Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1507-1521.djvu/43

 mus and that which I use in common with others has been taken away by John Lang.*

i6. LUTHER TO JOHN LANG AT ERFURT. Enders, i. 48. Wittenberg^ August 50 (1516).

Greeting. Venerable father, I am sending you the oration which I delivered at our chapter at Gotha* and I trust you to fulfill my promise, namely, to send it as quickly as possible to John Braun, priest of the Holy Virgin at Eisenach, or to Wigand of Guldennappen,* priest at Walterhausen. For I promised it to them, and I also promised to let George Leiff er, the reader, see it, and show it to his friends. Not that I think it worth reading, but I must yield to the wishes of others rather than my own.

You are certainly too much moved against John Vogt. I know nothing, nor have I heard any secrets, but I heard the prior of Magdeburg* complaining about it, and just the same as he was at Eisleben, that is, desperate about sustaining the school, and several of the older brothers agreed with him. . . . Now it is your duty to receive this blow on your right cheek

Jerome was one of the favorite authors of this period, as the numerous editions and even translations of his letters show. If we may trust an inscription in a book in the Boston Public Library, which has been identified as Luther's hand, the reformer later owned the edition which came out at Lyons, 151 8. This identifi- cation however is very doubtful. See Preserved Smith, Life and Letters of Martin Luther, p. 475.

^The text, after a lacuna, adds "and sold."

'The sermon held at Gotha, May i, 1515; cf. 'supra, no. 10.

'A former teacher of Luther at Eisenach. Luther later interceded for him with John Frederic, May 14, 1526.

Pomerania, put by htm in the year 1518, probably a mistake for 1516, is quoted by De Wette-Seidemann, vi. 530, note 3. "He invited Dr. Martin Luther, whom the Magdeburgians escorted with eighteen horsemen, and he came on July 26, at the solicitation of Dr. Vogt. with Thonamen, an old man in the Augustinian cloister, who had chosen Dr. Martin as his son. And when he could not give counsel against the wrong doctrine he was accustomed to say: 'I will complain of it to my son Martin,' for he knew what was in him. For they were both from Eisleben. Then Martin preached there about a week, and while he was there nothing was done with indulgences." Several sermons of 15 16 are against indulgences, e. g., Weimar i. 65, July 27, 1516, and Weimar i. 94. October 31, 1516. Vogt later became evangelical pastor at Magdeburg. Kolde: Augustiner-Congreo^' tion, 393. His devotion to the cause is thus amusingly portrayed in the table-talk: "When a certain Dr. Vogt wrote to him, *My Luther, I will go with you up to the fire— but not quite into it. Only advance bravely!' he answered, 'Such martjrrs Christ leads up to heaven — but not quite into it.' " Tischreden, Weimar L na J4J.
 * John Vogt. An interesting notice of him from the old chronicler Berkmann of

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