Torgau beer 
 of your own brewing. I am unworthy of such kind- 
 ness ; and, though I know that you are not poor, 
 but that God hath blest you with abundance, still I 
 should have liked better that you should have given 
 it to the poor, and from their prayers have received 
 
 40
 
 470 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1530-46. 
 
 a greater blessing than you can from poor Martin's 
 alone." 
 
 The following touching allusion to the death of 
 the companion who went with him, when a boy, to 
 the school at Magdeburg, will be read with interest. 
 "It is strange/' says he, in writing to a citizen of 
 Mansfeld, "how carefully all my friends and rela- 
 tions concealed from me the death of John Reineck, 
 your brother-in-law, and my best friend. Neither 
 my brother Jacob nor my Katy was willing that I 
 should know any thing of it in my sickness. Yet I 
 rejoice that he died so happily and piously, though 
 I bear with reluctance and grief the loss of such a 
 man." 
 
 Under date of. 1539, we find a letter of Luther to 
 his sister, whom he addresses as "Lady Dorothy, 
 wife of Balthasar Mackenrot, in the service of the 
 elector at Rossla," in the vicinity of Nordhausen. 
 He there says : "Dear sister, I see from your letter 
 to me that your highly burdened conscience longs 
 after the comforting preaching of the gospel, and 
 that you desire it to be introduced into your church 
 at Rossla. Rejoicing thereat, I have resolved to be 
 with you at Christmas, if God shall spare my life 
 and health, and to introduce, with God's help, the 
 first evangelical preaching myself both at Rossla 
 and Upper Rossla, and to establish it as a memorial. 
 Greet your husband, and your little daughter Mar- 
 garet, for whom I will bring some present." This 
 sister survived Luther several years. 
 
 When his daughter Magdalene was apparently 
 near her end, Luther wrote to Torgau, September 6, 
 1542, for his son John, who was attending school 
 there. "I request you," he said to Marcus Crodel, 
 " to keep from my son John what I now write you.
 
 M. 47-63.] EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 471 
 
 My daughter Magdalene is drawing near to death, 
 and will soon be with her true Father in heaven, 
 unless it shall seem best to God that it should be 
 otherwise. But she longeth so much to see her 
 brother, that I am constrained to send a carriage for 
 him, hoping she may live till he returneth. They 
 were very fond of each other. I do whatsoever I 
 can, that my conscience may not afterward reproach 
 me. Direct him, therefore, without mentioning the 
 reason, to hasten home in this carriage, by which 
 time she will either be with the Lord, or be re- 
 stored." The daughter lived but two weeks. He 
 says, in a letter to Justus Jonas, after her death, 
 that, notwithstanding her peaceful and happy depart- 
 ure, "The power of parental affection is such, that 
 he cannot suppress his sighs and groans." "The 
 countenance, words and motions of the living and 
 dying daughter, so obedient and reverent, remain 
 deeply fixed in my heart." 
 
 The same year, Jonas experienced a great be- 
 reavement in the death of his wife, the most inti- 
 mate of all the friends of Luther's family. The 
 latter wrote to Jonas thus : " What to write I know 
 not, so suddenly hath your calamity stricken me 
 down. We have all lost one of the sweetest of 
 companions. She was not only beloved by me, but 
 her countenance was always pleasant and full of 
 consolation, so that we had all our joys and sorrows 
 in common, and bitter indeed is the separation. I 
 had hoped she would survive me, as the best and 
 first comforter among women for my wife and chil- 
 dren." 
 
 In 1545, the year before his death, Luther be- 
 came dissatisfied, as he had often done before, 
 with the people of Wittenberg for their luxury and
 
 472 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1530-46 
 
 wanton pleasures. He even resolved to leave the 
 place and sp" end the remnant of his days elsewhere ; 
 and in May actually forsook Wittenberg, and went 
 first to Lbbnitz to his friend Ernest von Schonfeld; 
 then to Leipsic to see a mercantile friend by the 
 name of Scherle; afterward to Merseburg to the 
 provost, Prince George of Anhalt; and finally, to 
 Zeitz to visit Amsdorf, now bishop. But the en- 
 treaties of a deputation from the elector and from 
 the university induced him to return. His last 
 work was the completion of his Commentary on 
 Genesis, on which he had laboured diligently ten 
 years. The closing words are: "I am weak, and 
 can do no more. Pray God that he may grant me 
 a peaceful, happy death." 
 
 The Counts of Mansfeld had been for several 
 years at variance with some of their subjects, whom 
 they wished to deprive of their furnaces. Luther's 
 brother-in-law, Mackenrot, was in danger of losing 
 his. Luther had written to Count Albert on the 
 subject in 1540 and in 1542, and also to the other 
 two counts, Philip and George. These counts were 
 in controversy also with each other, in respect to 
 what is called the right of patronage. Luther, who 
 had advised them to settle the matter by a reference, 
 was himself requested to be one of the referees, and 
 gave his consent. Though it was contrary to his 
 custom to intermeddle in secular disputes, he yielded 
 in this case, because he was a native of Mansfeld, 
 and owed it a service. He left Wittenberg, January 
 23, 1546, with his three sons, John, Martin and 
 Paul. On the 25th he 'reached Halle, and stopped 
 with Jonas the three following days, on account of 
 the flood in the river Saale. From this place he 
 wrote to his wife : " Dear Katy. We came hither at
 
 JE. 47-63.] AT EISLEBEN. 473 
 
 eleven o'clock, but did not proceed to Eisleben ; for 
 a great Anabaptist met us with his waves and blocks 
 of ice. We could not return on account of the river 
 Mulda. Therefore we were forced to remain at 
 Halle between two floods, not that we were thirsting 
 for these waters, for we have good Torgau beer and 
 Rhenish wine, and indulged in these till the wrath 
 of the Saale should cool off." 
 
 On the 28th, Luther, his three sons and Jonas, 
 crossed the river in a boat, not without danger, that 
 they might proceed to Eisleben. No sooner had 
 they reached the boundaries of the county of Mans- 
 feld, than the counts met them with an escort of one 
 hundred and thirteen horsemen. Before reaching 
 Eisleben, Luther was very ill, but recovered after 
 being rubbed with warm cloths. From January 29th 
 to February 17th, he was engaged every day at Eisle- 
 ben with the counts in settling their difficulties. He 
 Decame impatient at his apparent want of success, 
 and often wished himself at home again. 
 
 February 6, he wrote as follows : " To the pro- 
 foundly learned lady, Catharine Luther, my gracious 
 housewife at Wittenberg. Dear Katy. We continue 
 here in a state of vexation, and wish ourselves away; 
 but that cannot be, I think, within a week. You 
 may tell Melancthon to correct his Postil, for he did 
 not understand why the Lord called riches thorns. 
 This is a school for learning to understand that. 
 . . . Your sons are at Mansfeld. We have enough 
 to eat and to drink, and should have good times, 
 were it not for these disagreeable transactions." 
 
 While at Eisleben, his native place, he communed 
 twice, ordained two priests, and preached four times. 
 Three days before his death, he preached in the 
 pulpit, which is still standing, his last sermon, from 
 
 40*
 
 474 LIFE OP LUTHER. [1530-46. 
 
 Matt. xi. 25-30, and closed by saying : " This, and 
 much more, may be said from the passage, but I 
 am too weak, and here we will stop." During his 
 stay at Eisleben, his conversation was unusually 
 rich and impressive, both on religious and othei 
 subjects. He experienced all that exhilaration which 
 an old man is wont to have in visiting the place of 
 his birth. Every evening, for those twenty-one days, 
 he retired, about eight o'clock, from the great hall, 
 where the company transacted their business and 
 took their meals, to his private apartment, and, 
 standing by the window, prayed for a long time so 
 earnestly that Dr. Jonas, M. Ccelius, preacher at 
 Mansfeld, his servant Ambrose, and Aurifaber of 
 Weimar, often overheard him. 
 
 On Wednesday, the 17th of February, the Princes 
 of Anhalt and Count Albert of Mansfeld and his 
 friends generally entreated him not to enter the 
 great hall during the business in the forenoon, but 
 to take repose in his own room. He did so, lying a 
 part of the time upon his leathern couch, walking the 
 room a part of the time, and going to the window at 
 times, and praying so that Jonas and Ccelius, who 
 were with him in the room, could hear him. At 
 noon he left his own apartment, and dined in the 
 great hall with the company. At table he was heard 
 to say: "If I could only reconcile the rulers of my 
 native place with one another, and then, with God's 
 permission, make the journey, I would go home, and 
 lay myself down to sleep in my grave, and let the 
 worms devour my body." In the afternoon, before 
 supper, he complained of a painful pressure at the 
 breast, and requested that he might, according to his 
 custom, be rubbed with warm cloths. He expe 
 rienced a little relief, and was able to take his supper
 
 M. 47-63.] DEATH-SCENE. 475 
 
 in the hall. His conversation at this time, which is 
 recorded, related to death, eternity and the recogni- 
 tion of friends in a future state. As he arose from 
 supper, he went to his room, accompanied by his two 
 sons, Martin and Paul, then fourteen and thirteen 
 years of age respectively, and Coelius. Soon the 
 latter left the room, and Aurifaber entered. Luther 
 now complained of a pain in the breast, as before. 
 Jonas and Coelius were immediately called, who 
 rubbed him with warm cloths, and Count Albert, 
 who brought with him the shavings from the tooth of 
 a sea-unicorn, a favourite medicine in those days, 
 and Luther took it. He slept till tt-u o'clock in the 
 evening, and Jonas, Coelius, his host Albrecht, and 
 his wife, Ambrose and Luther's two sons watched 
 with him. At ten he arose, and attempted to walk, 
 but was obliged to return to his bed. He afterward 
 slept till one o'clock, and when he awoke he requested 
 Ambrose to make more fire, although the room had 
 been kept very warm. As Jonas asked him whether 
 he felt weak, he replied: "Oh! how I suffer. Oh! 
 niy dear Jonas, I think I shall die here at Eisleben, 
 where I was born and baptized." The friends were 
 awaked and called in. When Jonas spoke encou- 
 ragingly of his profuse sweat, Luther said, " It is a 
 cold death-sweat; I must yield up my spirit, for my 
 malady increaseth." He then prayed fervently, and 
 commended his siul confidently to God. After tak- 
 ing a little medicine, and assuring hia friends that 
 he should die, he repeated three times quickly the 
 words: "Father, into thy hands do I commend my 
 spirit; thou hast redeemed me, thou faithful God." 
 He then became quiet. The attendants shook him, 
 rubbed him, and spoke to him, but he closed his eyes 
 and made no reply. Jonas and Coulius then spoke
 
 476 LIFE OF LUTHER. [1530-46. 
 
 very loud, and said, "Venerable father, do you die 
 trusting in Christ and in the doctrine which you 
 have preached ?" and he answered distinctly, " Yes," 
 and turned upon his right side and seemed to sleep 
 for nearly a quarter of an hour. His friends were 
 encouraged, but the physician told them that it was 
 no favourable symptom. A light was brought near 
 his face, and it was evidently turning pale ; and his 
 forehead, face and feet were becoming cold. After 
 one gentle breath and sigh, with folded hands, he 
 quietly died, on Thursday, the 18th of February, 
 1546, between two and three o'clock in the morning, 
 at the age of sixty-two years, three months and eight 
 days. He was laid out upon a bed till a lead coffin 
 could be cast; and two painters were employed to 
 take his likeness. 
 
 On the 19th of February, at two o'clock, a funeral 
 discourse was preached by Justus Jonas before a 
 large audience at St. Andrew's church, which stands 
 nearly opposite the house where Luther died. The 
 corpse remained over night in the church, guarded 
 by ten men. The Counts of Mansfeld desired that 
 he might be buried at Eisleben, where he was born 
 and where he died. But the Elector of Saxony was 
 desirous that his remains should be brought to Wit- 
 tenberg, and deposited in the collegiate or electoral 
 church, and the counts yielded to his wishes. An- 
 other funeral discourse, however, was pronounced 
 by Michael Coelius, of Mansfeld, before the body 
 was removed from Eisleben. 
 
 The same day, between twelve and one o'clock, 
 the corpse was removed, a great company following 
 it to the gate of the city, and the Counts of Mans- 
 feld with about fifty-five horsemen proceeding with 
 it to Wittenberg. As they passed along the way
 
 JE. 47-63.] FUNERAL CEREMONIES. 477 
 
 to Halle, the bells were tolled in the villages and 
 many people came to express their grief. At five 
 o'clock, as they approached Halle, the clergy, civil 
 authorities, citizens, schools, matrons, virgins and 
 children in great multitudes came out in mourning, 
 and singing funeral hymns, to meet the procession. 
 At one of the churches, to which the body was con- 
 veyed at seven o'clock in the evening, one .of Lu- 
 ther's hymns was sung amid a flood of tears, and 
 then a watch was stationed there for the night. The 
 next morning, which was Sunday, the procession left 
 the city in the same manner in which they entered 
 it, and reached Bitterfeld at noon, where they were 
 received with becoming ceremony. Here they were 
 met by the delegation from Wittenberg sent by the 
 elector. They came as far as Kemberg, and it was 
 evening. The next morning, they approached the 
 eastern gate of Wittenberg, and were joined by the 
 widow and sons of the deceased, and a great multi- 
 tude from the university and the city, and passed 
 amid crowds of people to the church at the other 
 end of the town. Here the funeral ceremonies took 
 place, and a funeral sermon was preached by Bugen- 
 hagen, and an address was delivered by Melancthon, 
 after which the remains of Luther were deposited 
 near the pulpit where he had preached, where they 
 still lie to attract the attention of the thousands 
 who, after three centuries, still continue to visit 
 Wittenberg, THE SEAT OF THE REFORMATION.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 A. 
 
 AOB.ICOLA, 459. His wife, 419. 
 
 Albert, archbishop of Mainz, 186, 327. 
 
 Alexius, 66. 
 
 Altstedt, 49. 
 
 Anabaptists at Wittenberg, 332. Luther counteracts their 
 
 influence, 338. Luther's severity towards, 433. 
 Anne, St., 67. 
 Augsburg, Luther there before Cajetan, 235. 
 
 Diet of, in 1530, 406, 434. 
 
 Confession, 442. 
 
 Augustinian monks in Saxony, 74. 
 
 B. 
 
 Bacchant, 28. 
 
 Bible, first seen by Luther, 63. 
 
 Biel, 99. 
 
 Biblicus, degree of, 128. 
 
 Bora, Catharine von, 367, 376. Her marriage, 372. 
 
 John von, 468. 
 
 Breslau, schools of, 27. 
 
 c. 
 
 Cajetan, 233, 244. 
 
 Carlstadt, 282, 284. His disorders at Wittenberg, 331. 
 
 Carlstadt, doctrines of, 358. 
 
 470
 
 480 INDEX. 
 
 Catacombs at Rome, 139. 
 
 Catharine Von Bora. See Bora. 
 
 Charles V. writes, requesting that Luther come to 
 
 Worms, 295. 
 
 Coburg, Luther's residence there, 407, 434. 
 Cotta, Madam, 54. 
 
 D. 
 
 D'Aubigne", error of, 15, (note). 
 Doctor of Divinity, Luther's view of, 143. 
 Dorothy, Luther's sister, 470. 
 Dressel, 164. 
 
 E. 
 
 Eck, Prof., 263. His obelisks, 221. 
 
 Education, Luther's domestic, 19. At Mansfeld, 21. At 
 
 Magdeburg, 46. At Eisenach, 50. At Erfurt, 56. His 
 
 religious education, 30. 
 
 Education, promoted by Luther, 15, 394, 419, 430. 
 Eisenach, Luther's removal thither, 48, 55. 
 Eisleben, Luther's birth-place, description of, 12, 15. 
 
 Founds a Latin school at, 15. His last visit to, 472. 
 
 His death at, 476. 
 
 Erasmus, Luther's controversy with, 354. 
 Erfurt, 57. 
 Erfurt University, 57, 58. Luther's trouble with, 148. 
 
 F. 
 
 Feldkirch, 167, 321. 
 Franciscan monks, 47. 
 
 Frederick the Wise, 123, 252. Negotiates respecting 
 Luther's going to Worms, 295. 
 
 G. 
 
 George, Duke of Saxony, 123, 459. 
 German (Catholic) church, 31. 
 Glapio, 302. 
 Goch, 191.
 
 INDEX. 481 
 
 Golden Meadow, 49. 
 Grimma, 162, 367. 
 Gulden, 106 (note), 380. 
 
 H. 
 
 Halle, scenery between it and Eisleben, 11. 
 Helme, scenery of, 49, (note). 
 Henry, Duke of Saxony, 460. 
 Hutten, 307. 
 
 I. 
 
 Indulgences, origin of, 178. Theory of, 179. 
 
 J. 
 
 Jena, Luther's appearance as knight there, 334. 
 
 Jerome, 70. 
 
 Jodocus of Eisenach. See Truttvetter. 
 
 John, Elector, 405. His death, 453. 
 
