Excerpt from The Hartford Seminary Record, Vol. 18: Issued Under the Auspices of the Faculty of Hartford Theological Seminary, Published Quarterly It is with reluctance that one assaults a hoary superstition and one to which so much defensive labor has been applied; but a full study of the Reformation literature with its antecedents will constrain a scientifically disposed mind to conclude that Luther is not the solitary and exclusive founder of the High German speech or anything approximating that conspicuous dignity. Many of his contemporaries wrote equally as well as he did, if not always with his popular genius and capacity for turning slang into golden speech, nevertheless with as good a grammar, as large a vocabulary, and as flowing an eloquence. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.