Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1521-1530.djvu/492

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I do not know yet, however, whether the journey will take place! We hope for nothing good from it, but suspect that the whole thing is a plot to give them the glory of a victory. We see that in the days of Arius these meetings did more harm than good, and the boastful Arians spread their teach- ing all the farther. Osiander^ of Nuremberg, John Brenz and others have been summoned, but they manfully refuse to go. Whatever happens, pray for us that Christ may rule us for our salvation. Amen. . . . That youth of Hesse is restless and hot-headed. In the last two years the Lord has kept us from two great conflagrations with which he would have set all Germany afire unless God, out of pity for us, had opposed him with His powerful and wonderful hand and turned his plans upside down. So on all sides we are in greater danger from our friends than from our enemies. And still bloody Satan rests not, breathing out slaughters and blood. Therefore we must diligently pray. . . .

842. URBAN BALDWIN TO STEPHEN ROTH AT ZWICKAU.

Buchwald, Wittenberger Brief e, 62. (WrrrENBESG, August i, 1529.)

Baldwin of Luckau in Meissen, matriculated at Wittenberg Septem- ber 15, 1521. In 1530 he became town clerk of Wittenberg, and on April 6 of the same year married a girl named Schutzenmeister, by whom he had three sons. Many of his letters in Buchwald, op, cit. Luther mentions him in 1542 as having given him stone and mortar from the town supply. Enders, xv, 59.

. . . Melanchthon has issued a new Dialectic. I suppose you will receive it. If you wish to hear it you must not long delay, for he will begin to lecture on it next week. . . . One thing more, I have seen Melanchthon dancing with the pro- vost's ■ wife. It was a strange sight. . . .

' Andrew Osiander (x498-i ss^) of Gunzenhansen in Brandenburg, studied at Letpiic and Ingolstadt, was ordained priest 1520. Prom 1522 he was the soul of the Reformation in Nuremberg, like Calvin introducing a strenuous moral sur- Teillance. The Interim in 1549 drove him to Konigsberg, where he was ap- pointed both pastor and professor at the university. A very bitter altercation on the subject of justification, between him and the other clergy, shook the Protestant Church to its foundation. In 1543 he published the De rgvolutionibn* orbiMtn catUsHum of the dying Copernicus, with a preface erroneously stating that the famous astronomer regarded his momentous discovery as a doubtful hypothesis. RGG., I4fe and Select Works by W. MoUer, 1870.

  • Justus Jonas. 'Another account of Melanchthon's dancing, in 1541, is given

in Kostlin-Kaweran, ii, 683, note to p. 506.

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