The Elector John was permitted to survive the conclusion of the peace, which he had been foremost among the princes in promoting. Shortly after, on August 15, he was seized with apoplexy when out hunting, and on the following day he breathed his last. Luther and Melancthon, who were summoned to him at Schweinitz, found him unconscious. Luther said his beloved prince, on awakening, would be conscious of everlasting life; just as when he came from hunting on the Lochau heath, he would not know what had happened to him; as said the prophet (Isaiah lvii. 1, 2), 'The righteous is taken away from the evil to come. He shall enter into peace; they shall rest in their beds.' Luther preached at his funeral at Wittenberg, as he had done seven years before at his brother's, and Spalatin tells us how he wept like a child.
John had, throughout his reign, laboured conscientiously to follow the Word of God, as taught by Luther, and to encounter all dangers and difficulties by the strength of faith. He has rightly earned the surname of 'the Steadfast.' Luther especially praises his conduct at the Diet of Augsburg in this respect; he frequently said to his councillors on that occasion, 'Tell my men of learning that they are to do what is right, to the praise and glory of God, without regard to me, or to my country and people.' Luther distinguished piety and benevolence as the two most prominent features of his character, as wisdom and understanding had been those of the Elector Frederick's. 'Had the two princes,' he said, 'been one, that man would have been a marvel.'
PART VI.
FROM THE RELIGIOUS PEACE OF NÜREMBERG TO THE DEATH OF LUTHER.
CHAPTER I.
LUTHER UNDER JOHN FREDERICK. 1632-34.
Political peace had been the blessing which Luther hoped to see obtained for his countrymen and his Church, during the anxious time of the Augsburg Diet. Such a peace had now been gained by the development of political relations, in which he himself had only so far co-operated as to exhort the Protestant States to practise all the moderation in their power. He saw in this result the dispensation of a higher power, for which he could never be thankful enough to God. For the remainder of his life he was permitted to enjoy this peace, and, so far as he could, to assist in its preservation. In the enjoyment of it he continued to build on the foundations prepared for him under the protecting patronage of Frederick the Wise, and on which the first stone of the new Church edifice had been laid under the Elector John.
A longer time was given him for this work than he had anticipated. We have had occasion frequently to refer not only to his thoughts of approaching death, but also to the severe attacks of illness which actually threatened to prove fatal. Although these attacks did not recur with such dangerous severity in the later years of his life, still a sense of weakness and premature old age invariably remained behind them. Exhaustion, caused by his work and the struggles he had undergone, debarred him from exertion for which he had all the will. He constantly complained of weakness in the head and giddiness, which totally unfitted him for work, especially in the morning. He would break out to his friends with the exclamation, 'I waste my life so uselessly, that I have come to bear a marvellous hatred towards myself. I don't know how it is that the time passes away so quickly, and I do so little. I shall not die of years, but of sheer want of strength.' In begging one of his friends at a distance to visit him once more, he reminds him that, in his present state of health, he must not forget that it might be for the last time. No wonder then if his natural excitability was often morbidly increased. He always looked forward with joy to his leaving this 'wicked world,' but as long as he had to work in it, he exerted all his powers no less for his own immediate task than for the general affairs of the Church, which incessantly demanded his attention.
The mutual trust and friendship subsisting between the Reformer and his sovereign continued unbroken with John's son and successor, John Frederick. This Elector, born in 1503, had, while yet a youth, embraced Luther's teaching with enthusiasm, and leaned upon him as his spiritual father. Luther, on his side, treated him with a confidential, easy intimacy, but never forgot to address him as 'Most illustrious Prince' and 'Most gracious Lord.' When the young man assumed the Electorship, and appeared at Wittenberg a few days after his father's death, he at once invited Luther to preach at the castle and to dine at his table. Luther expressed indeed to friends his fear that the many councillors who surrounded the young Elector might try to exert evil influences upon him, and that he might have to pay dearly for his experience. It might be, he said, that so many dogs barking round him would make him deaf to anyone else. For instance, they might take a grudge against the clergy and cry out, if admonished by them, what can a mere clerk know about it? But his relations with his prince remained undisturbed. He saw with joy how the latter was beginning to gather up the reins which his gentle-minded father had allowed to grow too slack, and he hoped that if God would grant a few years of peace, John Frederick would take in hand real and important reforms in his government, and not merely command them but see them executed.
The Elector's wife, Sybil, a princess of Juliers, shared her husband's friendship for Luther. The Elector had married her in 1526, after taking Luther into his confidence, and being warned by him against needlessly delaying the blessing which God had willed to grant him. On what a footing of cordial intimacy she stood with both Luther and his wife, is shown by a letter she wrote to him in January 1529, while her husband was away on a journey. She says that she will not conceal from him, as her 'good friend and lover of the comforting Word of God,' that she finds the time very tedious now that her most beloved lord and husband is away, and that therefore she would gladly have a word of comfort from Luther, and be a little cheerful with him; but that this is impossible at Weimar, so far off as it is, and so she commends all, and Luther and his dear wife, to the loving God, and will put her trust in Him. She begs him in conclusion: 'You will greet your dear wife very kindly from us, and wish her many thousand good-nights, and if it is God's will, we shall be very glad to be with her some day, and with you also, as well as with her: this you may believe of us at all times.' In the last years of his life Luther had to thank her for similar greetings and inquiries after his own health and that of his family.