In it also Murnar's, his journeyman, is commemorated. *)
End of March 1521.
Dear goat, don't poke me.
Preface.
Behold, Bocks Emser, are you the man with the long spear and short rapier? God forbid fork pricks, they make three holes. Bocks Emser, you are a strange man of war to me! St. Paul described, Eph. 6, 11. ff., four divine weapons, a sword, a helmet, a coat of armor, a shield; of which
You may not use more than one sword. And because St. Paul has taught you too little, you improve the armor with a long spear and short rapier, and fly to me with bare head, bare breast, bare belly, as if I will do no more than, kneeling before you, let me stab the naked knight and say: Mercy, Squire Bock, be merciful to us alive.
To this you swear by your priesthood,
*) Under this title, this writing appeared twice in a single edition, one time with Johann Grunenberg, the other time without indication of place and time. In the collective editions: Wittenberger (1554), vol. VII, col. 148; Jenaer (1564), vol. I, toi. 366d (this leaf has the wrong number 361); Altenburger, vol. I, p. 556; Leipziger, vol. XVII, p. 609; Erlanger, vol. 27, p. 221.
like Hannibal by his god, you would not stop writing against me. Bocks Emser, that you would also have sworn the oath, like the armor, improved by your horns and beard, like Socrates by his dog; that would have been quite a philosophical oath, almost frightening to me, because you recently found [the] Aristotle in the donkey stall with Christ, as you boast. It wants to be serious, I see well, because the long spears and short swords are coming, which I, as unnamed by St. Paul, have not provided myself with until now.
In such earnestness I must hold to the armor, helmet and shield that Emser leaves lying. Not that he despises it, as everyone knows, but that he does not need it, for he has a thick skin, a hard head and a hardened breast, so that he can resist not only me, but also the Holy Spirit. But St. Paul discusses 1) the weapons in such a way that he calls the helmet "a helmet of salvation"; the armor or cancer "an armor of righteousness"; the shield "a shield of faith"; Emser does not need any of these, he has enough in the most holy father Pabst, as a creature should have enough in its creator. Therefore, he also introduces the holy carnal law, more than divine law, and takes the sword with the long spear and short rapier and so nakedly attacks a cunning cuirass, 2) that is, the heretic Martin Luther. What do you think? I mean, the goat is a man and a noble hero, he may truly dare.
Now I put on my armor in God's name: the armor or cancer of righteousness is what Paul calls the righteous, innocent life that does no one wrong, or, as they say in German, a good cause and a good conscience. For thus St. Peter teaches [1 Ep. 4, 15. 16.]: A Christian should live in such a way that he may not be justly persecuted and suffer persecution only for innocence. Just as the cancer or shell guards the breast and gives courage against the stings; so he who has a good cause and conscience and is righteous does not fear, relies on it, and is courageous against his enemies. So
1) örtert - explained.
2) A cuirasser on horseback, i.e. a soldier on horseback equipped with a cuirass.
St. Paul says in 2 Cor. 1, 12: "Our abandonment or glory is our good conscience, that we have lived in the world simple-mindedly" 2c This armor is not necessary for the goat; for it is too heavy for him to carry, he likes to go without cancer, good things and conscience; is enough for him long spear and short sword of blasphemous words and lies.
But now the evil spirit is angry with pious, innocent people, and also seeks to pierce their good things with long spears and short swords, that is, to reproach and disgrace them before the people with great lies and cunning interpretations, as Bock Emser does to me; nor is there any thing so good that one can boast of it before God, "before whom no one is innocent," Ex. 34:7: so the shield of faith is necessary, that it may stand in God's trust; and though every man be turned away by poisonous tongues, yet let him not be faint-hearted and faint-hearted, put not his trust in human assistance, nor in his own right, but in God alone, who will perform it well.
Therefore Paul says: "In the shield of faith you can quench all the fiery spears and arrows" (would have called Emser's short rapier too) "of the wicked one." He does not say "fiery darts of the evil one" and "extinguish" for nothing. For the lies and false pretenses of the evil-doers are so malicious, hot, and deceitful that if they could set the whole world on fire, [they would do it] and their hearts would burn up with great hatred 4); of them one says in German: Ei, wie bitter und böse meint er's. (Egg, how bitter and evil he means it.
Therefore, the righteous must command and trust in God, and thus extinguish the fiery spears in the shield of faith. St. Paul often tried and experienced this from the Jews. I have not experienced it from any of my enemies, except from Eck and Emser, both of whom are well armed not with bad but with lost fiery spears; but they have not yet been able to harm me. And if there were not a faith, such fiery spears should indeed be
3) I.e. poisoned.
4) approaching - almost.
burn one's heart out than has happened to many. Nor does Emser need such a shield, for he knows how I have not used lies against anyone: but I do, for I have not read or heard more fiery, more wicked lies in my life than Bock Emser's, as we shall see.
