1 I found these thoughts of mine already partly printed under the printer's press when I was resurrected from the dead and had returned home in these days. However, I had poured them out to a good friend as a favor, during lunch and dinner, not so that they should be publicly published, but so that the same good friend would have an example of how to act and teach the Word. But now, even if I am vainly angry and unwilling that they should be publicly presented, I am also compelled, by the urgent and insistent pleading of other good friends, to adorn them with a preface, since I have nothing to say on the subject except that I do not dare to deny that both the thoughts and the words are mine. But if it had been allowed, at the right time and in the right place, I could at least have published them more extensively and more completely. If these bad and defective fragments should please some, then they may please them, even against my will.
*) The Latin text was published in Wittenberg in 1537 and then incorporated into the Heimische Ausgabe VII, 522 ff. Cf. Erl. A. oxx. varii urFumsuti VII, 374 ff.
(2) But for the sake of Christ I ask my pious thieves (for I know that they do this with a sincere and honest heart) that they may not easily be found, either while I am alive or even when I am dead, to hand over something of my thoughts, which they either stole and stole with cunning while I was alive, or which, when I am dead, has already been communicated to them before. For because I am compelled to present such a great person, especially at such a time, it is necessary that I be heated day and night and overflow in strange thoughts, which I, because of weakness of memory (for they are infinite), am compelled to put down on paper in two or three words, as a desolate chaos and lump, which one day, if necessity should require it, can be brought into its proper form. But to hand over such thoughts, which have either been stolen thievishly or received by gift, would be a sign of an ungrateful and inhuman mind. There are in them (as we are human beings) such pieces as are human, even tasting of the flesh. For when we are alone and disputing, we are also often angry; and God laughs at our excellent wisdom, with which we show ourselves whimsically before him; only believe that he also delights in such things of his.
Fools who teach him how he should rule, which I have done not infrequently and still often do. But if such things were to appear publicly, I would truly become the most beautiful fable among all the fables of the whole world. Not as if it were ungodly and evil, what I thus think in zeal and heat; but that it is foolish before all too great wisdom, even according to my own judgment, which I must make about it, when the heat, which is felt in the inventing, has subsided. And such is much that I wrote with heat in the beginning of my matter.
I have. Therefore, I ask again that no friend give out anything of mine without me, or take upon himself the burden and danger of a work without public testimony. Such a thing requires love and justice. For by the grace of God I have so far been able, and can still for myself more than sufficiently take upon myself the danger, envy and burden of even the best writings, that I therefore need no helper in this. May Christ Jesus bear and tolerate us, and finally free us from ourselves as well. Amen.
Index of the sermons contained in this booklet.
On the 1st Sunday of Advent.
From the boy JEsu.
On the 1st Sunday after the Epiphany of Christ.
On the Sunday of Quinquagesimä.
On Reminiscere Sunday.
On Sunday Oculi.
On Sunday Lätare.
On the day of the Annunciation of Mary.
A short disposition of the Passion of Christ.
On the Sunday of Quasimodogeniti.
On the Sunday of Misericordias Domini.
On the Sunday Jubilate.
On Sunday Cantate.
Ascension Day.
On Sunday Exaudi.
On the Sunday of Trinity.
On the second Sunday after Trinity.
On the fourth Sunday after Trinity.
On the thirteenth Sunday after Trinity.
On the nineteenth Sunday after Trinity.
On the twentieth Sunday after Trinity.
On the twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity.