Luther died peacefully in the presence of friends, confessing, Christ and asserting his firm allegiance to the faith he had proclaimed with his last breath.  The probable cause of his death was a stroke of paralysis.  Luther began to feel pains in the chest late in the afternoon of February 17, 1546.  He bore up manfully and continued working at his business for the Count of Mansfeld who had called him to Eisleben.  After a light evening meal he sat chatting in a cheerful mood with his companions, and retired early, as was his custom in his declining years.  The pains in the chest became worse, and he began to feel chilly.  Medicaments were administered, and after a while he fell into a slumber, 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