 John, Luther's son, 384, 466. 
 
 Justification, Luther's first glimpse of, 109, 112. 
 
 K. 
 
 Kessler, 334. 
 
 Lange, 155. 
 
 Leiffer, 165. 
 
 Leipsic Disputation, 262. 
 
 Link, 224. 
 
 Luther, Hans, Martin's father, 16. Piety of, 21. Dig- 
 
 pleased with Martin, 102. His death, 434, 440. 
 Luther, Hans, Martin's son, 416, 384. 
 Luther, Margaret Lindemann, Martin's mother, 18. 
 Luther, Martin, his birth-place, 14. His birth, 14. 
 
 founds a Latin school at Eisleben, 15. 
 
 his parents, 1618. Their residence, 15.
 
 482 INDEX. 
 
 Luther, in the Mansfeld school, 17. 
 
 his mother, 18. 
 
 his education, domestic, 19. At Mansfeld, 21. At 
 
 Magdeburg, 41. At Eisenach, 51. At Erfurt, 
 66. His religious education, 30, 33, 35, 55. 
 his ecclesiastical education, how viewed by 
 himself, 34. Luther a promoter of education, 
 392, 419, 430. 
 
 his studies in Mansfeld, 21, 23, 29. Eisenach, 
 
 50. In Erfurt University, 60. In the Erfurt 
 cloister, scholastic theology, 97. 
 
 his teachers, 22, 23, 51, 61. 
 
 simplicity of, 34. 
 
 witches, his belief in, 38. 
 
 mining, his knowledge of, 40. 
 
 a peasant's son, 41. 
 
 his position, social, 41. Geographical, 43. 
 
 in Magdeburg, 41 18. 
 
 in Eisenach, 48. 
 
 his early poverty, 52. 
 
 a singer in the streets, 54. 
 
 wounded, 60. 
 
 made Master of Arts, 62. 
 
 first sees the Bible, 63, 83. He is made Biblicut, 
 
 128. Studies the Bible, 144. 
 
 in the cloister at Erfurt, 66. His subsequent 
 
 troubles with, 148. 
 
 becomes a monk, 66, 71. Motives, 69, 78. 
 
 his novitiate, 73. 
 
 his humiliation in the cloister of Erfurt, 76. 
 
 his distress in the convent, 79 84, 95, 100, 108. 
 
 he takes the vow, 86. 
 
 first sees Staupitz, 90. 
 
 becomes priest, 102. 
 
 holds mass, 104107. 
 
 his first glimpse of justification, 109 112. 
 
 justification, his early views of, 110. 
 
 Wittenberg, his first visit to, 116. 
 
 he removes to Wittenberg, 116. His early la- 
 
 bours there, 126. Troubles there and Luther's 
 return, 329, 338.
 
 INDEX. 483 
 
 Luther, his first preaching, 131. 
 
 his journey to Rome, 132. In Rome, 134. 
 
 he is made Doctor of Divinity, 142. 
 
 his Lectures on the Psalms, 147. 
 
 his transition state, 154. 
 
 his religious feelings, 159. 
 
 he is made vicar of his order, 160. 
 
 his duties numerous, 169, 429. 
 
 his collision with Tetzel, 193. 
 
 his ninety-five theses, 196. 
 
 Indulgences, his theses on, 196. His sermon on, 
 
 197. 
 
 at Heidelberg, 205. 
 
 his citation, to Rome, 226. To Augsburg, 233. 
 
 he replies to Prierias, 232. 
 
 at Augsburg, 235. 
 
 at the Leipsic Disputation, 266, 279, 284. 
 
 his works on practical religion, 287. He sets out 
 
 for Worms, 298. Enters Worms, 301. 
 
 at the diet of Worms, 301. Luther appears be- 
 
 fore the diet, 305. His account of his bear- 
 ing, 312. He leaves Worms, 314. 
 
 conducted to Wartburg, 315. 
 
 his condition there, 318, 823. His occupations 
 
 there, 325. 
 
 his appearance as knight, at Jena, 334. 
 
 at Zwickau, 344. 
 
 controversy with Erasmus, 354. 
 
 his marriage, 872. 
 
 his domestic life, 377. 
 
 his improvidence, 380. 
 
 his possessions, 381. 
 
 his children, 384. 
 
 as a preacher, 387. 
 
 his love of music, 400. 
 
 his severity, 433. 
 
 at Coburg, 435. 
 
 his misunderstanding with Melancthon, 442. 
 
 his seal, 449. 
 
 his sister Dorothy, 470. 
 
 his death at Eisleben, 476.
 
