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CASSELL’S NATIONAL LIBRARY
SELECTIONS FROM THE
Table Talk
OF
MARTIN LUTHER.
TRANSLATEDBY
CAPTAIN HENRY BELL.
CASSELL & COMPANY, Limited:
LONDON, PARIS,NEW YORK &MELBOURNE.
1886.
INTRODUCTION.
martin luther died on the 18th ofFebruary, 1546, and the first publication of his “TableTalk”—Tischreden—by his friend, JohannGoldschmid (Aurifaber), was in 1566, in a substantialfolio. The talk of Luther was arranged, according to itstopics, into eighty chapters, each with a minute index ofcontents. The whole work in a complete octavo edition,published at Stuttgart and Leipzig in 1836, occupies 1,390closely printed pages, equivalent to 2,780 pages, or fullfourteen volumes, of this Library.
The nearest approach to a complete and ungarbled translationinto English was that of Captain Henry Bell, made in the reign ofCharles the First, under the circumstances set forth by himself;but even that was not complete. Other English versions havesubjected Luther’s opinions to serious manipulation,nothing being added, but anything being taken away that did notchance to agree with the editor’s digestion. Even thefolio of Captain Bell’s translation, from which theseSelections have been printed, has been prepared for reprint bysome preceding editor, whose pen has been busy in revision of thepassages he did mean to reprint. In these Selections everyparagraph stands unabridged, exactly as it was translated byCaptain Bell; and there has been no other purpose governing thechoice of matter than a resolve to make it as true a presentmentas possible of Luther’s mind and character. At leastone other volume of Selections from the Table-Talk of MartinLuther will be given in this Library.
Johann Goldschmid, the Aurifaber, and thereby true worker ingold, who first gave Luther’s Table-Talk to the world, wasborn in 1519. He was a disciple of Luther, thirty-six yearsyounger than his master. Luther was born at Eisleben in1483, and his father, a poor miner, presently settled atMansfeld, the town in which Goldschmid afterwards was born. Johann Goldschmid was sent by Count Albrecht of Mansfeld, in1537, to the University of Wittenberg, where Luther had beenmade, in 1508, Professor of Philosophy, and where, on the 31st ofOctober, 1517, he had nailed his ninety-five propositions againstindulgences to the church door at the castle. Luther hadcompleted his translation of the Bible three years before JohannGoldschmid went to Wittenberg. In 1540 Goldschmid wasrecalled from the University to act as tutor to CountAlbrecht’s children. In 1544 Gold