To the man to be highly honored in Christ, D. Johann Brenz, the disciple and confessor of Christ, the faithful elder of the church at Hall.
Grace and peace in Christ our Lord. Now, dearest Brenz, your Amos is coming back to you, which you sent to me a long time ago. It is not my fault that he came out very slowly, but the will of the one to whom you dedicated him. What reason moved him to do so, I do not know. But that you, according to the humility of your spirit, subject this whole interpretation to my judgment, that I should change it, add to it and do away with it what seems good to me, - that is far from me, that I should agree with you. For since it is already detestable among worldly people when someone wants to prove his wisdom by the book of another, it is even more detestable among Christians when someone arrogates to himself the mastery over the disciples of the same spirit. It is enough to test the spirits whether they are of God. If they are found proven, then one should immediately treat them with reverence and kiss them, give up the hope of mastery and rather become a disciple. For it cannot be otherwise than that where the Holy Spirit speaks, he speaks such things as to subdue every man who comes into this world and make him a disciple, since there is no measure to his wisdom.
But besides this general praise of the spirit, my judgment of your writings is
This is that my writings seem very contemptible to me when they are compared with yours or the writings of your equals. I am not flattering, nor am I telling lies, but I am also not playing a game, nor am I deceiving myself. Not the Brenz, but the spirit I praise, which in you is more lovely, gentler and calmer. Sodaun flows your speech, which is formed by the art of speech, purer, richer and more brilliant, and therefore moves more and delights more. My speech, however, besides being inexperienced and uneducated in the art of speech, emits nothing but a forest and disorderly heap of words, and suffers, moreover, from the fate of always being forced, as it were, to contend with innumerable monsters as a stormy and impetuous fighter. Therefore - if one may compare great things with small ones - I have received from the fourfold spirit of Elijah, 1 Kings 1) 19, 11. f., the [great strong] wind, the earthquake 2) and the fire, which tears the mountains and breaks the rocks, 3) but you and your kind the quiet gentle whirring, which refreshes. Thus it comes that even me, let alone
1) In the Latin editions: 4th HoA. instead of: 3rd RoZ.
2) In the editions: ventns niotus instead of: vontn8, motn8. In the Vulgate it is eoninaotio instead of iriotns. The old translator gave inotus incorrectly by "storm".
3) Here, instead of the correct reading of De Wette: Petrus eontvrit, the Erlanger has again shredded the wrong reading of Buddeus (which it follows) into the text: poerms eonvertit. Likewise in other places.
*The title of the writing of I). Joh. Brenz, to which this preface is placed, is: Jo. Brentii in Prophetam Amos Expositio. Witeb. 1530. 8. About Brenz Walch notes in his preface to the 14th volume, p. 17: Johann Brentius came to the knowledge of the evangelical truth by reading Luther's writings. He became a preacher in Halle in Swabia, and when he left there, he became the prefect of the church in Stuttgart and was given the supervision of the Tübingen Academy, whereupon he died in 1570. His writing was reprinted at Hagenau in 1533 and at Schwäbisch-Hall in 1544. The preface is found in Latin in Buddeus, Supplementum Epistolarum M. Lutheri, p. 192; in Coelestinus, torn. Ill, x>. 57; in De Wette, vol. IV, p. 148 and in the Erlanger, opp. var. ar^., tom. VII, p. 511. German in the Eislebenfchen edition, vol. II, p. 17; in the Altenburger, vol. V, p. 275; in the Leipziger, vol. XII, p. 83 and in Walch. We have retranslated according to De Wette.
than others, your writings and words are more pleasant. But I console myself with the fact that I believe, indeed know, that the heavenly Father of the house, with the greatness of his house, also needs one and the other, who is hard against the hard and rugged against the rugged, who belongs, as it were, like an evil wedge on the evil branches. And God, when he thunders, needs not only the moistening rain, but also the thunder that shakes and the lightning that cleanses the air, so that the earth may bear fruit more abundantly.
But this gift of God I love and honor above all others in you, that in all your writings you so faithfully and loudly urge righteousness by faith, for this teaching is the head and the cornerstone, which alone begets, nourishes, builds, sustains and defends the church of God, and without it the church of God cannot exist even one hour, as you know and also believe, and so much in such a way persist. For no one can teach rightly in the church, nor successfully resist any adversary who does not hold this article, or, as Paul calls it [Titus 2:1], this wholesome doctrine, or, as the same Paul says, perseveres in it. Therefore I often wonder, and almost with displeasure, how St. Jerome deserved the name of a teacher of the church, and Origen that of a master of the churches after the time of the apostles, since in the books of both one cannot easily find three lines that teach of righteousness by faith, and one could not make a Christian out of all that they both wrote, so they indulge in spiritual interpretations of events, or let themselves be taken in by the splendor of works. And St. Augustine would have been no different if the Pelagians had not finally plagued him and driven him to defend righteousness by faith. He emerged from this struggle and trial as a true teacher of the Church, and almost as the only one after the apostles and first fathers of the Church. Not as if I wanted to disparage the famous fathers and, as Jerome himself calls it, the crows the
1) Oculos cornicum configere, that is, to want to be better than the best. Compare St. Louis edition, Vol. IV, 2068.