# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1857_S363
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Dr. Martin Luther's Instruction in the Right Study of Theology.   363

Lutheran Reformation. To these belong not only those men who in the work of the Reformation stood at the head before all eyes, and whose names will therefore never be forgotten so long as there is still a church on earth, that is, until the last day; but also many whose activity was not so public and whose names are therefore already almost forgotten. Among these latter belongs also a Hieronymus Weller of Molsdorf. He was born at Freiberg in Saxony in the year 1499, where his father was burgomaster; he studied at Naumburg and Wittenberg, and thereupon, having already received the master's degree in the nineteenth year of his age, became teacher of the Greek language at Zwickau, and then in 1525 rector of the school at Schneeberg; but a year later he returned to Wittenberg in order to study law there. Soon after his arrival, however, he was powerfully awakened by a sermon of Luther's on God's judgments, turned in consequence to theology after all, and now for eight years was Luther's housemate and table companion and most faithful pupil, so that the older writers represent his relation to Luther as that of Elisha to Elijah and of Polycarp to John. With joy Luther soon saw what extraordinary gifts revealed themselves in Weller; only he himself, Weller, would not see them, and therefore fled all the responsible offices into which men wished to place him — until at last he was called to Freiberg. For at a time when it still seemed as though the University of Leipzig (under George) would remain closed to the pure gospel, in 1538, the city council of Freiberg, under its godly Duke Henry, resolved to lay here in Freiberg the foundation of an evangelical academy. God, to be sure, directed matters otherwise with respect to Leipzig, as Luther had prophetically foretold; George died suddenly in the year 1539, and hence Leipzig with its university opened its gates to Lutheranism in that same year. But the godly city council of Freiberg did not entirely give up its plan; rather, in the year 1540 it called its countryman Weller — who in the meantime had been promoted doctor of theology by Luther himself and was highly praised by all the theologians — for the purpose of holding theological and especially exegetical lectures in his native city, not only for young students, but at the same time as a point of connection for theological, and particularly exegetical, exercises for pastors already in office; so that, as Weller himself writes, "the servants of the church might come together in the school of the theologians, not so much to learn as to exchange with one another their opinions and counsels concerning matters of special importance and questions of ecclesiastical controversy." This position as professor and official director of a pastoral conference our Weller then accepted, and let himself at the same time be entrusted with the inspectorate over the gymnasium. Alongside the labors which his offices laid upon him — and especially after twenty-two years of official service, at the end of which he had to resign on account of bodily weakness — he occupied himself with