Over this is necessary the "helmet of salvation". The Savior or salvation is Jesus Christ, who becomes a helmet when we judge and comfort ourselves according to his example and form it before our eyes, as Paul says, Hebr. 12, 3: "Remember him who suffered such opposition from evil men, that you may not be weary in your faith." And he made himself a helmet, saying [Matt. 10:24, 25.], "Remember my word which I said unto you: A servant shall be no more than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you" [John 15:20]. Just as the helmet makes one secure and at peace in the heart, so also when a Christian remembers his Lord Christ, that he too has been so persecuted, he becomes secure and content, and lets go what is going on, and says cheerfully, "There must be a rascal who would have it better than his dear Father and Lord! Bock's Emser does not need this helmet either. But at the end of the book, he paints a picture of it and places it at his feet, asking so diligently that anyone who did not know him would think he was serious; but the head remains bare, that the "regents of the air" ever have free open access.
But he takes the "sword", the word of God, and pretends not to cut with the scabbard, that is, with the letter, but with the edge, that is, with the spiritual mind; as he then from the Bünden 1) well knows spiritual, better than German and Latin, as a true disciple of Aristotle. But if I wanted to take the same sword from him with my armor, I don't know where he lusts it; I see nothing in the whole book but vain long spears and short swords of a bareheaded, naked, bare liar and blasphemer. It must also be a clever sorceress who told him such a dream that the
1) from the fret - flush.
Sheath is called the letter and the cutting edge the spirit; but I mean, it has found its holy priesthood such and everything else in the ass stable with the Aristotle.
Well, the donkey's skin is itching and he is too comfortable, we want to reach for the things. He has shown three great wisdoms in this tender, noble little book. The first is that he does not attack any of my books, in which I deal with scripture and doctrine; but that in which I present with little scripture my mere faithful counsel to the German nobility, to whom, being sufficiently understanding, it was not necessary to show my doctrine, but my good opinion and admonition. Here I will (said the goat) seize the monk in the bath, and put in honor, because I do not bite any of the other little books.
The other, since he did not yet trust him in such merit, he invented to write a big book and to introduce many sayings, which all have a lot of trouble to answer. Thought: If I write a small one, one would soon see Emsern, as happened to me before. For it is difficult to hide great foolishness under little paper.
But now that I am writing and introducing a lot, everyone must say: "How learned is the goat in Leipzig! I mean, he gave it to the monk and did a little thing with the famous swordsman. Once upon a time, a monkey saw a shoemaker cutting leather; as he was leaving the workshop, the monkey ran over, as is his way, cut the leather and ruined it all. So, when my goat saw how I was inserting scripture and teachers in some books, he thought, "I can do that, too," and thought it was enough to carry what he found in a pile, just as his peers had destroyed and crushed a lot of scripture.
The third, since that was not sure enough either, he first of all makes use of Emser's right spiritual understanding, pinches out my words where it seems to him, smears his poison on them, leaves what is going on and follows, so that my opinion and his poison will not be noted. He does all this out of supra-Christian love and high spirit; in addition, he invokes the holy blood of Christ, prays for me that he would redeem me from the error that Emser teaches me, and that I teach contrary to sense; so that everyone should say: Ei, be-
God forbid, does Luther teach such poison? O, blessed be the goat of Leipzig, which shows us what kind of bird he is! These are the "fiery spears and swords of the evil one," as St. Paul says, so that he would gladly set the world on fire against me. But it does not help; God has built too great courage against this and has given me a good shield, which I will now try, so:
Where I said that much sorrow followed from the forbidden marriage of the priesthood, he thus interprets as if I taught how God punishes the world for the sake of chastity; and proves here his super-Christian wisdom, introducing a lot of Scripture where God punishes unchastity, as if no one had read that. With this he wants to show off, I teach unchastity and curse chastity. His raging hatred is so blind that he cannot consider that no one will believe him, does not see and does not hear my books, publicly available, from which even a child could make him a liar and a villain.
Item, that I have advised not to endow monasteries more, but less, 1) he aims at: Luther has taught, one should not keep monastery vows, throw off caps, run out of the monasteries. If these are not fiery malicious spits, I do not know what fire, malice and spits are. Item, since I have taught Christian liberty and advised how we should be courageous, he implies that I have taught pride, and pours out his art, how the holy scripture teaches only humility; that if Emser had not come, then no one would have known that the scripture teaches humility. Thus, according to the supra-Christian, supra-spiritual interpretation of Bock, Luther teaches Emser vain unchastity, pride, disobedience, and such unrighteousness. So he blames me for saying, "I did not begin it in God's name," and, "The devil strikes," so that the simple are offended by my teaching.
The whole book is full of these pieces and spiritual interpretations, so that I can't help but think that it has happened to him what I have long been worried about, that the unmistakable hatred has made him furious and nonsensical, that he has no
1) less - to make less.
I have neither wit nor sense anymore; I cannot think that there are still people on earth. It has probably happened before that a raging hatred has made a man raging and furious, as the poets of Hecuba fable. But if he is not nonsensical, I must not call him a lying boy who lies wantonly and out of pure malice, which he knows to be otherwise in the eyes of everyone. So he scolds himself publicly in this booklet before everyone; there are ever my books available, I refer to them.
