I thank God the Father through Jesus Christ our Lord, so be it with me, that I have experienced so much, that in the pulpit one must now at least preach the text of the Gospel and the Epistle more loudly and purely, so that the innumerable idolatries, which have been driven into the churches by the priesthood, may be driven out daily more and more, which is not less, because we should daily see many devils approaching through God's Spirit. Although the devil defends himself confidently, he rages and rumbles almost terribly, both through his lying mouths and his tyrants; and as he stirs his dragon's tail through the lying mouths, so he also roars terribly through his lion's mouth, the tyrants. But still nothing will help him.
For it is no longer written (praise God!) even among the papists themselves on the pulpit, how St. Barbara helps to the Sacrament, St. Christopher against the going 2) death, St. George, St. John, St. John the Baptist, St. John the Baptist, St. John the Baptist, St. John the Baptist, St. John the Baptist.
2) Erlanger: "tough". Both the Wittenberg and the Jena have our reading. The explanation of the idiom used here is found in Walch, St. Louis Edition, Vol. Ill, 1722, Z42: "St. Christoffel has to help those who are in their last throes."
in the war, St. Erasmus in the box, and the like holy service, brotherhoods, pilgrimages etc. And those who are in awe of Luther can no longer hear such things themselves. Nevertheless, everyone now wants to hear Christ, regardless of the fact that [it] displeases the pope, whom they now fear as much, taught by Luther, as the red king in the card game, without what they do to annoy us, against their conscience, after they, either hardened or come into the no, cannot return with honor.
I have now been under the pope's spell for twenty years, but I have never felt it (praise God!). So the pope has also been under my spell for twenty or more years; whether he has felt the same, I let them say or remain silent, is the same to me. But I am concerned that these and similar books show what he has felt, still feels, and must feel more. For it is, truly, not to his liking that the holy scriptures come to light; for this reason I often wish that a short commentary on the gauze Biblia would also be made for the preachers, especially in Latin, like the good man,
*The necessary remarks on this preface have already been made at No. 36, Col. 362 in this volume. The Wittenberg and Jena editions place it in the year 1537. It is found in the Wittenberg edition (1559), vol. XII, p. 363d; in the Jena edition (1568), vol. VI, p. 485d; in the Altenburg edition, vol. VI, p. 1073; in the Leipzig edition, vol. XXII, appendix, p. 124 and in the Erlangen edition, vol. 63, p. 350.
Nicolaus de Lyra, has undertaken. Which work would not be to be rejected where it would be improved.
4 For the end Christ must die, not by the hand of man nor by the mouth of man, that is, by the power and wisdom of man, but by the Spirit of the mouth of Christ, as St. Paul prophesies. But Christ's mouth is his word and preaching, as he says Luc. 21, 15.: 1) "I will give you mouth and wisdom" etc., and in the prophet Jeremiah: "You shall be my mouth, where you shall divide the delicious from the foolish." And to Moses he says, "Aaron shall be thy mouth, and thou shalt be Pharaoh's God" [Ex. 4:16].
5 Therefore let us continue confidently, and bring the Scriptures fresh and pure into the pulpit, so that the people may know the Lord and Savior.
1) In the editions: "Matth. 10 [, 19.]"; the Erlanger reprinted from Walch: "Matth. 10. (V. 9.)".
If we know Jesus Christ rightly and well, then the most holy father, with St. Barbara, Catharine, Margaret, and also with Veronica, will easily fall without a battle of swords, and his great thunderbolt, the terrible ban (as the first Psalm says), will become dust that the wind scatters, as it stands in the day. For before Luther's time no one could have remained a year before the Pabst's wrath; now even those who kiss his feet mock him. May God, the Father of our dear Lord Jesus Christ, a God of truth and Father of all comfort and joy, accomplish the work He has begun (as He has also inspired us to ask through His Holy Spirit, taught us and commanded us through His dear Son), and bring it to a mighty end, for the praise and honor of His name, and the blessedness of all believers, for the final judgment and punishment of the Pabst and his idols, Satan and his angels! Amen, amen.