now as he had been ten years before. He
wrote in 1624: "I pray for those who have reviled and condemned me.
They curse me and I bless. I am standing the test ["Proba"] and have
the mark of Christ on my forehead."[44] But he thought that it did not
befit him as an instrument of God's revelation to let the false charges
against him go unanswered. He accordingly replied to the accusations
in an _Apology_, in which the whole depth and beauty of his spiritual
nature breathes forth. His appeal was in vain and he was forced to
leave Goerlitz. He went forth, however, in no discouraged mood. He saw
that his message was "being sounded through Europe," and he predicts
that "the nations will take up what his own native town is casting
away. Already, he hears, his book has been read with interest in the
Court of the Elector of Saxony, and he writes, March 15, 1624: "I am
invited there to a conference with high people and I have consented to
go at the end of the Leipzig fair. Soon the revelation of Jesus Christ
shall break forth and destroy the works of the Devil."[45] The real
trouble with the world, he thinks, is that the Christians in it are
titular and verbal,"--they are only "opinion-peddlers,"[46] and that is
why a man who insists upon a reproduction of the life of Christ is
persecuted. The visit to the Elector's Court in Dresden came off well
for the simple shoemaker. He spent two months in the home of the court
physician, Dr. Hinkelmann, where many of the nobility and clergy came
to see {168} him and to talk with him. Three professors of theology
and other learned doctors were asked by the Elector to examine him.
They reported that they did not yet quite succeed in understanding him,
and that therefore they could not pronounce judgment. They hoped "His
Highness would please to have patience and allow the man sufficient
time to expound his ideas"--which were, in fact, already "expounded" in
more than a score of volumes! One of the professors is reported to
have said: "I would not for the world be a party to this man's
condemnation," and another declared: "Nor would I, for who knows what
lies at the bottom of it all!"[47]

The end of the good man's life, however, was near. He was taken ill in
November 1624, while staying with his old friend, von Schweinitz, and
he hurried home to Goerlitz, where his family had remained during his
absence, to die in the quiet of his own house. The night before he
died, he spoke