In this way John Hus and Jerome of Prague were also burned at Costnitz; whom, since they were not able to contradict honestly, they put on a false opinion, as the clear evidence of both writings and booklets show. Just as Christ, when he said [Matth. 22, 21]: "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's", he must have said that one should not give interest to Caesar.
And St. Stephen, Apost. 7, 48, 49, preaching how the temple at Jerusalem was not the right house of God, but Christ made a right house of God through faith, and thus said: "God does not dwell in made houses of men, as he says through the prophet Isaiah [66, 1. 2.]: 'Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what house will you build for me? On a quiet and humble heart my spirit will rest." 2c Since they could not contradict this clear saying in any way, they "appointed false witnesses who said: He had blasphemed God and the holy temple," and so he had to die [Apost. 6, 13].
So my goat also, full of the same Jewish spirit, because he could not deny that much misery has come from the forbidden marriage of the spiritual state; as I have said that even the children on the gaff sing about it and say: for this I have introduced the clear saying of St. Paul 1 Tim. 4, 3, so that I prove that the pope has been an apostle in such a law of the devil, that everyone, not only Emser, must become dumb because of it, and nothing can answer it, he breaks out to the side and hits me with the edge of his spiritual mind; blames me,
I have taught that God punishes the world for the sake of chastity and calls me and my Greeks, who have not accepted the commandment of the devil, to stay at home; let this be my answer.
But is it not a strange thing about the world! If I were once found to have lied, to have been false, and to have been so grossly deceived, all my teaching and honor, faith and loyalty would be completely gone, and everyone would take me for a knave and a dishonorable villain (how cheap). My enemies still have the good fortune that, even though they lie about me without ceasing, without stopping, and are publicly disgraced, they are still not let go of them, and everyone still waits to see if they will catch me once; since it is obvious from their wanton lying that they do not act against me out of God; that even if I were already full of devils, their thing would still not count for anything, since they do not put their hands on God, but rather try to cast out devils with devils [Luc. 11, 15. 20.]. They are forgiven for all their lying and fooling; if I had wavered a hair's breadth, everything I had ever said would be heresy. And if they are not able to do so, they still cling to me and are busy with my sharp, biting letter; they cannot forget the pin in my eye, but no one wants to remember the big beam in their eyes [Luc. 6, 41].
Therefore, I truly need God's help. I, a mere human being (who cannot live without infirmities), should close a round circle without some scratch, and not stumble at all; if I am driven into the game without my will. But you, the great crowd, which forces itself to it, has advantage with vain, scratchy, hole-rich, loose pieces existing. 1) But it must be so, as it is written: Hohel. 2, 2.: "As the roses among the thorns, so my friend among the daughters"; and Ps. 110, 2.: "Thou shalt reign in the midst of thine enemies." I stand alone in the midst of them; they in the ring, many against one; that one may see how easily the strong unconquerable truth increases its honor in the lie, and how with much effort and labor the unstrengthened 2) lie increases its honor in the lie.
1) I.e. that it exists with 2c
2) I.e. powerless.
acquires disgrace in the truth. So my goat would have acquired enough shame in other things with pleasure and joy; but in the truth he had to recover it with great raging and blustering.
Although this is enough to answer Bock, since his unchristian lies and false swearing are clear from what he has written in his mind and spirit; for against the recognized devil there is no fencing, but only blessing and fleeing: It is time that the evil spirit, which does not cease to lie through Bock Emser's mouth and to blaspheme the divine truth, is pulled out and brought to light, and that his disgrace is brought home in reward, and that Emser is brought to an understanding with his own, which is called the saying of Isaiah, 33, 11.Concipietis ardorem et parietis stipulam, "You conceive with a fire and give birth to no more than a straw." The great mountains should also once recover from a child, as the poets write, and when everyone took a great child like a mountain, it became a mouse, and everyone laughed at it. This is where the saying comes from: The mountains get pregnant and become a mouse.
So my goat Emser has also threatened to thrust, long spears, short swords and swords sharpened, and the great butt war has gone over the poor paper, which has thereby been increased to the secret chamber and into the pharmacies; although such honor is also too much to the unchristian lies, blasphemies, oaths, 3) happened against the holy word of God.
From the priesthood of all Christians.
Since I had proved so clearly with strong and solid scripture that all Christians are spiritual and priests, that Emser also did not dare to write a lie (of which I am justly astonished), so that he would blaspheme the same, and had to allow it without his thanks, he has nevertheless shown his mastery, divides the scripture interpretation into two parts and says: I cut with the sheath; he wants to cut with the edge. Here let us go to
3) In the old editions: Oath.
He will let us see a special masterly piece. He takes before him the saying of St. Paul, 2 Cor. 3, 6: "The letter kills, but the spirit makes alive"; and teaches us thus: He who understands the Scriptures according to the letter and not according to the spirit, would rather read Virgilius or some other heathen fable; for he reads his death. And so does Luther; he follows the letter and lashes out with his scabbard, and does not teach the spirit.
