September 2, 1530.
At the beginning of this writing, the author, according to his habit and his deeply ingrained hatred of evangelical truth, violently attacks Luther, the great confessor of the same, accusing him of considering Purgatory to be something invented and unfounded in Scripture, as if he were falsifying Scripture, leading pious souls away from the true faith, and thus spreading a very dangerous and horrible error in Christendom. To counter this, and to refute it from the Scriptures themselves, he claims to have been urged by love and zeal for godliness.
But before Eck comes to the matter at hand, and undertakes to refute Luther's writing, in his opinion, he tries to show first and foremost how Luther contradicts himself. And this is his main effort in the first part. He tries to force the first contradiction out of the title, and thinks that it would not be correct, since Luther does not mention a recantation with a single word throughout the entire text. However, it is to be regarded as a retraction, insofar as the blessed Luther refers to purgatory in it.
and thus, as it were, does not want to recognize those passages in his first writings, in which he still asserts the same, as his own.
By continuing his refutation and referring to these passages, D. Eck accuses Luther of the second contradiction. But this is easily lifted by what has been reported from Luther's first writings, and since Luther himself has gradually changed in many respects, and in many a doctrinal point has gained a better insight, we Lutherans prefer to take the proof of his doctrine from those writings that he produced after 1523 or 1524, since, on the other hand, those who are of a papist mind take all their arrows that they unleash against Luther and his followers from his first writings. This is what D. Eck does here. He refers to the fifteenth thesis of the "Explanation and Proof of Luther's Disputation on the Power of Indulgences", which Luther had already published in 1518. One looks up the passage above in No. 11, Col. 146 ff. He also refers to the "Leipzig Disputation", which was held in 1519, in which Luther himself stated to him
*This writing, which is excerpted here, has the title: "Christenliche erhaltung der stell der geschrifft, für das Fegfeur, Wider Luthers lasterbüchlin. By Doctor Johan Eck. 1530." 24 leaves in small quarto. Printer and place of printing are not indicated. We are content to reprint here the excerpt written by Walch with some improvements, although the original edition is in our hands.
He had confessed that he firmly believed that there was a purgatory. Compare Walch, old edition, vol. XV, Col. 1198 ff. He continues with the "instruction of Luther on several articles, so him of his Abgönnern auflegt and zugemessen worden", edited in the year mentioned. See Walch, old edition, Vol. XV, Col. 844. Likewise, his "Reason and Cause of all Articles, which are unlawfully condemned by the Roman Bull," which was brought to light in 1520, because Luther had made this confession about the XXXVII article: "I have never denied Purgatory, and I still hold it, as I have written and confessed many times. See Walch, old edition, vol. XV, Col. 1862. Finally, he also draws a passage from a sermon by Luther on the Gospel on the first Sunday after Trinity, Luc. 16, by the rich man, which Luther had printed along with several others in 1523. Because he claims in it that one does not commit a sin if one prays for the deceased, D. Eck draws a conclusion from this about the existence of the purgatory, which Luther did not doubt at the time. One finds the quoted sermon in our St. Louis edition, Vol. XI, where the passage referred to by Eck, Col. 1206, § 28 and § 29 can be read.
After D. Eck has finished with this and believes to have sufficiently proven the contradiction reproached to Luther from his own words, he turns in the other part to Luther's writing itself, which is divided into six chapters.
In the first, Luther merely dwells on the passage hon Judah the Maccabee, and accuses the papists of four lies, which Eck answers shallowly enough. For after he has made known his displeasure that Luther rejects the books of the Maccabees as apocryphal, which, according to Augustine's testimony, would have been included by the Church in the number of divine books of Scripture, he replies to the first lie: If there were nothing explicit in the text about Purgatory, it would be just as sophistical to doubt it altogether, as if someone wanted to deny that there were three persons in the Godhead, since the word "person" is nowhere found in Scripture, and as if someone wanted to argue that Christ did not prove the resurrection of the dead against the Sadducees with this saying: "Have ye not read that it is told you of GOD, saying, I am the GOD of Abraham, the GOD of Isaac, and the GOD of Jacob?"because not a word of the resurrection was thought of in it. If Luther continues and does not refer this passage both to Purgatory and much more to the resurrection, then he is wrong.
