First request.
1. of defilement of the divine name.
Faithful exhortation to the Christians of Erfurt to beware of false teaching and to hold righteous teachers dear and valuable.
November 1527.
To all pious Christians in Erfurt.
Grace and peace in Christ. One of your own preachers, Mr. Justus Menius, has sent me a booklet which he has written against the preacher of the Barefoot Church, so that I should judge whether it is worthy and sufficient. Now I am of the opinion that God should also protect me from refraining from being a judge or ruler over other preachers, so that I do not also start a papacy; but rather, I want to command Christ, who alone should rule over his preachers in Christendom. But this I owe and will do.
I will gladly do so, that out of my duty of love, I may bear witness to each one for the service and benefit of the Christians to his teaching, where it is right, and warn against the false teachers and also bear witness against them, as much as God gives me; as I have done so far.
2 Therefore, I give my testimony to this booklet that it is well made, acts and advocates the doctrine of the Christian faith rightly and purely with fine good German words, well founded in the Gospel and other holy Scriptures; and that you also owe it to yourselves to recognize such grace and gifts of God, even if he does not give you any more than he has given you in the past.
such a man would have existed. Now, however, he has advised you with many and, as it were, showered you with them. See to it that you are not found weary and ungrateful, and that your ears itch to hear and know otherwise; lest Satan gain room to introduce error by force of God's doom and wrath; as St. Paul also warns the Thessalonians. For he wants to keep his precious word in honor and his preachers and messengers unnoticed; or he even wants to avenge it horribly; as he threatens Capernaum, Chorazin, Bethsaida, Matth. 11, 21.
You have had a high school with you for many years, in which I also stood for many years; but I will swear that all this time not one proper Christian lesson or sermon has been preached by anyone, of which you now have every corner full. Oh how blessed I would have felt at that time, if I could have heard a gospel, even a little psalm once; since you now have the whole scripture to hear clearly. How precious and deep the Scriptures lay buried, since we were so wonderfully hungry and thirsty for them, and there was no one to give us anything; and yet so much expense, trouble, danger and work went into it. But now, full of great abundance and riches of the Word, you have become equally full and slothful, and have it without cost, trouble, or labor.
4 Once Doctor Sebastian, preacher on Our Lady's Mountain near you, said, since it was so cheap in Erfurt: God plagues other people with anger, but punishes us with abundance. See to it that this about spiritual abundance is not true now. In our time we had the plague that the word was dear to us and restrained; your plague is the same.
will now be that you have it too full and too much; therefore it will be despised along with its servants.
(5) For this reason, I fear, God still allows you to be challenged in such great light by the preacher of darkness, Doctor Conrad Kling, of the Barefoot, and does not give your councilors the courage to attack it and to do so, so that the discord of the preachers would be added, and they would be heard against each other, and those who could not stand would have to remain silent, as other cities, such as Nuremberg and the like, have done. For it is not good for any city to suffer discord among the people through public instigators and preachers. A part of it should give way, it would be the Protestants or the Papists; as Christ teaches, Matth. 10, 14: "In whichever city they will not hear you, depart from it, and cast the dust of your shoes upon it." Those who will not hear us, we are easily and soon separated from.
(6) So now, for God's sake, I ask that you patiently and Christianly accept this admonition of mine and show your gratitude to God, the Father of all mercy, who has sent you such comforting preachers and called you out of the former darkness into his wonderful light. And beware of the teachers of darkness, who seek you and will not celebrate. For Satan does not sleep, as you well see and experience. Therefore I have not left the booklet lying around, but have printed it to strengthen you and all others. For this is the right way, which the gospel teaches us. And send and give it also herewith in a spiritual gift; God grant that it may create much benefit among you, Amen. Anno 1527.