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

preparing it. It shines its own evidence into the eyes of every one who
opens it.
Nevertheless, it is not without historical interest, little as it is
necessary, logically, to look at the evidence of Luther's fitness for the work.
Some of the facts which naturally attract our attention here, are the
following:
I. Luther was well educated as a boy. He went to school in
Mansfeld until he reached his fourteenth year; thence he went to
Magdeburg; four years he spent at Eisenach, under the tuition of a teacher
of whom Melanchthon testifies that in the grammatical branches, the very
ones which were so largely to become useful to Luther as a translator, he
had no superior. Here he finished his school-days proper--already as a
boy, by his great proficiency, giving indications of extraordinary talents
and industry. Melanchthon says of him at this era: "As he had great
genius, and a strong predisposition to eloquence, he speedily surpassed the
other youths in the fulness and richness of his speech and of his writing,
alike in prose and verse." Even as a boy, he was already marked out as a
translator.
II. Luther received a thorough collegiate education. In 1501 he
repaired to the college at Erfurt, where he was matriculated during the
presidency of Truttvetter, whom he loved and venerated as a man and a
teacher, and where he faithfully used all the advantages which surrounded
him.