MARTIN LUTHER

on the

BONDAGE OF THE WILL;

to the venerable mister

ERASMUS OF ROTTERDAM

1525

faithfully translated from the original latin

by

EDWARD THOMAS VAUGHAN, M.A.

vicar of st. martin’s, leicester, rector of foston, leicestershire, and sometime fellow of trinity college, cambridge

with a preface and notes

LONDON:

SOLD FOR THE EDITOR, BY T. HAMILTON, PATERNOSTER ROW; AND T. COMBE, LEICESTER

1823

[Entered at Stationers’ Hall.]

to

HIM

who sitteth upon the throne

by the side of the invisible father,

EVEN JESUS,

my lord and my god!

who knoweth that

not by my freewill, but by his,

THIS WORK,

whatsoever it be,

was prompted and undertaken,

and hath now at length been executed,

I DEDICATE IT:

desiring that his will, not my own,

be done by it;

and firm in the hope, that he will use it

unto the edifying of his people.—

e. t. v.

PREFACE

I deem it expedient to put the reader in possession of the circumstances under which this work was written; for which purpose it is necessary that I premise a rapid sketch of Luther’s history, in its connection with Protestantism.

Martin Luther was born in the year 1483, at Isleben, in Saxony. His father, who had wrought in the mines of Mansfield, became afterwards a proprietor in them; which enabled him to educate his son, not only with a pious father’s care, but with a rich father’s liberality. After furnishing him with the elements in some inferior schools, he sent him at an early age to the University of Erfurth: where he made considerable proficiency in classical learning, eloquence and philosophy, and commenced Master of Arts at the age of twenty. His parents had destined him for the bar; but after devoting himself diligently to the study of the civil law for some time, he forsook it abruptly, and shut himself up in a convent at Erfurth.

Here he became remarkable for his diligence, self-mortification and conscientiousness; occasionally suffering great agitation of mind from an ignorant fear of God. Habitually sad, and at intervals overwhelmed with paroxysms of mental agony, he consulted his vicar-general Staupitius; who comforted him by suggesting, that he did not know how useful and necessary this trial might be to him: ‘God does not thus exercise you for nothing, said he; you will one day see that he will employ you as his servant for great purposes.’—‘The event, adds the historian, gave ample honour to the sagacity of Staupitius, and it is very evident that a deep and solid conviction of sin, leading the mind to the search of Scripture-truth, and the investigation of the way of peace, was the main spring of Luther’s whole after conduct; and indeed this view of our reformer’s state of mind furnishes the only key to the discovery of the real motives, by which he was influenced in his public transactions.’

It was not till the second year of his residence in the monastery, that he accidentally met with a Latin Bible in the library, when he, for the first time, discovered that large portions of the Scriptures were withheld ...