MARTIN LUTHER***


This eBook was prepared by Les Bowler.

                          [Picture: Book cover]

                        CASSELL’S NATIONAL LIBRARY

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                           SELECTIONS FROM THE
                                TABLE TALK
                                    OF
                              MARTIN LUTHER.


                              TRANSLATED BY
                           CAPTAIN HENRY BELL.

[Picture: Decorative graphic]

                       CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED:
                _LONDON_, _PARIS_, _NEW YORK & MELBOURNE_.
                                  1886.

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INTRODUCTION.


MARTIN LUTHER died on the 18th of February, 1546, and the first
publication of his “Table Talk”—_Tischreden_—by his friend, Johann
Goldschmid (Aurifaber), was in 1566, in a substantial folio.  The talk of
Luther was arranged, according to its topics, into eighty chapters, each
with a minute index of contents.  The whole work in a complete octavo
edition, published at Stuttgart and Leipzig in 1836, occupies 1,390
closely printed pages, equivalent to 2,780 pages, or full fourteen
volumes, of this Library.

The nearest approach to a complete and ungarbled translation into English
was that of Captain Henry Bell, made in the reign of Charles the First,
under the circumstances set forth by himself; but even that was not
complete.  Other English versions have subjected Luther’s opinions to
serious manipulation, nothing being added, but anything being taken away
that did not chance to agree with the editor’s digestion.  Even the folio
of Captain Bell’s translation, from which these Selection