Dear, let us remember, here stands the main piece of Emser's theologians, and on this plan it will be: won or lost. From this follows and must conclude the holy priest of God, first of all, that St. Peter taught the letter and death, when he says, 1 Petr. 2, 9: "You are a royal priesthood and a priestly kingdom." From this saying I have proved that all Christians are priests. For Peter said this to all Christians, as the words clearly read and express by name the people. If I teach the letter and death and fence with the scabbard, since I have spoken these words to St. Peter, this disgrace does not concern me, but St. Peter. So I ask the high priest of God to tell me in these words of St. Peter which is the letter and which is the spirit, unless he wants to say that there is neither letter nor spirit in them, which he undoubtedly does not do.
He says: Whoever interprets these words of St. Peter to mean that all Christians should be priests in the same way as they are ordained by bishops, cuts with the scabbard, takes the letter and follows a deadly mind. For St. Peter speaks of the inward, spiritual priesthood, which all Christians have, and not of the ordained priesthood. Here I answer: It is true that St. Peter speaks of the spiritual priesthood; yes, further I say that he also does not speak a tittle of the ordained priesthood; therefore his words also may not be a scabbard or deadly letter, as Emser dreams; but whoever drives St. Peter's word on the ordained priests, keeps neither scabbard nor letter of it; it is wrong and nothing.
everything that he does. St. Peter's words have only a simple sense, where they go with letter and spirit. But Emser does not know what letter means; therefore he makes separation and what he desires from God's word. In addition, he makes him dream that there are two kinds of priesthood, a spiritual and an ecclesiastical one, which he calls ecclesiasticum; and thus he thinks that Peter's words may rhyme with both, and the danger is only that one rhymes them with the righteous one, and he punishes me for not rhyming them correctly.
All this is pure error and blindness, and Emser might well have stayed at home with such blind grips. I have never said that St. Peter's word applies to his invented priesthood, which he calls ecclesiasticum, and which I will henceforth call "ecclesiastical. I did not say that all Christians are ecclesiastical priests: therefore, if the holy priest of God had put his glasses on his nose and looked at my booklet correctly, he would not have had to interpret such lies to me. Also, if the foolish dream existed, since St. Peter's word meant two kinds of priesthood, one with the letter and scabbard, the other with the spirit and scabbard, then the whole ecclesiastical priesthood would be a deadly and harmful thing; because it [is] signified by the deadly letter. As Emser himself says, St. Peter speaks only of the spiritual, living priesthood. For what is not spirit does not live and is dead.
Again, because he gives me the deadly letter and yet calls my priests the living ones, as Peter speaks of, he calls the living ones deadly and his deadly ones the living ones; he is false to himself, does not know himself what he is saying, makes his own priesthood deadly himself and desecrates it higher than anyone has desecrated it. This is what happens to the leaders of the blind who want to act on divine Scripture and wield the sword of the spirit, which is too heavy for them; and it happens as they say, "Who put this man to the sword?
Therefore, to avoid the foolish dream of the Emser, it is to be known that the Holy Scriptures, especially in the New Testament, since the figures are out, do not speak more than of One spiritual
I have also written of the papacy that it writes no more than of a spiritual church. And the priesthood, since Emser dreams of it, and the church, since the papists write of it, rhyme into the Scriptures, as life and death join together. And offer defiance here; if Emser brings me a letter from Scripture that calls his ecclesiastical priesthood priesthood, then he shall have won; but he shall let me have it.
The Scripture makes us all priests, as it is said: but the ecclesiastical priesthood, which we now in all the world distinguish from the laity, and call the priesthood alone, is called in the Scripture ministerium, servitus, dispensatio, episcopatus, presbyterium, and in no place sacerdotium nor spiritualis. This I must say in German: The Scripture, I say, calls the spiritual and priesthood a ministry, a care, an office, an altar, a guard, a hat, a preaching office, shepherds. Let us prove this thoroughly. St. Paul to St. Timothy says [1 Ep. 3, 3.]: "A servant of God shall not grieve"; there he calls Timothy a "servant of God" in a special way, that he preached and gave spiritual direction to the people. Item 2 Cor. 11, 23.: "If they are Christ's servants, so am I"; and 1 Cor. 4, 1.: "Dear brethren, we do not want to be held more by the people than as servants of Christ and house servants over his spiritual goods." And Christ Matth. 24, 45-47. sets much of the same house servants.
Now the word "priest" comes from the Greek language, in which presbyteros means senior in Latin and the eldest in German. German; therefore, that in former times the spiritual regiment was always with the elders, as also a city councilmen, in Latin Senatus, have the name from age. Young people have never been good for the regiment. So "priest" is a name of age and not of rank, does not make priest or clerical man. Thus St. Peter says, 1 Petr. 5, 1.5: "I, the elder, beseech you, my fellow elders, to feed the flock of Christ which is with you"; item: "Ye young men shall be subject unto the aged." This must be called in German "den Priestern oder Geistlichen" (to the priests or clergymen), because of the wrong usage of the words.
