“On the Friday after Whitsuntide, 1521, I heard a report at Antwerp, that Martin Luther had been treacherously seized; for the herald of the Emperor Charles, who attended him with a safe-conduct, and to whose protection he was committed, on arriving at a lonely place near Eisenach, said he durst proceed no further, and rode away. Immediately ten horsemen made their appearance, and carried off the godly man thus betrayed into their hands. He was indeed a man enlightened by the Holy Ghost, and a follower of the true Christian faith. Whether he be yet living, or whether his enemies have put him to death, I know not; yet certainly what he has suffered has been for the sake of truth, and because he has reprehended the abuses of unchristian papacy, which strives to fetter Christian liberty with the incumbrance of human ordinances, that we may be robbed of the price of our blood and sweat, and shamefully plundered by idlers, while the sick and needy perish through hunger. Above all, it is especially distressing to me to think that God may yet allow us to remain under the blind doctrine which those men called ‘the fathers’ have imagined and set forth, whereby the precious word is either in many places falsely expounded or not at all observed.”[V-47] [Footnote V-47: Durer, though an advocate of Luther, does not seem to have withdrawn himself from the communion of the Church of Rome. In his Journal, in 1521, he enters a sum of ten stivers given to his confessor, and, subsequently, eight stivers given to a monk who visited his wife when she was sick. The passage in which the last item occurs is curious, and seems to prove that female practitioners were then accustomed both to dispense and administer medical preparations at Antwerp. “Meine Frau ward krank,--der Apothekerinn für Klystiren gegeben 14 Stüber; dem Mönch, der sie besuchte, 8 Stüber.”--Von Murr, Journal, 7er Theil, S. 93.]