life we can only avail ourselves of occasional and isolated remarks
of his own, partly met with in his writings, partly culled from his
lips by Melancthon, or his physician Ratzeberger, or his pupil
Mathesius, or other friends, and by them recorded for the benefit of
posterity. These remarks are very imperfect, but are significant
enough to enable us to understand the direction which his inner life
had taken, and which prepared him for his future calling. Nor less
significant is the fact that those opponents who, from the
commencement of his war with the Church, tracked out his origin, and
sought therein for evidence to his detriment, have failed, for their
part, to contribute anything new whatever to the history of his
childhood and youth, although, as the Reformer, he had plenty of
enemies at his own and his parents' home, and several of the Counts
of Mansfeld, in particular, continued in the Romish Church. There
was nothing, therefore, dark or discreditable, at any rate, to be
found attaching either to his home or to his own youth.

It is said that childhood is a Paradise. Luther in after years found
it joyful and edifying to contemplate the happiness of those little
ones who know neither the cares of daily life nor the troubles of
the soul, and enjoy with light hearts the good thing which God has
given them. But in his own reminiscences of life, so far as he has
given them, no such sunny childhood is reflected. The hard time,
which his parents at first had to struggle through at Mansfeld, had
to be shared in by the children, and the lot fell most hardly on the
eldest. As the former spent their days in hard toil, and persevered
in it with unflinching severity, the tone of the house was unusually
earnest and severe. The upright, honourable, industrious father was
honestly resolved to make a useful man of his son, and enable him to
rise higher than himself. He strictly maintained at all times his