"Bishop" also comes from the Greek language, whom they call Episcopus, which in Latin is called speculator, in German a warder or watchman on the watch; just as one is called a Thürmer or houseman on the tower, who is to watch and see over the city, lest fire or enemy do harm. So every parish priest or spiritual ruler should be a bishop, that is, an overseer, a watchman, so that in his city and among his people the gospel and the faith of Christ are built and remain against the enemies, devils and heresy. Thus says St. Lucas, Apost. 20, 17, 28: "Paul called the priests of the church," that is, the elders of the Christians of Ephesus, "and said to them, 'Look to yourselves and to the host of Christ, over which the Holy Spirit has made you bishops, to feed the church of God, which He purchased with His blood.'" Here it is clear that the elders are called bishops, that is, overseers of the Church of God, that is, of the Christians, which is God's people.
So Emser also knows from St. Jerome that priest and bishop are one thing in Scripture; for St. Paul says, Titus 1:5, 6: "Thou shalt set priests in every city" (that is, an elder over it), and soon after speaks of the same priest: "But the same bishop shall be an unpunishable man"; clearly calls priest, bishop, elder and guardian one man. But that now bishop, parish priest, priest, chaplain, canon, monk and many more of the same names have such a difference, no one should be surprised; for it all came from the way that no word of Scripture remained in its right understanding. Therefore the bishops, who are now, do not know God and His Scriptures. It is thus made by man's laws and order, and in time has become so deeply established that such a spiritual state is thought to be founded in Scripture; when it is more than twice more worldly than the world itself: because it calls itself spiritual and pretends to be, and there is nothing behind it.
That is why I called this priesthood ecclesiastical, because it came from the order of the church and was not founded in Scripture. For this is how it happened in the past
And it should be so, that in every Christian city, since they are all equally spiritual priests, one of them should be chosen as the oldest or most learned and pious, who would be their minister, steward, keeper, guardian in the gospel and sacraments; just as a mayor is chosen in a city from the common crowd of all citizens. If plates, consecrations, anointings, garments made priests and bishops, Christ and the apostles would never have been priests nor bishops.
Now step out, Emser, prove a saying or a letter that our priests are called Sacerdotes ecclesiastici [ecclesiastical priests] or religiosi spirituales [spiritual clergy], then I will gladly approve and praise your jugglery with the sheath and edge of two priesthoods. You are ever obliged, before you become a defense man, to indicate what you want to defend and where it comes from. Although this time your high, spiritual mind has shamefully forgotten this, you defend and do not know what, how and where. You are a Licentiat sacrorum Canonum and a Prohibitat sacrae Scripturae. Licentiam [permission] you have to babble what you want; but prohibition [denial] you have that you cannot prove anything.
But you know very well that I am not moved by the fact that you have drawn some of the fathers' sayings on your dreams with your hair; and even if they agree with you, it is not enough; I want to have the holy scriptures, because I also fight against you with scriptures. In addition, the fathers are nothing to you with me, because you have proven beforehand that they have never been wrong. You will do this when the donkey gains horns and the goat becomes a sheep. And when thou hast done the same, I will nevertheless say, No holy father hath power to ordain and make an article of faith or sacrament, which the scripture hath not ordained and made, and will not respect thy long straw spear of custom, and thy short waxen sword. Christ did not say: I am Emser's long spear and short sword; nor: I am habit and usage; nor: I am Ambrose, Aristotle, the and the teacher. But therefore he said: "I am the truth" [Joh. 14, 6.]. Because Emser
I will wait for the three main pieces, the spear, the sword and the sword, and for the spear to be the first.
From Emser's long spit.
Your long spear is Goliath's spear [1 Sam. 17, 7.], and your short sword is Joab's sword [2 Sam. 20, 8. 10.]. Where habit would be enough, the heathen would have the very best excuse, who have been accustomed to worship idols for more than four thousand years. You should first prove that the habit is right and from God; so you think it is enough that it is called habit. And that I suggest to you new philosophers also something from philosophy, you should not prove prius per posterius [the earlier by the later, et principium petere [and prove with what is to be proved]. I challenge the priesthood, which has been a cause and lifter of this habit; and not again. Thus you answer me by the habit. This is just as if I said, The skirt shall make the tailor, and the shoe shall make the cobbler. See, you have such a deliciously clever philosophy that it would be enough if Mr. Thomas Rhadinus, Emser's sister of some brother, had spoken it; for he also philosophizes in this way.
