Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1507-1521.djvu/36

 no attention to him and teach others to do the same. For I am not perjured because I took my degree elsewhere. For both universities and all of you know that I never lectured on the Bible at Erfurt, on which occasion it is customary to take an oath, nor am I aware that I ever took an oath in the whole course of my academic career. I did lecture on the Sentences at Erfurt, but I believe no one will affirm that I took an oath at that time. ... I write this, excellent fathers, lest the Erfurt doctors of theology should consider me a despiser of the uni- versity to whom, as to a mother, I owe everything. . ..

But whatever men have done I am peacefully disposed to- wards you all, however much I may have been offended. Foi God has blessed me richly, unworthy as I am, and I have no cause to do ought but rejoice and love and bless even those who have deserved the contrary from me, just as I have deserved the contrary to what I receive from the Lord. Where- fore please be content, and lay aside all bitterness, if there is any, and let not my removal to Wittenberg provoke you, for thus the Lord, who is not to be resisted, willed. Farewell in the Lord.

Brother M. Luder.

8. LUTHER TO SPALATIN. Enders, ii. 287. (iSH?)*

Greeting. I would most willingly comply with your wish, which is also mine, good Spalatin, but that you ask something which is beyond the mediocrity of my powers. I frankly con- fess my ignorance, for I do not know the meaning of those refrains* nor can I even conjecture it.

I am sure that the psalms, Ixxx. and Ixvii. which you

by file first editor in 15 19. All successors have followed him, although De Wette, Enders and the St. Louis editor all think that it properly belongs to an earlier date. The main proof of this is the signature "Luder,** a form found nowhere else after September 11, 151 7. Moreover a parallel passage has been found to the Dietrntm smpgr Psalierium given by Luther 15 13-6. Werke, Weimar ed. tiL 606; Enders, iL ^89. (There is a supplement to the Dictate, Weimar ix. 118, but no further parallel.) Spalatin frequently turned to Luther for exegesis of the Bible, idiich he had read through in 1508. On general dating cf. Kostlin-Kawerau, i. 754, note a to pL 166, and Theologische Studien und Kritiken 1888, p. 385.
 * TtM letter has no date in the original, and was put, for an unknown reason,

'Lather was thinking of the "Selah" which occurs in Psalm LXVII and else- where: This was not printed in the Vulgate, but was in the original and so in the e^Btioa of Lefivre d'fitaplcs which he used.

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