Doctor Luther (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1916 Excerpt: ...and sharp as steel, now a powerful stream in rich expansion, his words pressed among the peopie; figurative expression, convincing comparison, made the most difficult things comprehensible. It was a wonderful, creative power. With sovereign ease he made use of the language; as soon as he laid hold of his pen his mind worked with the greatest freedom; in his sentences the cheerful warmth is seen which filled him; the full charm of warm-hearted endeavor is poured out over them. And such power is not least visible in the attacks with which he favors individual opponents. And it is closely allied to a bad habit which already gave his admiring contemporaries cause for reflection. He liked to play with his adversaries; his imagination clothes the figure of his enemy with a grotesque mask, and this image of his imagination he teases, derides, and strikes with expressions which do not sound mild and not always proper. But just in his scolding his good humor had, as a rule, a conciliatory effect, naturally not upon the parties concerned. Almost never is any small hatefulness visible, not seldom his indestructible goodness of heart. At times he falls, to be sure, into a real artist-zeal; then he forgets the dignity of the reformer and pinches like a German peasant child; yes, like a mischievous hobgoblin. How he worried all his adversaries Now with blows of a club, wielded by an angry giant, again with the paddle of a fool. He liked to distort their names intd the ridiculous. So they lived in the circle at Wittenberg as animals, as fools. Eck became Dr. Geek; Murner received head and claws of a tomcat; Emser, who had his coat of arms, the head of a horned goat, printed at the beginning of most of his polemic treatises, was abused as a goat; the Latin name of the hum...