hat the two universities of
Strasburg--the Lutheran, founded in the year 1538 by Jacobus Surmis,
counsellor of the senate,--and the Popish, founded by Leopold, arch-duke
of Austria, were, during all this time, employing the whole depth
of their knowledge (except just what the affair of the abbess of
Quedlingberg's placket-holes required)--in determining the point of
Martin Luther's damnation.

The Popish doctors had undertaken to demonstrate a priori, that from the
necessary influence of the planets on the twenty-second day of October
1483--when the moon was in the twelfth house, Jupiter, Mars, and Venus
in the third, the Sun, Saturn, and Mercury, all got together in the
fourth--that he must in course, and unavoidably, be a damn'd man--and
that his doctrines, by a direct corollary, must be damn'd doctrines too.

By inspection into his horoscope, where five planets were in coition all
at once with Scorpio (Haec mira, satisque horrenda. Planetarum coitio
sub Scorpio Asterismo in nona coeli statione, quam Arabes religioni
deputabant efficit Martinum Lutherum sacrilegum hereticum, Christianae
religionis hostem acerrimum atque prophanum, ex horoscopi directione
ad Martis coitum, religiosissimus obiit, ejus Anima scelestissima ad
infernos navigavit--ab Alecto, Tisiphone & Megara flagellis igneis
cruciata perenniter.--Lucas Gaurieus in Tractatu astrologico de
praeteritis multorum hominum accidentibus per genituras examinatis.) (in
reading this my father would always shake his head) in the ninth house,
with the Arabians allotted to religion--it appeared that Martin Luther
did not care one stiver about the matter--and that from the horoscope
directed to the conjunction of Mars--they made it plain likewise he must
die cursing and blaspheming--with the blast of which his soul (being
steep'd in guilt) sailed before the wind, in the lake of hell-fire.

The little objection of the Lutheran doctors to this, was, that it must
certainly be the soul of another man, born Oct. 22, 83. which was forced
to sail down before the wind in that manner--inasmuch as it appeared
from the register of Islaben in the county of Mansfelt, that Luther was
not born in the year 1483, but in 84; and not on the 22d day of October,
but on the 10th of November, the eve of Martinmas day, from whence he
had the name of Martin.

(--I must break off my translation for a moment; for if I did not, I
know I should no more be able to shut my eyes in bed, than the ab