Suffering and misfortune must come if we are to be partakers of comfort.
Thank God, too, for His great grace, that your husband did not remain in his despair, as some do, but was lifted out of it by God's grace, and was, at the end, in the faith and Word of Christ. Of such it is said, "Blessed are they that die in the Lord," * and Christ Himself says, "He that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live."* May God the Father comfort and strengthen you in Christ Jesus. Amen.
Martin Luther.
814. LUTHER TO WENZEL LINK AT NUREMBERG. Enders, vii, 26. (WrrrENBERc, end of December,' 1528.)
Grace and peace in Christ. I received your letter, my dear Wenzel, in which you tell of what Duke George has tried to do at Nuremberg.* He had made the same demand of me and then of our Elector, but accomplished nothing in that quarter. Nevertheless he has published a copy of the letter with an invective against me as a sign of his great folly and accursed rage. It is said that eight thousand copies have been printed, and he is sending them all around under his own seal. Thus Luther will be put down at last and the glorious Duke George will triumph. He will put them out at the fair." I secured a copy secretly, however, and have prepared an an- swer* which will be made public at the same time, quite un- expectedly to him. I wish that that thief of a Miricionus * had got from you the letter written with my own hand, for I have no fear whatever of that Satan, though I am surprised at Scheurl, not because he gave up the letter, but because he is
^Rerelatlon xfv, 13. ■John xi, 25.
- After the publication (December 19) of Duke George's inrectsve {vide suprm,
no. 811).
- He had attempted* by application to the Nuremberg Council, to secure the
original of Luther's letter of June 14. ■The Nuremberg New Year's fair, 1529.
- Von gestoMtnen Brief en, etc.
- Thomas von dcr Heyden, Duke George's secretary, who had vainly tried to
secure at Nuremberg the original letter of June 14. Joachim von der Hayden called himself Miricianus. Luther changed this to Miricionus, in allusion to the •n» bvo^y in his satire, A new Aesop^s Fable, Thomas, born c. 1500, M.A. at Leipsic 1 5a I, and was secretary of Duke Henry in 1540. De WettC'Scideniann, vt. 540.
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