Preface Martini Luther.
1 I must boast once, because I have not boasted for a long time. People have long cried out for a concilium, so that the church would be reformed. I mean, I have caused a concilium and made a reformation, so that the ears of the papists ring, and the heart wants to burst with great malice; for I hold it true that if the pope were to hold a common concilium, not so much would be accomplished in it.
First, I have chased the papists into the books, and especially into the Scriptures, and have driven the pagan Aristotelem and the Summites together with the Sophists with their [Magister] Sententiarum from the place, so that they neither rule nor teach in the pulpit or in schools as they did before, which I respect that no concilium would have been able to do.
3 Secondly, I have quieted the great bustle and fair of the seductive indulgence, which no concilium should have touched.
Thirdly, the pilgrimages and the devils of the field have almost been put out of the way. So I also hope that the monasteries and convents will henceforth become a measure, and many other large pieces more, which the papists must drive, fall and lie down, so that they do not rage and rage so unreasonably; they should also have ingratitude, where they would be hostile to me without cause, I have honestly deserved it. Praise be to God, amen.
5 Again, by God's grace, I have accomplished so much that, praise God, now a boy or girl of fifteen knows more in Christian doctrine than all the high schools and doctors knew before. For the right catechism has once again emerged from the
I have, by God's grace, 1) brought into good conscience and order every man, that he may know how to live, 2) and how he may live in his state, and in sum, all the estates of the world, and in sum, all the estates of the world, I have, by God's grace, 1) brought to good conscience and order, that each one may know how he should live, 2) and how he should serve God in his estate, and no small fruit, peace and virtue has resulted among those who have accepted it. None of these have ever been taught rightly in a monastery, high school, or parish, as is evidenced by their books and sermons.
(6) Yes, rather they have taught 3) the contradiction, so that they have also made counsels out of the commandments of Christ, Matt. 5 and 6, and in sum have taught vain men's estates and works, suppressed the faith, diminished and destroyed worldly authority and marital status, and the abominations of much more; indeed, to this day they know nothing of true Christian and necessary articles or catechism.
(7) And consider it still certain that if the papists, especially those who are now almost blubbering with letters, were all pressed into one vat and then melted and distilled seven times, there should not be a fourth of a tongue brought out of it that could teach such articles properly, and not find so much out of all their teaching as a servant against his lord, a maid against her wives, and so on, in the sight of God.
1) The words: "von GOttes Gnaden" are in the Wittenberg and in the Jena, but are missing in the Erlangen.
2) The Jenaer has the good Conjectur at the edge: "live" instead of: lives.
3) The words: "have they" are missing in the Erlanger.
*The title of the book to which Luther wrote this preface is: "Von Priester Ehe des werdenigen Licentiaten Steffan Klingebeyl, mit einer Vorrede Mart. Luther. Wittemberg 1528." 20 quarto leaves. At the end: "Printed in Wittemberg by Nickel Schirlentz. - Am Jar. M.D.LLViij." Our preface is found: in the Wittenberg (1569), vol. IX, p. 541; in the Jena (1566), vol. IV, p. 381 b; in the Altenburg, vol. IV, p. 455; in the Leipzig, vol. XXII, appendix, p. 90 and in the Erlangen, vol. 63, p. 271.
Let it be said, then, how a prince or lord shall deal with his subjects, 1) that they also must testify to me that they never hear such things from them.
8. so completely has a Pabstesel become of the people that they are donkeys, and must remain donkeys, one boils, roasts, shames, sweeps, pours, blues, breaks, turns them, as one wants or can; alone they can scold Luther, that is the art completely, who does that, he is doctor, poet, and master of all art, with their bunch.
(9) Because I have now chased them into the Scriptures, and yet they 2) cannot understand nor act, help God, what a wild, desolate clamor and clamor I have caused with this. Here one howls about one form of the sacrament, there the other one laments against the clergy marriage; here one barks about the mass, here 3) the other one shrieks about good works; there one murmurs about monastic vows, there one hums about the holy service.
10 Summa, it is Luther's Reformation. He has caused a strange hunt, and hunted such asses' heads into the Scriptures, as if one had brought all kinds of animals into an animal garden.
Here, Doctor Cocles barks like a dog; there, Brand von Bern screeches like a fox; the blasphemous preacher at Leipzig howls like a wolf; Kunz Doctor Wimpina quacks like a grunting sow; and there are so many different sounds and cries of vermin among each other that I am almost disgusted by my hunt, when I realize that nothing helps everywhere that they are hunted into the Scriptures. The kind will not leave the kind, nor the bird sing differently than its beak has grown. They are supposed to be in the Scriptures, and yet they cannot deal with it; I would like to have mercy on their misery myself.