Who doubts that from the beginning the ecclesiastical priesthood has had different dress, manner and work than other common Christians, and in it a public custom has been brought up to us, and is kept? should therefore the same constant custom be sufficient to make two kinds of priesthood in Christendom? Why does not also many kinds of priesthood make so many kinds and habits of the collegiate churches and monasteries, since none concords with the other, and yet remains a constant habit in all? So learn, dear Bock, that no habit may change or negate anything in the Scriptures and articles of faith; but it remains only in outward changeable works and offerings, in which neither Christian nor priestly status, but only offices, services and such works are stated and performed. Thus ordination does not make a priest, but it makes priests.
servants; and the plate, casel, 1) mass, sermon proves not a priest, but a servant and officiant of the common priesthood.
We are all priests, together with the whole multitude, without the bishop's consecration; but by consecration we become other priests' servants, ministers, and officers, who may be deposed and changed; just as in the collegiate churches one priest is another's provost, dean, cantor, custodian, and the like. But that the ecclesiastical law does almost nothing more than make such ministers priests and clergymen (that it is also called there by ecclesiastical law), raises and drives such a thing too high and blinds the words of the holy scripture and that no one is called priest and clergyman more than such clergymen, does not exclude me; yes, it is therefore to be burned and destroyed. Traditions hominum, laws of men, have always harmed and obscured divine laws; as Christ, Matth. 15, 3, and Paul teach in all places. Therefore you would have saved Bock the leaden sword until you cut butter or soft cheese.
It is true that the holy fathers called the ecclesiastical priesthood the priesthood. How should they do it? It had already been established that the laity and the rulers were separated in such a way that they had to be called each by its name. So, if I should now preach about the rulers of the churches, who would understand me, if I did not call them priests, ministers, clergymen in the usual way? It started from the chapter Ebr. 5, 1. that our regents are called 8acerdotos [priests], because there it says: Omnes Sacerdos ex hominibus assumptus etc.. ["Every priest taken from among men" 2c]; which, speaking of the Old Testament, is drawn to the New Testament for the sake of the same donor. But if the dear fathers had written about it, they would have called it differently and according to the Scriptures, and would not have defended it with sacrilege.
And that you also try your own spear and sword, whether it stings you or me harder, so give me answer. You yourself say
1) Casel - chasuble.
All of you, that the priest may celebrate mass and give bread, not in his own person, but in the person of the whole church; to this end the truth, your conscience, necessity, and the unanimous speech and faith of all the world compel you, so that whether the priest is not pious or devout and worthy (as no saint is worthy enough), Christianity may exist and be worthy. Who then is the right priest? the one who does it as a servant, or the one in whom he does it? Who is the priest who does the work and sends it, or the servant who carries it and brings it? The priest is a messenger and servant in the work; so someone else must be the right priest. I think it is clear enough that we are all priests, and that these priests are not different priests, but servants and ministers of the common priesthood (as it is said above), and that there are not two priesthoods in Christendom, as you have dreamed. Behold, so it is with the drunken fencers, who take the sword by the edge and the spear by the point, and make ridiculous grudges 2).
As I have now written several times, by the pope's damned law and regiment it has come to this, that the precious common names church, priest, clergy and the like are turned from the congregation only to the very smallest bunch, which we now call spiritual and priesthood and their thing of the church thing, so that we are all together church, spiritual, priests, as much as we believe in Christ, and they are only servants, ministers, caretakers, shepherds, guardians, watchmen. And so I think Bock Emser's dream of two kinds of priesthood lies in the sand and quat. 3)
But I am surprised that you, wise man and victorious knight, are not ashamed to fight against me with habit in matters concerning Christian faith and God's word; you juggle with long spears and swords, when habit is the weakest and commonly ridiculed argument even in worldly affairs.
2) i.e. lumps. - In the Wittenberg and Jena editions (also in the Erlangen edition) the reading "gruntzen" is found, which may also be found in the original print. But we consider this a misprint instead of "Grumpen" i.e. crumbs, lumps. Already Dietz, in his Wörterbuche zu Dr. Martin Luthers deutschen Schriften, s. v. gruntzen has marked this word at this point with a question mark.
3) d. i. Dirt.
ment is. Everyone is waiting for you to attack me with writings 1); then you leave [the] writings and fall on the custom. But I feel well that the must of the holy burnt right, of which thou art an unworthy licentiate, in which much of the custom is set, have not let his goring like and have pushed out the bottom of the barrel, lest thou with Elihu, who also mocked the holy Job [Job 32, 17. 18.], choke with great art. What mayst thou teach us, that this priesthood by habit hath hitherto abode? what peasant and child seeth and graspeth not the same? Take a spoon and taste for yourself what you say.
If the priesthood has arisen and remained by habit, it can be abolished by human force and arbitrariness by another habit, as can happen to all habits; so it certainly follows that it is not of divine order. For divine order does not hang on to any wavering habit, and cannot be changed by men. This is also true, so I have also said and still say that such an external priesthood has no basis in Scripture, but is thus called and held out of long custom. Behold, how finely thy spear stings me; thou wilt write against me, and writest for me, against thyself. This is what your overbundling warfare does. Thou bearest the spear by the point against thee, and runnest upon me with the handle, and thrustest through thee.
