856. LUTHER TO NICHOLAS AMSDORF AT MAGDEBURG. Enders, vii, 173. (Wittenbekg), October 18 (or 19), 1529.
Grace and peace in Christ. We got home* safe, my dear Amsdorf, and Master George* and John Ziering* will tell you what was done. The landgrave treated us magnificently. Yesterday and again this evening I was tormented with an illness of the mind. The messenger of Satan — or whatever is the name of the death devil — ^buffets me thus. He is helped by the fury of the Turks, who are at our very door, and will visit with a rod of iron the horrible blasphemies of those who oppose the Word and the intolerable ingratitude of all the people. Christ have mercy on us! Amen. Admonish your Church, therefore, to penitence and prayer. The time is here, and the need is pressing. The rest again ; I cannot write more now because my fingers are so weak and tremble so.
Yours, Martin Luther.
857. LUTHER TO NICHOLAS HAUSMANN AT ZWICKAU. Enders, vii, 175. (Wittenberg), October 2IS, 1529.
Grace and peace in Christ. I must write hurriedly, my dear Nicholas, because of the sudden departure of the men who will bring you this letter. I thought they would stay here longer or I would have written at greater length both to you and Cordatus,* especially about the Turkish war, which disturbs Germany, and justly, too, for we have earned the wrath of God, and they who have earned it neither repent nor amend their ways, but go on as before. I am publishing a
^I.e.f from Marburg.
- George Major (1502-74) of Nuremberg, studied at Wittenberg, taught school
at Magdeburg, in 1537 became preacher at tlie Castle Church, Wittenberg, and 1545 professor of theology there. After Luther's death he became a Philippist, and had a bitter controversy with Amsdorf on good works, the so-called Major- istic controversy. RGG.
- A Wittenberg student whose home was at Magdeburg.
- Conrad Cordatus (i 476-1 546) of Weissenbach in Austria, an early convert to
the Reformation, came to Wittenberg 1534 and spent a year with Luther. Re- turning home he was imprisoned for his faith, but escaped to Wittenberg in 1526. After teaching school at Liegnitz he returned to Wittenberg in 1528. The next year he was given a church at Zwickau, which his hot temper lost him in 1531. He spent ten months (August, i53i-June, 1532) at Wittenberg, when he got an inferior position at Niemeck. He was the first to note down Luther's "table talk." C/. Smith: Luther's Table Talk: A Critical Study, 1907, ppw i8f.
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