I have written so many little books, and not one has been found who can give me the right 6) answer.
1) The words: "against his subjects" are in the Wittenberg and in the Jena, but are missing in the Erlangen.
2) In the editions: the same.
3) Erlanger: kreiset.
4) "Cocles" is Cochläus. The "Brand von Bern" is v. Mensing. Cf. St. Louis edition, vol. XIX, 1346.
5) "one" is missing in the Erlanger.
6) "correct" is missing in the Erlanger.
7) I am not going to answer "the same"; everyone lets it stand, and meanwhile teaches me other things, which I know well before, namely human commandments, that they have made me lazy and safe, and I have to let their noise and shouting pass by.
For this reason, I have allowed myself to omit this booklet by the worthy licentiate Stephan Klingebeil, in which he writes of the priests' marriage against such vermin, not only because it is almost well founded in Scripture, but also because it is finely and well equipped with the papal laws and the sayings of the fathers, whether my vermin and wild hunters would understand their own howling and clamoring.
14 For the world cannot deny that the apostles and ancient bishops were married, and many ancient canons confirm such marriage. It is well known that St. Cyprian (who had more spirit and holiness in one hair than all the papists have in their whole life and being) not only allowed but also advised even the deacons, who had vowed chastity, to marry, so that they would be safe from the danger of unchastity.
15: This is what is written in the spiritual law Distinet. 27. C. Quidam, that St. Augustine speaks thus: Some say that they are adulterers who are free after the vow of chastity. But I say that they are hardly sinners who separate from one another. From this saying it is easy to see what St. Augustine thought about the vow and the conjugal life, although after that such a saying had to give way to the pope.
16 Thus says there Pope Martinus, Cap. Diaconus: If a deacon wishes to renounce his office, and be free, he may do so; and gives such a reason for the answer: For (says he) although at the time he was ordained he vowed chastity, yet the sacrament of marriage is so powerful that such a marriage cannot be divorced, although the vow is broken. I think it should be clear from such a text that the ancients were more concerned with the marital state than with the vow of chastity, and that they did not consider the vow of chastity as a vow.
7) Erlanger: da.
Marriage for the sake of vows (as is happening now), but have torn the vows for the sake of marriage.
17 Yes, the pope knows this well, and does it, for he has often taken monks and nuns out of the monastery and let them marry, as we read in the histories; so that the papists themselves, together with their head, do not consider it wrong for clergymen to marry, otherwise the pope would not do it; therefore it cannot be their seriousness that they rage and rage against it.
(18) But this they have, that they seek only cause to lie against us, and to deceive the common man, though they know otherwise; and the end of the song is this, If they did it, or permitted it, it would be right; but because we do it, and permit it, it is wrong. From this you see how they seek the truth and love the right, namely their own tyranny, and the prison of the poor conscience. They are boys in the skin, and all who knowingly and wantonly keep it with them. There you have the reason why they strive so nearly against our marriage, namely their desperate, malicious will to be brave, and nothing else.
19 Notice also that they not only blaspheme and desecrate the innocent marriages of ours, but also so chasteningly silence the most heinous whoremongers and public adulterers and wife-stealers and maiden-abusers, if they themselves are among themselves, that
their insolent cries of sin fill heaven and earth. There is no Cocles, no fire, not one papist who murmurs against it.
(20) And I am reminded of such impudent boys, as if a coarse elf in the middle of the market stood up in front of everyone and made his muck, and meanwhile pointed to a house, where a child with discipline and secretly arranged his misery, and thought thereby to beautify himself and to move everyone to laugh at the child. Shouldn't such a rascal be put out with dogs, or be hunted down with rods?
(21) My papists also do the same: they make their filth in all kinds of unchastity most shameful and annoying before all the world, and then point to the marriage of the priests, who keep themselves with a wife by breeding and in silence; nevertheless, they think that they want to cover their abominable filth of whoredom and fornication with it. Oh, let them go, the blind leaders [Matth. 15, 14]. God's wrath has come upon them to the end that they shall see no more.
(22) We have the Scriptures for us, along with the old fathers' sayings, and the laws of the former churches, along with the Pope's own custom; there we remain. But they have some of the fathers' contradictions, new canons and their own will, without all Scripture and the word of God, so they may remain; if we are heretics, they are even greater heretics. But Christ will be the judge of all this, amen.