But tell me, Emser yourself, does this seem to you to be a Christian habit, that you call yourselves something other than what the Scriptures call you? Are you ashamed of your name? Or is the Holy Spirit not good enough that he may call you, and you be content to be called by his name? Despise them, and invent your own names, so that whoever reads the Scriptures cannot know you, and must say, "Where did the foreign people come from? St. Paul calls every city parish priest a bishop [Tit. 1, 7.], that is, a guardian, priest and elder, ministrum, dispensatorem, and not a sacerdotem [priest]; so you call bishops, who now are not, for
1) Writings, i.e. scriptural passages, scriptural testimonies.
secular princes, sacerdotes who read Mass and pray Horas 2), turn and turn God's word as you will. And just as you have expressed yourselves of the work, you are also ashamed of the names; and to cover this, you put on yourselves the glorious, dignified titles Sacerdotes and Ecclesiastici and the like.
Nevertheless, do not be content that God and we allow you such wickedly perverse habits and look through your fingers, pretending to urge us to approve and sanction it as if it were right and the Holy Spirit's own work, if it is your own will of courage and the Holy Spirit's contempt; want to make long spears and short swords out of it; shall be right for no other reason than that you have devised it, and the Holy Spirit shall be wrong, depart from you and have been your fool. You scream and lie at the top of your lungs about me, how I blaspheme and desecrate the head of the church, the pope and priesthood, which I have never done. For I also have suffered and honored the violence of the Turks (whom you want to eat) and all unjust violence. But that you with your pope blaspheme Christ, God and his Holy Spirit, pervert all their words and works, and play with them in no other way than as jugglers play with their heavens, I shall call you grace-junkies, adore you and thank you humbly.
I must have done it out of hatred that I do not want to preach your new and self-invented way based on Scripture, and it is not enough that I let it remain and go outside of Scripture in its dignity; but you do it out of love that you snatch God's Scripture for your own doing 3) and mix us in and out of it what you only desire. God must follow you and make a mockery of you, 4) and I meant that you should follow God and make His children. Nor shall we alone suffer such reproach of our Lord from you, but together with the Jews we shall say to him: Ave, Rabbi Judaeorum "Hail, King of the Jews!
2) The prayers that had to be performed at certain hours according to the Canon.
3) The Wittenb. and Erl, edition: Eigenthum.
4) Putzen or Potzen, a scarecrow. Cf. Jenaer, Vol. I, 501 b.: Hanffpotzens.
nig"], [Matth. 27, 29.] and consider such abominable mockery as the highest honor of God. Woe to you, end-Christ, and to all your apostles and priests!
So you must confess with me that this priesthood is not taken from Scripture. For what exists from custom is already known without Scripture and being God's order; but likewise, if it is confirmed by the teaching of fathers and men, it is 1) known that (it) is not from Scripture; because custom and the teaching of men are other things than Scripture. This is answered by the long spear and habit, which, if it were a Christian habit, should ever have a little ground in Scripture, and of the Spirit's sword yet a smell. But now that it is a louder habit, what is it but a carnival play? But I do not want to mock you yet, as I would like to. Perhaps you could not find the sword before Shrovetide, so I will hold it in your favor until we come to it in the third play. However, I give you time and space, as long as you yourself want; and not only to you, but to your whole papal sect, which you call yourselves the church of God. Dear, turn diligently and search; may St. Aristotle and the sacred burnt law help you to find the sword, then pick it up and strike freshly at the heretic Luther, ever hitting him with the edge.
But be careful that you do not hit yourselves in the cheeks. Yes, because I'm afraid you won't find it, in the meantime hit yourselves with straw sacks; it will be all right for this Shrovetide. For God's sake, I pray that everyone would think too kindly of me. Who can deal with the childish, foolish, blind heads, who dare all things and can do nothing, with constant brave earnestness? They are the ones of whom Christ, Matth. 11, 17, says: "If you sing to them, they do not dance; if you complain to them, they do not weep"; neither seriousness nor scolding helps in dealing with them. This coarse goat-head pretends to fence with the sword, and since he has only named it, he speaks: Now let's do the
1) D. i. in turn.
Put down the sword and pick up the spear; he never picked it up before and will not pick it up again. Who can tolerate such crude foolishness in such serious matters? so that they may lead the people by the nose and smear their mouths. I mock (as I hope) those who mock my God and His words and works, as Elijah mocked Baal's prophets [1 Kings 18:27].
And that I end that the sword of the spirit, the divine word, is valid in all disputes, no one doubts; but that habit, if it were equally good, and the doctrine of men are valid, Emser should have proved before. Now he leaves the sword, which is valid, and leads custom with the doctrine of men, which are not valid. Where is here the high, great philosopher Mr. Thomas Rhadinus, who found Aristotle in the donkey stable? Did not Aristotle teach that it is not right to prodanäa P6r proba-väa probare [prove the thing to be proved by the thing to be proved], and potero prirwipia (presuppose the thing to be proved as proved)? These are the clever ones who lure our dear youth to philosophy, and know as much about it themselves as they do about theology; take money from them only so that they come from them less knowledgeable than they were when they came to them. Surely it would be a virtue that you coarse asses could do your own philosophy, which you praise so highly. This is a ridiculous guild to me, since no one knows his own craft well. So the sword also goes into your fingers.
