Of the ten lepers.
D. Martin Luther's Letter and Preface.
Jesus.
Martin Luther wishes the grace and peace of God to the honorable and strict Herr Haugold von Einsiedeln, Herren Hansen von Dolzk and Bernhard von Hirschfeld, my favorable lords and friends.
Favorable, dear gentlemen and friends.
I, poor brother, have once again lit a new fire; I have bitten a big hole in the papist's pocket, that I have attacked the confession. Where will I stay now? And where will they find enough brimstone, pitch, fire and wood to destroy the poisonous heretic?
*Written in 1521, at the Wartburg. We take the following historical note from the Erlangen edition: "Luther composed this writing at the Wartburg on the occasion of Duke John of Saxony, who had desired an explanation of this gospel, because the opponents believed to find in it reasons for refutation against Luther's book of confession. On September 17 (the Lamperti), he sent the finished writing, which he himself called a foretaste of his postilla, to Spalatin with the request to have it written in the neat and then to forward it to the duke; also, if he considered it worthy of printing, to send the dedication enclosed with the letter to Haugold von Einsiedeln, Hans von Dolzk and Bernhard von Hirsfeld. (Cf. the entire letter to Spalatin of Sept. 17, 1521, in de Wette II, p. 53 f.) - Spalatin gave Luther's work to the printing press at Wittenberg; however, the printing does not seem to have progressed quickly enough for Luther, and he complained to the Wittenbergers through Spalatin; for Melanchthon writes to Spalatin (Corp. Ref. I, p. 455.): Concio de decem leprosis post triduum, credo absolvetur. Tu curabis, ut vacare sinat ty- pographos. (The sermon of the ten lepers will be finished, I believe, in three days. You will see to it that he gives time to the printer). - On November I, the printing was not yet completed; for in the letter to Gerbellius in Strasbourg, written on that day, Luther lists this writing among those which are still under the press, (De Wette II, 90.:
powder? Now one must certainly break out the church windows, since some holy fathers and spiritual lords preach that they may feel like proclaiming the gospel, that is, blaspheming against Luther, shouting murder and spouting? What else should they preach to the poor people? Each one must preach what he can.
But his reason and cause, since he relies on and attacks them, they will, by special grace, remain most kindly untouched, and may not intercede here; for their own consciences abundantly testify to them, as they know nothing at all and are so stock unlearned that they would be rightly vain cardinals and bishops, and perhaps therefore remain so grossly unlearned that they hope that the pope should also throw such broad and pointed hats among them. Only dead, dead, dead, they cry, with the heretic, he wants to kill all things.
and overthrow the whole spiritual estate as Christendom rises. I hope, if I am worthy, that it will come to them that they will kill me and fill me with their fathers' measure, but it is not yet time, my hour has not yet come; I must first greatly anger the serpent race and earn death for them honestly, so that they may have cause to perform a great divine service on me. Now if my ungracious lords would hear, I would not answer this, for what they themselves know well.
3. first, that it is public how I take no money to teach such things as they take. Johannes Eck has become rich over me and many others. So I ever have no favor from it, because the book writer in Leipzig takes the same, who would also be worthy of a cardinal's hat along with the corners. Thus I have all the disgrace and hardship of my life, and being of clerical rank myself, I should spare myself. But now my conscience alone compels me to warn everyone as much as I can: whoever follows me must not thank me; whoever persecutes me must not answer me; I want to have cleared my conscience before God, and be innocent of the blood and souls that are seduced by the pope and papists. He is above and will come, to whom everyone must answer.
4 Therefore I still say, call and exhort, ask and plead: Whoever wants to keep his soul, let him beware of pope, cardinal, bishop, priests, monks, high schools with their teachings of men, and certainly consider them apostles of wolves and devils, if they do not preach the gospel pure and true. Dear people, things are not so good in Christendom as they pretend. I do what is mine, each one sees for himself.
5 But I beg the papists to see that I do them no injustice: they must ever confess that their thing is not founded in Scripture, and their nature was not in the apostles' and martyrs' time, when the church was at its best, but was invented anew by men; so my thing is ever not contrary to Scripture, as they themselves must say, but vain Scripture. Do they now
not with us the bare Scriptures, well, let them keep their thing, and yet let us keep the Scriptures; let us not forcibly lift them out of their thing, and put them into the Scriptures; he that will not, let him keep his own. We want Christ and not the pope; so they keep the pope and not Christ: because Christ's doctrine and Pabst's doctrine neither want nor like to rule with each other; because Christ alone wants to be master, as he says Matth. 23, 8.
