# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_August 1856_S239
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

239

Lutheran-Theological Pastor's Library.

(Continued.)

Among the writings directed against the false doctrines, especially those of the Roman Church, that are absolutely indispensable to a Lutheran pastor, we name, secondly, the following work: "Examen Concilii Tridentini, written by D. Martin Chemnitius." The author of this work, Martin Chemnitz, was born at Treuenbrietzen in the Mark of Brandenburg on November 9, 1522. Already in the eleventh year of his age he lost his father; in the year 1536 he attended the Latin grammar school at Wittenberg, where the fourteen-year-old boy received indelible impressions from Luther's sermons; thereupon, despite his great eagerness to study, poverty compelled him to learn the trade of a clothmaker, but he used the leisure hours left to him during his apprenticeship to teach himself, with the very meager resources at his disposal, at least the Latin language. When, therefore, it once happened that two learned relatives of the young Chemnitz came to Treuenbrietzen on a visit, he seized this opportunity to do something in order still to reach the goal that, though far off, had never been allowed to slip from his sight. He composed a Latin letter in which he asked the relatives, who were held in high regard by his mother, to obtain for him, through their intercession with her, that he be sent to the Latin school. The letter had its effect. Those to whom it was addressed recognized with astonishment, from it, what rare gifts lay dormant in the knowledge-thirsty youth, and brought him to the school at Magdeburg. He then pursued his academic studies from the year 1543 at Frankfurt an der Oder, and thereafter, after a brief interruption to which his poverty had compelled him, at Wittenberg, where, on Melanchthon's advice, he applied himself especially to mathematics and astronomy. In the year 1548 he became rector of the cathedral school at Königsberg, and two years later librarian to Duke Albert of Prussia there. This office gave him an excellent opportunity to perfect himself in every branch of theological science, an opportunity which he indeed used most faithfully and zealously. Above all, Holy Scripture, Luther's writings, and the works of the Church fathers were the object of his untiring study. He himself confesses that he achieved such favorable results in this chiefly by reading everything with pen in hand and making abundant excerpts from what he read. Occasioned by the Osiandrian controversies that broke out at Königsberg, he went in the year 1553 to Wittenberg, where he lectured on Melanchthon's Loci to great applause; but the following year he answered a call to Brunswick, where he received the office of a preacher at St. Aegidien's Church and, later, in 1567, that of superintendent, which he held with great faithfulness until a year and a half before his death, and finally, in the year