Bohemia, and forbade a single soldier to stir, and the emperor does nothing; as if it were settled that we should be exterminated by the Turks." (Dec. 29th, 1542.) "Nothing new here, except that the margrave of Brandenburg is getting evil spoken of by every one, with regard to the war in Hungary. They speak just the same of Ferdinand. I descry so many and such probable reasons for it, that I cannot help believing there is horrible and deadly treachery there." (Jan. 26th, 1542.) "I ask, what will be the end of this horrible treachery of the princes and kings?" (Dec. 16th, 1543.) "May God avenge us on the incendiaries (Luther speaks, almost every month, of fires occurring at Wittemberg). Satan has devised a new plan for getting rid of us. Our wine is poisoned, and lime mixed with our milk. Twelve persons have been killed by poisoned wine at Jena. Perhaps they died of excess of drink; but at all events, it is given out for certain that dealers have been detected selling poisoned milk at Magdeburg and Northuse." (April, 1541.) He writes to Amsdorf, on occasion of the plague at Magdeburg: "What you tell me of the alarm felt of the plague, reminds me of what I observed some years since; and I am surprised to see that the more life in Christ Jesus is preached, the stronger grows the fear of death; whether this fear were lessened, during the reign of the pope, by a false hope of life, and that now the true hope of life is placed before the people, they feel how weak nature is to believe in the conqueror of death, or that God tempts us by these weaknesses, and allows Satan to grow bolder and stronger on account of this alarm! Whilst we believed in the pope, we were as drunkards, men asleep, or fools, mistaking death for life, that is, ignorant of the nature of death and of God's wrath. Now that the light has shone upon us, and that God's wrath is better known, nature has shaken off sleep and folly, and hence greater fear than before. Here I apply the passage of the seventy-first Psalm, ' Cast me not away in the time of age; forsake me not when my strength faileth me.' For I think that these are the latter days of Christ, and the time of casting down; that is, the time of the last great assault of the devil, as David, in his latter days, weakened by years, would have fallen before the giant, had not Abishai come to his aid. year to sing with St. Paul,

I have learnt almost all this As dying, and behold, we live;'

6

and, By your rejoicing, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily.' When he says to the Corinthians, 'In deaths oft,' this was not meditating or speculating on death, but the sensation of death itself, as if hope of life there were none.'” (Nov. 20th, 1538.) "I trust that with this rending of the world, Christ will hasten his coming and crush the globe to atoms, ut fractus illabatur orbis." (Feb. 12th, 1538.)

BOOK THE FOURTH.

A.D. 1530-1546.

CHAPTER I.

Luther's Conversations on Domestic Life, on Wives and Children, and on Nature.

LET us pause in this sad history of the last years of his public life, and retire with Luther into his private life, seat ourselves at his table, by the side of his wife, and in the midst of his children and friends, and listen to the grave words of the pious and tender father of a family.

"The man who insults preachers and women, will never succeed well. From women proceed children, the future heads of families and of the state. To despise them is to despise God and man.' "The Saxon law is too hard in giving the widow a chair and her distaff only. The first we should interpret to mean, a house; the second, her maintenance. We pay our lacquey; what do I say, we give more to a beggar ?" "There can be no doubt that women who die in the faith in child-bearing, are saved, because they die fulfilling the end for which God created them." "In the Low Countries, the priest, on his induction, chooses some little girl as his betrothed, in sign of honoring the marriage state.

Luther being asked whether a Christian preacher, who is bound to suffer imprisonment and persecution for the word's sake, ought not much more to do without marriage? replied: “It is easier to endure imprisonment than desire, as I know in my own person. The more I strove to macerate and subdue the flesh, the more I lusted. Even though gifted with chastity,

one ought to marry to spite the pope. Had I been seized with a fatal illness, I should have wished to summon some pious maid to my death-bed, and wed her, presenting her with two silver goblets as a wedding-gift and morrow's present (morgengabe), in order to show how I honored marriage.” To a friend he writes: "If you lust, marry. You want a wife at once beautiful, pious, and rich. Well, you can have one painted, with red cheeks and white limbs, and such are the most pious; but they are worth nothing for kitchen or couch. . . . No one will ever have to repent rising early and marrying young. . . . It is no more possible to do without a wife than without eating and drinking. Conceived, nourished, borne within the body of woman, our flesh is mainly hers, and it is impossible for us ever to separate wholly from her. Had I wished to make love, I should have taken thirteen years ago to Ave Schonfelden, who is now the wife of doctor Basilius, the Prussian physician. At that time I did not love my Catherine, whom I suspected of being proud and haughty; but it was God's will; it was his will that I should take pity on her, and I have cause, God be praised, to be satisfied."

...

"The greatest grace God can bestow is to have a good and pious husband, with whom you may live in peace, to whom you can trust everything, even your body and your life, and by whom you have little children. Catherine, thou hast a pious husband, who loves thee; thou art an empress. Thanks be to God!"

Alluding to immorality in men, Luther observed: "Let them know that they are, after all, but despisers of the sex, who are not created for their brutal pleasures. 'Tis a

great thing for a young girl to be always loved, and the devil but seldom allows it.. .My hostess of Eisenach said well, when I was a student there: There is no sweeter pleasure upon earth than to be loved by a woman.

"On St. Martin's day (doctor Martin Luther's birth-day), master Ambrosius Brend came to ask him his niece in marriage. One day, surprising them in close conversation, he burst out laughing, and said: 'I am not surprised at a lover having so much to say to his mistress; can they ever tire? We must not put them out of the way; they have a privilege above law and custom!' When he betrothed her to him, he addressed him as follows: Sir, and dear friend, 1

give you this young maid, such as God in his goodness gave her unto me. I confide her to your hands. May God bless you, sanctify your union, and make it happy!"" "Being present at the marriage of John Luffte's daughter, he led her to her bed after supper, and said to the husband, that, according to common custom, he was to be master of the house. when the wife was not in it; and, in token of this, he took one of the husband's shoes, and put it on the top of the bed, showing that he so assumed dominion and government.

Being one day in very high spirits at table, "Be not scandalized," he said, "to see me so merry. I have heard a great deal of bad news to-day, and have just read a letter violently abusing me. Our affairs must be going on well, since the devil is storming so!"

"Were I to make love again, I would have an obedient wife carved for me in stone; I should despair of getting one any other way." 66 Strange thoughts come into one's head the first year of marriage. When at table, one says to oneself, 'Just now thou wert alone, now thou art two' (selbander). On awaking, one sees another head by the side of one's own. The first year my Catherine used to sit by me whilst I was studying, and, not knowing what to say, she asked me,‘Sir doctor, in Prussia, is not the mâitre-d'hôtel the margrave's brother?" " "There should be no delay between the betrothals and the marriage. . . . Friends interpose obstacles. All my best friends kept crying, 'Don't take her, take another.'" "A sure sign that God is hostile to the papacy is, that he has refused it the blessing of corporeal fruit (children). . . . When Eve was brought before Adam, he was filled with the Holy Ghost, and gave her the most beautiful and glorious of names, calling her Eva, that is, mother of all living. He did not call her his wife, but mother, mother of all living. This is woman's glory, and most precious ornament. She is Fons omnium viventium, the source of all human life; a brief phrase, but such as neither Demosthenes nor Cicero could have expressed. The Holy Ghost here speaks by our first father, and having passed so noble a eulogy on marriage, it is but right in us to extenuate the weaknesses of woNo more did Jesus Christ, the Son of God, despise marriage. He is himself born of woman, which is a high testimony to marriage."

men.