(6) And coming to confession, I have also attacked it as a human poem, not that I reject confession, which is almost heartily pleasing to me, but that I reject coercion and compulsion. I praise faith and baptism, but no one is to be forced into them, but only admonished and left free; so also confession is to be free and only praised.
(7) But against this they have nothing to answer, for such a poor cry: they blame and reproach us, as those who shun and condemn confession only because we do not like to confess and do not like to hear about it. To this we answer thus: We confess our guilt, we are poor sinners who do not like to confess, and it is no wonder; for without the grace of God it is not possible that nature should like to confess; and therefore it is true that we are hostile to confession, even from infirmity of nature, not only from the honest cause of divine right; this is also no great shame to us, because it is a common infirmity of all the world. But it is a great wonder how it happens that they themselves, the confessional tyrants and great saints, who are not like other people, not even like us public sinners, nevertheless do not like to confess at all, and are so deep in common frailty, or even deeper than we poor sinners, that it would not be necessary here to call one ass the other sack bearer: Nor do they leave the beam in their eyes and look at the little piece in our eyes, praising us that we do not like to confess; just as if they were the ones who liked to confess, if it were publicly known otherwise.
(8) They also have a good boast against us; they hear us, and we must confess to them; if the little wheel should be turned back, how justly.
If they also had to confess to us and let us hear the great miraculous sanctity hidden under their robes: Then we should well realize how they would be more cringing, bending and shaking than we; then the great lovers and prize-givers of confession would say very badly of their most beloved confession; then the fame would very quickly subside, and leave us in peace, yes, they would soon invent that there was neither need nor command to confess, and still boast that they do it not out of hatred of confession, but out of love of what is right. But now they do not have to confess us, they invent that it is necessary and commanded; they do not leave it at that, mock our infirmity on top of that, and shall gladly suffer their tyranny and mockery, if no one but they alone is the cause and guilty of such our infirmity, with their sacrilegious, invented, mad laws.
9. If we now ask again: Why then they 1o like to hear confession, and thus praise the confession, which we shun, then the honest cause is found, the holy confession penny, the great emergency helper: If he did not fear that the belly would weaken,*) you should see that confession would be neither necessary nor commanded; but so that the same interest does not depart, on which so many bellies and fattening sows are endowed in the monasteries, confession must be commanded by God, and a cry must be raised among us that the holy servants of the belly and the tender eating people seek salvation through the confession of our poor sinners. And whoever believes this believes the highest, best and richest article of the holy Christian faith, for it bears great good and riches, so that the others, which Christ commanded, make all poor.
10. also so he brings for verily much strange new newspaper, which is sweet to the tickling ears.
and after that the holy people may talk and rejoice spiritually over the table and among themselves. But whoever denies the article has denied God, and not only denied God, since they do not care so much, but has pierced a hole in their belly, which is their true God, of which St. Paul says Phil. 3:19: Quorum Deus venter est: "The belly is their God"; therefore it is neither a reproach nor a joke to them with the belly, it is a soft God and has no leg, would be pierced very quickly if they did not perceive it with diligence.
(11) If they should not only confess to us, but also give us the penny of confession, our infirmity might truly be healed, so that it would be as strong as its holiness is now, and confession might be as dear to us as it is now to them. But our belly is not worthy of such purgation, therefore we must remain frail and hostile to confession, which they may easily hold by the help of such strong medicine; for all frailty is thereby taken from their belly. How earnestly they seek our salvation, however, is easily seen from other things that do not bear confession pennies nor help the belly, which they may well leave untouched and unpracticed, since all power lies with them.
For this reason I have sent out this Gospel beforehand, so that they may grasp how finely they have preached the Gospel to us and established confession. I also want to present my dear Germans with the postilions from the barrel, although I have not taken them further than from Advent to Epiphany, and in the middle of the work, for the sake of the blasphemers, I have to break the order: but there is nothing wrong, it will be all right again. Hereby commanded by God. On the day of Lamperti 1521.