428 LUTHER'S CORRESPONDENCE AND Let 'fitj
7^. LUTHER TO GERARD WILSKAMP* AT HERFORD. Enders, vi 173. (Wittenberg), January i, 1528.
Grace and peace. I received your last letters of condolence, my dear Gerard, with great joy and gratitude; may Christ repay you. It is true that this trial * is the worst I have ever had, and though I have had similar experiences ever since my youth, I had not expected that it would become so much worse now. So far Christ has triumphed, but He holds me by a very slender thread.* I commend myself to your prayers and those of your brethren ; I have saved others, myself I can- not save. Blessed be my Christ, even amid despair, death and blasphemy! May He grant us to see one another in His kingdom! Meanwhile we are sure that what we have built, by word or deed, is His ; but we are not justified thereby, nay, we are unprofitable servants, except that we have lived even in this world according to Christ's will and have forgotten our former evil way of life; it remains for Christ to be our life and righteousness, and oh ! how hard it is, and repugnant to the flesh and always hid in God. . . .
Yours, Martin Luther.
��787. JUSTUS JONAS TO LUTHER.
Kawerau, i, 112. Nordhausem;, January 3 (?) 1526.
Greeting and peace in Christ Jesus our Lord. I envy this letter, my beloved father in the Lord, because it will reach you before I shall I had made up my mind to put an end to my long desire and see you within a week, but when I was all ready to start I was detained and delayed by necessary matters, of which you will hear when I see you, for they will not detain or delay me much longer. I will bid farewell to all the pleasures that my native place can ever hold in order to see you again and hear you talking about that fatherland
1 Of whom we know little except that he preached in Herford from xsi8 t9I hit death in iSA^* and was imprisoned for a time, in X525, for his I«atheran views.
'/.«., his illness of 1527.
- Following the St Louis editors (Walch,' xxia, X058), we read /iia for Endert'a
facto.
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