 484 INDEX. 
 
 Magdeburg, 46. Luther's journey thither, 44. 
 Madeline, Luther's daughter, 377, 386. Her death, 470. 
 Mansfeld, county of, 15, (note). 
 
 town of, 15. Luther's removal to, 15. 
 
 Luther in the school of, 21. School of, 23, 28. 
 
 Mass, 101. Abuse of, 106. 
 
 Melancthon, 229. Misunderstanding with Luther, 442. 
 
 Michelet, error of, 17, (note). 
 
 Miltitz, 246, 253, 259, 278. 
 
 Mining, Luther's knowledge of, 40. 
 
 Monk, Luther, 66. Novice, 77. Priest, 98. 
 
 Monks, their preaching, 37. Their view of baptism, 38, 
 
 88. Franciscan, 47. Augustinian, 74, 76. 
 Mora, the homestead of Luther's ancestors, 13. 
 Mosellanus, 223. 
 Muncer, 49 50. 
 Music, Luther's estimate of, 400. 
 Mutianus, 163. 
 
 N. 
 
 Nathin, Master of Erfurt, 149. 
 Nimptschen, nunnery of, 367. 
 Novitiate, Luther's, 73. 
 Nuremburg, 424. 
 
 0. 
 
 Oemler, Nicholas, 22. 
 
 P. 
 
 Painting, symbolical, seen by Luther, 47. 
 
 Papacy, characteristics of, 31, 98, 177. 
 
 Papal schools, 24 29. Education, 34. Preaching, 37. 
 
 Platter, Thomas, 25. 
 
 Preaching of Luther, 387. 
 
 heard by Luther in his childhood, 37. 
 
 Prierias, 204, 226. 
 
 Priesthood, Luther's, 102. Studies for, 98.
 
 INDEX. 485 
 
 R. 
 
 Reformation defined, 190. 
 
 - its origin in Luther's experience, 65. 
 Eeineck, John, 44, 439, 470. 
 
 Beuchlin, 152, 250. 
 
 Home, 135. Luther there, 134. 
 
 S. 
 
 Safe-conduct, Luther's to Worms, 304. 
 
 Saxony, house of, 123. 
 
 Scheurl, 171. 
 
 Scholastic theology, Luther studies it, 97. 
 
 Schools in the Middle Ages, 2429. 
 
 Schools at Mansfeld, 23. 
 
 Smalcald convention, 467. 
 
 Spalatin, 226, 409, 411. 
 
 Spenlein, 156. 
 
 Staffelstein, 69. 
 
 Staupitz, 90. 
 
 - Luther's letters to him, 215, 249. 
 
 - his superstition, 427. 
 
 T. 
 
 Teachers of schools in the Middle Ages, 24. 
 
 Tetzel, his life, 183. Luther's collision with, 193, 208. 
 
 Theses, the ninety-five of Luther, 196. 
 
 Thuringia, 1213. 
 
 Thuringian forest, 13. 
 
 - character, 32. 
 Trebonius, Luther's teacher, 51. 
 Truttvetter, 62, 213, 152. 
 
 u. 
 
 Usingen, 61. 
 
 Veronica, St., 138. 
 Visitation of Saxony, 426. 
 Vow, Luther's, 86.
 
 486 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 w. 
 
 Walther, the musician, 401. 
 
 Wartburg, how situated, 18. Luther conducted thither, 
 315. His condition there, 318, 323. His occupations 
 there, 325. 
 
 Weller, 463, 465. 
 
 Wessel, 192. 
 
 Winkler, George, murdered, 422. 
 
 Witches, Luther's belief in, 38. 
 
 Wittenberg, 117. Luther's removal to, 116. University 
 of, 119. Languishes, 410. Churches of, 121. Troubles 
 there and Luther's return, 329. Luther forsakes the 
 city, 472. 
 
 Worms, diet of, 294. What was done there before Luther's 
 arrival, 302. Luther sets out for Worms, 298. Enters 
 Worms, 301. Appears before the diet, 305. Luther's 
 account of his hearing, 312. He leaves Worms, 314. 
 
 z. 
 
 Zollsdorf, 382. 
 
 Zwinglians, excluded by Luther, 450.
 
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