_Polemical Trend of Luther’s Pedagogics_ If we seek to characterise both the writings just spoken of we find that they amount to an appeal called forth by the misery of those times for some provision to be made to ensure a supply of educated men for the future. Frederick Paulsen describes them, particularly the earlier one, as nothing more than a “cry for help, wrung from Luther by the sudden, general collapse of the educational system which followed on the ecclesiastical upheaval.”[21] They were not dictated so much by a love for humanistic studies as such or by the wish to further the interests of learning in Germany, as by the desire to fill the secular-government berths with able, “Christian” men, and, above all, to provide preachers and pastors for the work Luther had commenced and for the struggle against Popery. The schools themselves were unobtrusively to promote the new Evangel amongst the young and in the home. Learning, according to Luther, as a Protestant theologian expressed it, was to enter “into the service of the Evangel and further its right understanding”; “the religious standpoint alone was of any real interest to him.”[22] Melanchthon’s attitude to the schools was more broadminded. To some extent his efforts supplied what was wanting in Luther.[23] His object was the education of the people, whereas, in Luther’s eyes, the importance of the schools chiefly lay in their being “_seminaria ecclesiarum_,” as he once calls them. With him their aim was too much the mere promoting of his specific theological interests, to the “preservation of the Church.”[24] According to Luther the first and most important reason for promoting the establishment of schools, was, as he points out to the “Councillors of all the Townships,” to resist the devil, who, the better to maintain his dominion over the German lands, was bent on thwarting the schools; “if we want to prick him on a tender spot then we may best do so by seeing that the young grow up in the knowledge of God, spreading the Word of God and teaching it to others.”[25] “The other [reason] is, as St. Paul says, that we receive not the grace of God in vain, nor neglect the accepted time.” The “donkey-stables and devil-schools” kept by monks and clergy had now seen their day; but, now that the “darkness” has been dispelled by the “Word of God,” we have the “best and most learned of the youths and men, who, equipped with languages and all the arts, can prove of great assistance.” “My dear, good Germans, make use of God’s grace and His Word now you have it! For know this, the Word of God and His grace is indeed here.”[26]