n peace
and charity, as he now does to fight and slay one another?"

This severe piece drew upon him the resentment of Urban; and was likely
to have involved him in greater troubles than he had before experienced,
but providentially he was delivered out of their hands. He was struck
with the palsy, and though he lived some time yet in such a way, that
his enemies considered him as a person below their resentment. To the
last he attended divine worship, and received the fatal stroke of his
disorder in his church at Lutterworth, in the year 1384.

_Martin Luther._

This illustrious German divine and reformer of the church, was the son
of John Luther and Margaret Lindeman, and born at Isleben, a town of
Saxony, in the county of Mansfield, November 10, 1483. His father's
extraction and condition were originally but mean, and his occupation
that of a miner: it is probable, however, that by his application and
industry he improved the fortunes of his family, as he afterward became
a magistrate of rank and dignity. Luther was early initiated into
letters, and at the age of thirteen was sent to school at Madgeburg, and
thence to Eysenach, in Thuringia, where he remained four years,
producing the early indications of his future eminence.

In 1501 he was sent to the university of Erfurt, where he went through
the usual courses of logic and philosophy. When twenty, he took a
master's degree, and then lectured on Aristotle's physics, ethics, and
other parts of philosophy. Afterward, at the instigation of his parents,
he turned himself to the civil law, with a view of advancing himself to
the bar, but was diverted from this pursuit by the following accident.
Walking out into the fields one day, he was struck by lightning so as to
fall to the ground, while a companion was killed by his side; and this
affected him so sensibly, that, without communicating his purpose to any
of his friends, he withdrew himself from the world, and retired into the
order of the hermits of St. Augustine.

Here he employed himself in reading St. Augustine and the school men;
but, in turning over the leaves of the library, he accidentally found a
copy of the Latin Bible, which he had never seen before. This raised his
curiosity to a high degree: he read it over very greedily, and was
amazed to find what a small portion of the scriptures was rehearsed to
the people. He made his profession in the monastery of Erfurt, after he
had been a novice one year;