The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

worthy and erudite, and gave him a copyright for his work, which was to
reach over the next two years. Poor Emser. suffocated in such a profusion
of praises and privileges, died before he could enjoy any of them. His
vanity was very great. One special token of it was, that he had his coat of
arms engraved for the books he published. A copy of his New Testament
lies before us, in which there figures, as a part of his crest, that goat's head
from which Luther--whose sense of the ludicrous was very active--derived
his ordinary sobriquet for Emser, "the goat."
In his Treatise on Translation, Luther thus characterizes his opponent
and his work: "We have seen this poor dealer in second-hand clothes, who
has played the critic with my New Testament, (I shall not mention his
name again--he has gone to his Judge; and every one, in fact, knows what
he was,) who confesses that my German is pure and good, and who knew
that he could not improve it, and yet wished to bring it to disgrace. He took
my New Testament, almost word for word, as it came from my hand,
removed my preface, notes, and name from it, added his name, his preface,
and his notes to it, and thus sold my Testament under his own name. If any
man doubts my word, he need but compare the two. Let him lay mine and
the frippery man's side by side, and he will see who is the translator in
both. If any man prefers the puddle to the spring, he need not take my
work; only, if he insist on being ignorant himself, let him allow others to
learn. If any man can do the work better than I have done, let him not hide
his talent in a napkin; let him come forth, and we will be the first to praise
him. We claim no infallibility. We shall be thankful to those who point out
our mistakes. Mistakes we have no doubt made, as Jerome often made
them before us."
The New Testament, in common with the rest of the Scriptures--yet
with a pre-eminence among them--continued to be the object of Luther's
repeated study up to the time of his death. The last revision of the
translation of the whole Bible was commenced in 1541. The last edition
printed under Luther's own eyes appeared in 1545. In February, 1546, he