on the improved edition of the interpretation of the Epistles and Gospels, from the Feast of the Epiphany to Easter, in 1625, in print.*)
Mercy and peace! What is this, my dear printers, that one so publicly robs and steals from another, and corrupts you among yourselves? Have you now also become highwaymen and thieves? or do you think that God will bless you and feed you through such evil deeds and pieces?
I have started the postilions from the holy three kings' days until Easter; then a boy, the typesetter, who feeds on our sweat, steals my handwriting before I finish it, and carries it out, and has it printed outside in the country, to destroy our food and work. God will find it. What you gain from it, grease your shoes with it: You are a thief and you owe God restitution.
Now the damage would still be to suffer, if they had not so falsely and disgracefully prepared my books. But now they print the same and hurry so that when they come back to me, I do not know my own books. There is something outside; there it is displaced; there it is forged; there it is not corrected: they have also learned the art of printing Wittenberg on top of some books that have never been made nor been in Wittenberg. These are knavery to deceive the common man, because by the grace of God we are in the cry that we with all diligence and no useless book omit as much as we can. So they are driven by avarice and envy to deceive people under our name and to ruin ours.
It is ever a dissimilar thing that we work
*) Cf. Walch XI Prefaces 34 and Erl. A. 7, 13 f.
D. Red.
and food shall turn to it, and others shall have the enjoyment and we the damage. So let everyone be warned about the Postille of the Six Sundays, and let it perish. I do not know them for mine either. For in correcting it, I often have to change myself what I have overlooked and done wrong in my handwriting, so that my handwriting copy is not to be trusted.
But if anyone wants to have them, he should improve and correct them according to this copy. One knows our letter well, so that one can judge by it and separate the wrong books from the right ones. Although I would be content if I could never go without a book, it costs me a lot of effort and work.
Therefore be warned, my dear printers, you who stand and rob like this; for you know what St. Paul says to the Thessalonians in 1 Ep. at the 4th chapter: "No one defiles his neighbor in trade, for God is avenger of all such things. This saying will also affect you one day; even so you will not be richer of such robbery, as Solomon says: "In the house of the wicked is vain destruction *), but the house of the righteous is blessed." And Isaiah, "Thou that robest what is good, thou shalt be robbed again."
Shouldn't a printer, out of Christian love, wait a month or two for the other's good before reprinting him? But if we Germans are ever stingy and want to be beasts, then always be stingy and rage, not in God's name. The judgment will be found. God grant correction in time, amen.
*) Wearing out, that is, going out of each other in fibers.
D. Red.