Eck says that Luther falsifies the text, in which it is clearly stated that it is a salutary thing to pray for the sins of the deceased, but not for the resurrection, which the ungodly would share just as much as the pious. Eck agrees with Luther that the conclusion that a deceased person is in sin, therefore he is in purgatory, is useless, provided the sentence is understood as such; the latter, however, wants to restrict it according to papal theology: a deceased person is in such sins that can still be forgiven, therefore he is in purgatory, because nothing impure enters heaven, and in hell, from which there is no redemption, forgiveness would not take place. But Eck completely rejects the conclusion: Judas prays for the dead, therefore they are in purgatory, and makes this conclusion: Judas prays for the dead, therefore he believes that there is purgatory; because if he did not believe it, he would not pray for the dead either.
To the other lie D. Eck answers thus: If we would do such sacrifices, we would not immediately become Jews. For if the ceremonial law of Moses had now ceased, this would not be of such a kind. Enough, therefore, that one could take a proof that one had believed in purgatory in the Old Testament, and there would be no reason why it should have ceased to exist in the New Testament. If, moreover, all that is written were written for our learning, the examples of others would also have great force, which is why Paul in the epistle to the Ebrews, and even Christ himself, referred so strongly to examples. As for the sacrifice of sons, the Jews did not imitate Abraham, who had received an explicit command from God, but rather the idolatrous nations. According to the examples of Joshua, David, and Gideon, the "wicked and God-rejecting" were allowed to be punished alive; Luther, however, would have seduced the peasants with his teachings, stirred them up, and then had them put down; Gideon's example, who had an ephod and all the priestly ornaments made, did not matter, because it had been done against divine command; of Judah, on the other hand, one nowhere reads that God had forbidden him what he had done, and therefore no one in the church had ever considered Judah's deed unjust.
To the accusation of the third lie he answers: Judas must have believed that there is a purgatory, because he wants one to pray for the dead that they might be freed from their sins.
den. Since this prayer helps neither those who are in hell nor those who are in the limbo of the fathers, it necessarily follows that Judas must have prayed for those who are in purgatory. That there was no purgatory in the Old Testament would be a poem of Luther's, which obviously conflicts with Scripture; Eck refers to the custom of the Jews, who mourned their dead for forty days, and to the example of Joseph, who mourned for his father for seven days. That the sophists in the New Testament say that there was no purgatory in the Old Testament is wrong, since the teachers of the New Testament found clear traces of it in various passages of the Old Testament long ago, e.g. Job 10, 20. ff. 1 Sam. 2, 6.
D. Eck's answer to the fourth lie is short, and goes like this: it would not be necessary that, if one refers to examples, one should exactly orient oneself according to all and every circumstance of the same. If Judas had offered sacrifices for the dead in his time, we too could offer sacrifices in the office of the mass, now that Christ has instituted the sacrifice of his body and blood.
Since Luther has shown in the other chapter that the words Ps. 66:12, "We have passed through fire and water," are ridiculously used by the papists to refer to purgatory, and he again accuses them of four lies, Eck answers the first by saying that the teachers of his church consistently deny that the souls in purgatory are tormented by the devil. For such souls would have overcome the devil, and he would therefore have no more power and authority to torment them. Eck admits that the psalm is about the suffering of the saints, but he does not think that it follows: This psalm is about it, therefore it cannot be interpreted to something else. Otherwise, Luther's opinion, according to which he understands the psalm to be about the suffering of the saints, would also fall away, because according to the literal understanding, it contains a thanksgiving for the deliverance of the Israelite people from the hands of the Egyptians; But if this psalm, according to Luther's explanation, also speaks of the suffering of the righteous, but the souls in purgatory are also righteous and holy according to Luther, consequently this psalm would also have to be understood by such, since the suffering would be indicated by fire and water, and this would be much more sensitive with those in purgatory than with those who live on earth.
The remaining three lies are summarized by D. Eck, and he gives the following answer: Luther actually wrote this Psalm only about the saints of old.
