"_For that I can trust my good God!_" and added, "Help me, help me, O my
God."
And after receiving the holy communion in both kinds, he called his
servants around him, and said,--
"Dear children, I entreat you, that in whatever I have done you wrong,
by word or deed, you will forgive me for God's sake, and pray others to
do the same. For we princes do much wrong often to poor people that
should not be."
As he spoke thus, all that were in the room could not restrain their
tears, and seeing that, he said,--
"Dear children, weep not for me. It will not be long with me now. But
think of me, and pray to God for me."
Spalatin had copied some verses of the Bible for him, which he put on
his spectacles to read for himself. He thought much of Luther, whom,
much as he had befriended him, he had never spoken to, and sent for him.
But it was in vain. Luther was on the Hartz mountains, endeavouring to
quell the peasants' revolt. That interview is deferred to the world
where all earthly distinctions are forgotten, but where the least
Christian services are remembered.
So, "a child of peace," as one said, he departed, and rests in peace,
through the high and only merits of the only Son of God, in whom, in his
last testament, he confessed was "all his hope."
It was a solemn day for Wittemberg when they laid him in his grave in
the Electoral Church, which he had once so richly provided with relics.
His body lying beneath it is the most sacred relic it enshrines for us
now.
Knights and burghers met the coffin at the city gate; eight noblemen
carried it, and a long train of mourners passed through the silent
streets. Many chanted around the tomb the old Latin hymns, "In media
vitae," and "Si bona suscipimur," and also the German, "From deepest need
I cry to Thee," and--
"In Fried und Freud fahr ich dahin."
"I journey hence in peace and joy."
The money which would in former times have purchased masses for his
soul, was given to the poor. And Dr. Luther preached a sermon on that
promise, "Those who sleep in Jesus, God will bring with him," which
makes it needless, indeed, to pray for the repose of those who thus
sleep.