“2.  When this had been done, no such tumult and hellish rumbling was heard any more that day.  However, during the following night, at the place where Martin Luther’s corpse had been buried, there was heard by everybody in the community a much greater confusion than the first time.  The people arose and flocked together in great fear and terror.  At daybreak they went to open the grave where the wicked body of Luther had been placed.  When the grave was opened, you could clearly see that there was no body, neither flesh nor bone, nor any clothes.  But such a sulphuric stench rose from the grave that all who were standing around the grave turned sick.  On account of this miracle many have reformed their lives by returning to the holy Christian faith, to the honor, praise, and glory of Jesus Christ, and to the strengthening and confirmation of His holy Christian Church, which is a pillar of truth.”

Luther appended the following comment to this pious document: 

“And I, Martinus Luther, D., do by these indentures acknowledge and testify that I have received this angry fiction concerning my death on the twenty-first day of March, and that I have read it with considerable pleasure and joy, except the blasphemous portion of the document in which this lie is attributed to the exalted majesty of God.  Otherwise I felt quite tickled on my knee-cap and under my left heel at this evidence how cordially the devil and his minions, the Pope and the papists, hate me.  May God turn them from the devil!

“However, if it is decreed that theirs is a sin unto death, and that my prayer is in vain, then may God grant that they fill up their measure and write nothing else but such books for their comfort and joy.  Let them run their course; they are on the right track; they want to have it so.  Meanwhile I want to know how they are going to be saved, and how they will atone for and revoke all their lies and blasphemies with which they have filled the world.” (21b, 3376 f.)

Similar, even more grotesque tales have been served the faithful by Catholic writers.  The star production of this kind was published years ago in the Ohio-Waisenfreund.  It related that horrible and uncanny signs had accompanied Luther’s death.  Weird shrieks and noises were heard, devils were flying about in the air; the heavens were shrouded in a pall of gloom.  When the funeral cortege started from Eisleben, a vast flock of ravens had gathered and accompanied the corpse croaking incessantly and uttering dismal cries all the way to Wittenberg, etc., etc.

These crude stories have now been censored out of existence.  Catholics nowadays prefer to lie in a more refined and cultured manner about Luther’s death:  Luther committed suicide; he was found hanging from his bedpost one morning.

Comment is unnecessary.