1. The University Professor, the Preacher, the Pastor _Relations with the Wittenberg Students._ AMONG the pleasing traits in Luther’s picture a prominent one is the care he evinced for the students at Wittenberg. The disagreeable impression caused by the decline of the University town is to some extent mitigated by the efforts Luther made to check the corruption amongst the scholars of the University. He saw that they were supervised, so far as academic freedom permitted, and never hesitated to blame their excesses from the pulpit. At the same time, in spite of the growing multiplicity of his labours and cares, he showed himself a helpful father to them even in temporal matters, for instance, when he inveighed in a sermon against their exploitation at the hands of burghers and peasants: They were being sucked dry and could scarcely be treated worse; this he had heard from all he knew.[777] The respect he enjoyed and the example of his own simple life lent emphasis to his moral exhortations. His eloquent lectures were eagerly listened to; his delivery was vivid and impressive. People knew that he did not lecture for the sake of money and, even at the height of his fame, they gladly pointed to the unassuming life he led at home. He did not expect any marks of respect from the students, greatly as they, and not only those of the theological Faculty, esteemed him. Melanchthon had introduced the custom of making the students stand when Luther entered the class-room; Luther, however, was not at all pleased with this innovation and said petulently: “_Doxa, doxa est magna noxa_; who runs after glory never gets it.”[778] Oldecop, the Catholic chronicler and Luther’s former pupil, who, as a youth and before the apostasy, had listened to him at Wittenberg, remembered in his old age how Luther, without setting himself in opposition to their youthful jollifications had known how to restrain them; just as he “reproved sin fearlessly from the pulpit,”[779] so he earnestly sought to banish temptation from the pleasures of the students. We may here recall, that, as early as 1520, Luther had urged that all bordels should be done away with, those “public, heathenish haunts of sin,” as he termed them, at the same time using their existence as a weapon against the Catholic past.[780] The fact that many such houses were closed down at that time was, however, to some extent due to fear of the prevalent “French disease.” When, in his old age, in 1543, the arrival of certain light women threatened new danger to the morals of the Wittenberg students, already exposed to the ordinary temptations of the town, Luther decided to interfere and make a public onslaught at the University. This attack supplies us with a striking example of his forcefulness, whilst also showing us what curious ideas and expressions he was wont to intermingle with his well-meant admonitions.