§ 11. During the earlier years of Arndt’s residence in Brunswick, as a co-pastor of the church of St. Martin, his life was comparatively peaceful and happy. The purity of his character, the soundness and power of his doctrine, and the diligence and fidelity manifested in his pastoral labors, could not fail to command the respect, and attract the love of all candid persons. But he was at length subjected to trials of a new and painful character, and became the victim of the hostile and persecuting spirit of men from whom a very different course of conduct might have reasonably been expected. The origin of these new difficulties has not always been clearly understood; while some have regarded Arndt as worthy of the censures of those who assailed him, others are disposed to condemn those assailants in unqualified terms. It is strange that, even at this comparatively remote period, such judgments are sometimes expressed in language which betrays personal feeling rather than it announces the calm judgment of a later and disinterested generation. § 12. It is here necessary to cast a glance at the history of the times which preceded and followed the eventful year 1555, in which Arndt was born, a year ever memorable as the one in which the signing of the articles of the Peace of Augsburg secured a temporary external repose for the Lutheran Church. This “Peace” terminated at least the horrors which had followed the introduction, in 1548, of the _Augsburg Interim_, by which the newly-established Protestant doctrine was seriously endangered. The provisions of this _Interim_ were enforced with such merciless tyranny by popish authorities, that in South Germany alone about four hundred faithful Lutheran pastors, who could not conscientiously accede to an arrangement which might possibly restore the full authority of the errors and superstitions of Rome, were driven, as exiles, with their families, from their homes. The spirit of the Christian martyrs of the early ages of the Church revived in these heroic men, and they clung with undying tenacity to their holy faith.