If he wants to understand the Old Testament, he contradicts the interpretation of the Fathers, the superscription of the Psalm and himself, since he has applied it to all afflicted souls, to the martyrs and to the whole church in the book of his discussions. That one should not have known about purgatory in the Old Testament has already been examined. That the Psalm was written in the Old Testament, no conclusion could be drawn from it, therefore we must not prove Purgatory from it in the New Testament; Christ, the evangelists and Paul himself would have constantly referred to Moses, to the prophets and to the Psalms. If Luther goes on to say that those in purgatory would not sacrifice burnt offerings to the Lord, of which the psalm immediately reports; Eck is immediately finished with the answer: If one draws a single verse of a psalm to a certain doctrinal point, then it is not necessary to explain the whole psalm from it. Finally, the explanation of the words of Job Cap. 24, 19, according to which heat and snow water are understood as the punishments of hell, is quite natural: the context does not stand in its way: this can be explained with the words of Christ Matth. 22, v. 13, and has Jerome and the whole church for itself.
In the third chapter, Luther refers to the passage Revelation 14:13, but Eck did not get involved with it, and he did well to do so, because it obviously defeats the papal purgatory all at once.
In the fourth chapter, Luther comes to the passage 1 Cor. 3, 15, which the papists also forcefully interpret as referring to Purgatory, and Eck defends himself against Luther in such a way that he first presupposes his own explanation of this passage and then answers Luther's accusations. For since the latter holds that the text is about the preachers and teachers who were to build the Christian church with their teachings, Eck first comes up again with the Leipzig Disputation, in which Luther admitted that this passage could be understood of Purgatory (see Walch, old edition, Vol. XV, Col. 1210), and then assumes that it deals with the fire of the last judgment; but then he claims that Paul does not speak both of doctrine and of works, and says: "Every man's work" (not the work of doctrine) "will be revealed through the fire. Since everyone works either good or evil, this text would also apply to everyone, and not only to teachers and preachers: the fact that the Fathers would have understood this passage in this way would be sufficient reason for the Roman-minded to be in agreement.
But the passages from Augustine, Jerome, and Ambrose, which Luther would have cited, conclude nothing, because it is known that the writings of the Fathers do not serve as proof everywhere, and they sometimes contradict themselves: the words, "we must not dare to follow all the works and words of Christ," would not be true. Of course, we could not follow Christ in all his works, especially miracles, but we could follow his words. In response to the passage from Augustine that Luther refers to, Eck says that Luther is referring to a different understanding; it is true that the fathers, out of humility, did not make much of their writings and did not hold them in the same esteem as the writings of the prophets and apostles; but if they all had the same interpretation, which no Christian has ever rejected, which furthermore agrees with other passages of Scripture and has been accepted by the entire church, then Luther would be going too far in wanting to punish all the fathers and the entire church itself.
The other passages that the papists used to cite for Purgatory, as Ecclesiastes 4, 14, Matth. 12, 32, Matth. 5, 26, 1 Sam. 2, 6, Ps. 30, 4.In the fifth chapter, he cites Gregory as the originator of the doctrine of purgatory, which Eck contradicts with great clamor, saying that the ancients had already thought of it hundreds of years ago, as David, Job, Judas Maccabaeus, Christ, Paul; But of the Fathers, Augustine, Jerome, Ambrose, all of whom lived before Gregory; what Gregory writes of the apparitions of souls cannot be entirely rejected; if Gregory has these apart from and without the Scriptures, then he is not to be blamed.
and accepted and believed their testimony, this holy man had received a testimony from God Himself in His miraculous works, which He had performed through him, so that souls had been miraculously redeemed through him, as he told about himself. What Eck, in order to elevate Gregorius and to defend him against Luther, further brings forward, shall, since it is of equal importance, be passed over in silence.
There is still the sixth chapter left, and what Luther brings up in it against the papists, Eck recently answers in this way: he and his fellow Christians had enough that they knew some passages of Scripture, from which Purgatory could be proven; that in the Psalms, which had been chosen for vigils, no letter could be found that rhymed with Purgatory, Luther would again contradict himself, in that one could only read, among other things, what he wrote about Psalm 6, 4. But since the explanation of the first Psalms of David was also one of Luther's first exegetical works, this reproach is easily lifted from what has been reported above about the first writings of the blessed man, not to mention that he seems to speak merely in spray words in the place mentioned.
Since the answer to what else Luther objected against Purgatory is also of poor relevance, it is not worth the effort to dwell on it; only at the end of this it should be remembered that D. Eck assigned this writing to Cardinal Albrecht, Archbishop of Mainz and Magdeburg, and finished it on September 2, 1530.