ked, hungry
children. I continue to dwell _ex mandato_ in the very old, and on
account of the want of a chimney, a floor and so forth, dangerous
school-house, where I can neither attend to my studies, nor do anything
for my support. For I have neither food nor clothes, _longe enim plura
deficiunt_. Given at my castle of misery, Stelzen, 1633. Your willing
servant, and obedient poor burnt-out pastor, Nicholas Schubert."
Shortly he was removed. His successor likewise was pillaged, and
stabbed in the left hip with a rapier; he too was removed; a second
successor also was unable to maintain himself there. After that, the
parsonage house was uninhabited for fifteen years, but the neighbouring
pastor, Goetz of Sachsendorf, came every third Sunday, and performed
service in the ruined village. For two years there came no pence to the
church coffers. At last, in 1647, the church was entirely burned to the
bare walls.

Gregory Ewald was pastor at Koenigsberg; in 1632, Tilly burnt down the
city, and Ewald was taken prisoner in a vineyard by two Croats, and
robbed; when they could not withdraw a gold ring from his finger they
prepared to cut off the finger, but at last had so much consideration
that they took only the skin with the ring, and demanded a thousand
dollars ransom. Ewald released himself by this stratagem; he took the
simple soldier, who was left with him to fetch the ransom, first to the
door of a cellar in order to give him a drink of wine, and under the
pretext of fetching the key he escaped. In his great necessity he took
an appointment as Swedish army chaplain, and after the battle of
Noerdlingen, lived as an exile for a year in a foreign country, from
thence he returned to his ruined parish, where for some years he and
his family endured want and misery.

Among the most instructive of the biographical accounts of Protestant
pastors, is that of the Franconian pastor, Martin Boetzinger. We see
with horror, both the village life in the time of the war, and the
demoralization of the inhabitants, distinctly portrayed in his
narrative. Boetzinger was not a man of great character, and the
lamentable lot he had to bear did not strengthen it; indeed, we can
hardly deny him the predicate of a right miserable devil. Nevertheless
he possessed two qualities which render him estimable to us, an
indestructible energy with which there was not the slightest frivolity
united; and that determined German contentment which takes the