which lasted an hour. He awoke with increased pain and a feeling of
great congestion, which caused the death-perspiration to break out. He
was rapidly turning cold. All this time he was praying and reciting
portions from the Psalms and other texts. Three times in succession he
repeated his favorite text, John 3, 16. Gradually he became peaceful,
and his end was so gentle that the bystanders were in doubt whether he
had expired or was only in a swoon. They worked with him, trying to
rouse him, until they were convinced that he had breathed his last. The
Catholic apothecary John Landau, who had been called in while Luther was
thought to be in a swoon, helped to establish the fact of his death.

28. Luther's View of His Slanderers.

Luther was the subject of gross misrepresentation and vile slander
during his lifetime: At first he used to correct erroneous reports about
himself, usually in his polemical writings, later he merely noted them
with a brief and scornful comment, and finally ignored them altogether.
He relates that he had treated many slanderous publications of Eck,
Faber, Emser, Cochlaeus, and many others with silent contempt. (18,
1991; 14, 331.) It was a physical impossibility for him to reply to all
the misleading and vicious reports that were being circulated about him.
He was convinced that he must use his time and strength for more
necessary matters. His friends in many instances relieved him of the
unpleasant task. Moreover, after he had answered those who had first
assailed him in the beginning of his public activity, he could afford to
disregard many slanders, because they were mere repetitions.

Luther was aware that he was probably the worst-hated man of his times.
He declares his belief that in the last hundred years there has not
lived a man to whom the world was more hostile than to himself. (22,
1660.) Persons praising him, he says, are regarded as having committed
a more grievous sin than any idolater, blasphemer, perjurer, fornicator,
adulterer, murderer, or thief. (9, 553.) Anything that Luther has said,
he observes, is denounced as coming from the devil; what Duke George
(one of his fiercest enemies), Faber, or Bucer say or do is highly
approved, (4, 1606.) Like Elijah, he was charged with having disturbed
Israel: before he began preaching there was peace and quiet, now all is
confusion. (9, 587.) He is held responsible for the Peasants' Revolt and
the rise of the Sacramentarian sects. (22