Page:The letters of Martin Luther.djvu/10

 he had been permitted to make of the treasures in the Grand Ducal library in Weimar. De Wette gives the literary history of every letter, thus making them a Tagebuch of Luther’s life.

In the Preface to Dr. Schütze’s German edition of Luther’s letters the translator says: “From different quarters a wish has been expressed to see Dr. Schütze’s unprinted letters in the hands of the German public, and I did not know how one could become better acquainted with the character of this Paul-like man than from his letters, in which his heart lies exposed, and which bring us so much in contact with the spirit of the Reformation; and if, at times, they verge on vehemence, yet they never leave the reader unedified.” The Latin edition is dedicated to Frederick V. of Denmark. In the Preface to Stroebel’s Selected Letters—Nürnberg, 1780 —the author says: “The more of Luther’s letters I read, my respect for this wonderful man always increased, and most of them gave me such pleasure that I believed I would be conferring a favor on many of his admirers, especially among the laity, to whom his voluminous works were scarcely accessible, if I made them better acquainted with his noble and honest heart, thus inspiring his ungrateful children with more respect for him to whom they owe so much, and who, in every relation of life, appears as noble as he was amiable, although many who never read his works assert the opposite.”

Dr. Enders, in his splendid collection of Luther’s “Briefwechsel,” mostly in Latin—the first volume was published in 1884, and the tenth in 1903—says that they are intended not only for the learned, but for a larger public who are interested in all Luther’s letters. Dr. Enders derives most of those letters from De Wette, Walch, Aurifaber, Schütze, and Stroebel.

Luther was the first classic writer of the German