The piety of the parents, their activity and strict virtue, gave a happy impulse to the boy, making him of a grave and attentive spirit. The system of education which then prevailed employed fear and punishment as its leading stimulants. Margaret, though sometimes approving the too strict discipline of her husband, often opened her maternal arms to Martin, to console him in his tears. She herself occasionally carried to excess that precept of Divine wisdom, which says, "He that spareth the rod hateth his son." The impetuous temper of the child often led to frequent reproof and correction. "My parents," says Luther, in after life, "treated me harshly, and made me very timid. My mother one day chastised me about a filbert till the blood came. They believed with all their heart they were doing right, but they could not discriminate between dispositions, though this is necessary in order to know when and how punishments should be inflicted."[127] [127] "Sed non poterant discernere ingenia secundum quæ essent temperandæ correctiones." (Luth. Op. W. xxii, p. 1785.) But they could not discriminate between minds, though these ought to regulate chastisement. The poor child's treatment at school was not less severe. His master one morning beat him fifteen times in succession. "It is necessary," said Luther, when mentioning the fact, "it is necessary to chastise children; but it is necessary, at the same time, to love them." With such an education, Luther early learned to despise the allurements of a sensual life. "He who is to become great must begin with little,"[128] justly remarks one of his earliest biographers; "and if children are brought up with too much delicacy and tenderness, it does them harm all the rest of their life." [128] "Was gross sol werden, muss klein angeben." (Mathesius, Hist. p. 3.) Martin learned something at school. He was taught the heads of the Catechism, the Ten Commandments, the Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, hymns, forms of prayer, and the _Donat_. This last was a Latin grammar, composed in the fourth century by Donatus, St. Jerome's master; and having been improved in the eleventh century by a French monk, named Remigius, was long in high repute as a school-book. He moreover conned the Ciseo-Janus, a very singular almanac, composed in the tenth or eleventh century. In short, he learned all that was taught in the Latin school of Mansfeld. But the child seems not to have been brought to God. The only religious sentiment which could be discovered in him was that of fear. Whenever he heard Jesus Christ mentioned he grew pale with terror; for the Saviour had been represented to him as an angry Judge. This servile fear, so foreign to genuine religion, perhaps predisposed him for the glad tidings of the gospel, and for the joy which he afterwards experienced when he became acquainted with him who is meek and lowly in heart.