without being branded liars on that account. Sometimes even a professor
forgets things, and Luther was a professor. What Luther has said about
the rigor of his monastic life is perfectly true, but it was no reason
why in 1512 he should counsel men to become monks. He had not yet come
to the full knowledge of the wrong principles underlying that mode of
life. To adduce such inaccuracies as evidence of prevarication is itself
an insincere act and puts the claimant by right in the Ananias Club.

Luther is said to have been a glutton and a drunkard. "Let us examine
the facts. What is the evidence? Luther's obesity and his gout. Is that
evidence? Not in any court. It would be evidence if both conditions were
caused, and caused only, by gluttony and tippling. But this notoriously
is not the case. Obesity may be due to disease. A man may even eat
little and wax stout if what he eats turns into adipose rather than into
muscular tissue. As for gout, it is the result of uric acid diathesis.
Now uric acid diathesis may be, and very often is, caused by high
living, but often, too, it is due to quite different causes. Just as in
the case of Bright's disease. I do not deny that Luther drank freely
both beer and wine. So did everybody else. People drank beer as we do
coffee. . . . Moreover, in the sixteenth century alcoholic beverages
were prescribed for the maladies from which Luther suffered much--kidneys
and nervous trouble. We now know that in such cases alcohol proves a
very poison; but this Luther could not know. But intemperate . . . in
his use of strong drink Luther was not. Neither was he a glutton. Before
he married, he ate very irregularly, and often completely forgot his
meals. When he could not get meat and wine, he contented himself with
bread and water. . . . Melanchthon tells us that Luther loved the coarse
food as he did the coarse speech of the peasantry, and even of that food
ate little, so little that Melanchthon marveled how Luther could
maintain strength upon such a diet.--It is further a noteworthy fact