Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1507-1521.djvu/12

Rh fought harder for the good cause. Ours is an age that trusts life; that scorns a cloistered virtue, idle if stainless, but loves the warrior who rushes into the thick of the forces of evil to overthrow them, even if he is at times mistaken and now and then wrong. And in Luther we have the most active brain, the most intrepid will and the most passionate heart of his century.

It remains to say a few words about my own part in the present work. I have not included all of Luther's extant letters, but have omitted a few which were either unimportant or repetitious or which were already translated in my "Life and Letters of Martin Luther" (1911). The original of the greater part of the epistles is Latin, and may be understood to be so when not otherwise stated. Other letters from the German, English, Greek, Italian and Spanish have been included, the original language being duly stated in every case. I have not translated directly from the Italian and Spanish, but have used either the English version offered by Bergenroth and Brown in the "Calendars of State Papers," where available, or else have retranslated from the German of Kalkoff despatches relating to Luther written from the Diet of Worms. When convenient, I have, however, compared my translation with the original. Adopting Luther's own wise principle (see below, ep. no. 344), I have not tried to give a slavishly literal rendering; I trust that I have never altered the sense or the spirit of my original, but the means employed have been such as were, in my judgment and according to my powers, the best adapted to reproduce in our idiom the literary quality, flavor and effect of the document in question. The fact that in some cases, particularly in Bucer's letters, the text is uncertain and the phrasing at times ungrammatical, has given me the more justification for rather drastic treatment.

In the notes I have endeavored to give all necessary light for the comprehension of the text: explanation of allusions, corrections of mistakes, and short biographical notices of persons mentioned. The basis of my work on Luther's letters has, of course, been the edition of Enders, but with the results of thirty years' scholarship since the first volume of this was