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��318 LUTHER'S CORRESPONDENCE AND Let 68$
your recent news, all of which I was glad to have, especially about Thomas Mikizer/ Please let me have further details about his capture and of how he acted, for it is profitable to know how that proud spirit bore itself.
It is pitiful that we have to be so cruel to the poor people, but what can we. do? It is necessary ~ah3 God wills it, so that fear may be brought upon the people; otherwise Satan would do far worse. God's decree is. Qui accipit ghdium, gladio peribit.* It is comforting to think that the spirit has been revealed, so that henceforth the peasants will know how wrong they were, and, perhaps, leave oflf their rioting, or do less of it. Do not be so worried about it, for it will profit many souls, whom it will terrify jnd restr ain.
My gracious lord, the Elector, passed away on the day I left you^, between five and six o'clock, almost at the very time that Osterhausen ^ was destroyed. He died in a gentle spirit, with mind and reason clear, after receiving the sacrament in both kinds, but no unction. We buried him without masses and vigils, and yet with fitting ceremony.* Some stones were found in his lungs, and especially softie in the gall, which is strange. They were almost as large as a shilling and half as thick as one's little finger. He died of the stone, but none was found in the bladder. He had known very little of the uprising, but had written his brother* to try all kindly meas- ures before he allowed it to come to a battle. Thus his death was Qiristianlike and blessed. The sign of it was a rainbow that Philip and I saw over Lochau one night last winter, and a child born here at Wittenberg without a head; also another with club feet.
Farewell, and greet your house-vine and her grapes. En- courage Christopher Meinhart * to let God have His way, which
^ After the defeat of the peasants by the Counts of Mansfeld at Prankenhanaen, May 15, .Munzer was captured and imprisoned. He was afterwards taken to Ifl&Ihausen, where he was executed. May 27, first receiTing tke sacrament in one kind according to the Roman use.
• "He that taketh the sword shall perish by the sword** (Mtttkew snri s^).
» May s.
^WhenTthe Counts of Mansfeld defeated the peasants.
- Pein hgrrtich. The funeral was on the nth, at Wittenberg.
- On April 14, 1525, Porstemann: Neues Urkundenhuch, p. as9. Pacsimile of
first page in Ments: Handsckriften, 191s, no. 279. John's anawer, April 90, Porstemann, p. 275!. Quotations in Smith, p. 160.
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