From the leaden sword of Bocks Emsers.
But that his spear and sword may not only be blunted and refuted, but also completely destroyed, I will report that it has happened to him as to a dreaming man who finds a spear and sword in his sleep and fights hostilely; when he wakes up, it has been a dream. This I have experienced, how all those who write and do against me bring with them a stupid heart and a despondent conscience, that they are afraid of the Scripture, which they know well, as it is unknown to them.
They would not have to touch me with writings 1) nor would they be beaten with writings. Then they devise a new lie, find swords and spears and such foolish things, and say: The Scriptures are so dark that we cannot understand them without the interpretation of the holy fathers; therefore we must follow not the text, but the glosses of the fathers. And that is called here Emser not with the scabbard, but with the cutting edge. If then they bring up a saying of the fathers against me, they ring all the bells, beat all the drums, and shout hostilely, they have won, plug both ears and eyes, want to have the whole scripture blocked and muffled for me.
If I then feel such zag and flight of light, how can I be afraid of the blind moles that shun the light? They force me to think that they know nothing in the Scriptures; therefore it happens to them as it happened to the old frog, to whom the young frog complained, how a large animal, an ox, had come and had trampled all the frogs to death; then the frog was angry and puffed himself up and said: How now, am I not also so large? No, dear mother," said the frog, "even if you burst. So also my goats blow themselves up with their own breath, wind and spirit, and when I come with the ox's foot, as the scripture says, I kick them so that they quack.
So that such gossip may be recognized, I ask them again: Who told them that the fathers are lighter than the Scriptures and not also darker? How if I said that they understood the fathers as little as the Scriptures? I could stop their ears both against the fathers' sayings and against the Scriptures. But this does not bring us to the truth. If the Spirit spoke in the fathers, he spoke much more in his own Scriptures. And whoever does not understand the Spirit in his own Scripture, who will believe that he understands him in another Scripture? This is what it means to sheathe a sword, when it is not only grasped in itself, but also in the words and phrases of men; it soon becomes blunt and darker than before. Nor does the em
1) Writings - Scriptures.
ser call hewn with the edge. His skin slithers before the bare sword; but it does not help, he must like.
Therefore it is to be known that the Scripture without all gloss is the sun and all light, from which all teachers received their light; and not again. This is evident when the fathers teach something, they do not trust their doctrine, worry that it is too dark and uncertain, and run to the Scriptures, take a clear saying from them, so that they illuminate their thing; just as one puts light into a lantern, as Ps. 18:29: "Lord, you illuminate my lantern." Likewise, when they interpret a place of Scripture, they do not do it with their own mind or word (for where they do this, as often happens, they commonly err), but bring in another place that is clearer, and so illuminate and interpret Scripture with Scripture. As my goats would well find, if they read the fathers aright; but now they run over and regard neither scripture nor fathers aright, it is no wonder that they know not what scripture or fathers teach.
I cannot bear it that they thus revile and blaspheme the Scriptures and the holy fathers; blaming the Scriptures for being dark, when all the fathers give it the brightest light and take it from them, as David, Ps. 119, 105: "Thy word is my light." Again, they give the light to the fathers, that they may illuminate the Scripture; so all the fathers confess their darkness, and only illuminate Scripture with Scripture. And this is also the right art, that one should compile the Scriptures rightly and well; which father can do this best, he is the best. And one must read all the fathers' books with modesty, not believing them, but seeing whether they also speak clearly and explain the Scriptures with bright writing. How should they have overcome the heretics, where they would have argued with their own glosses? They would have been considered fools and nonsensical; but since they led such clear sayings, which needed no glosses, that all reason was caught with them, the evil spirit itself with all heresies had to give way to them.
It is another study in the Scriptures, when one interprets dark Scriptures and figures; this is called a pastoral work, when one
some merry minds, as the wild beast, seek and sow; but the study that is for warfare is to be known in the Scriptures, as Paul saith [Tit. 1:9.The study that serves for warfare is to be known in the Scriptures, as Paul says [Titus 1:9], to contend mightily and richly with clear sayings, than with a bare drawn sword, without all glosses and interpretations; as the golden spears in Solomon's temple signified, that the adversary, overcome with the bright light, may see and confess that the sayings of God are alone, and need no man's interpretation. For whoever does not believe the clear Scriptures will certainly not always believe any of the fathers' sayings.
From this it follows that one should not believe any teacher, and that the Emser's sword is only a foolish poem; but one should see whether they lead clear scripture, and follow it; so that no more than the mere sword, the word of God, rules with everyone. This is what St. Paul taught us when he wrote [1 Thess. 5:20], "Try all doctrine, and whichever is good, keep it." He did not say that one should keep any doctrine; but try all and keep the good one. Emser, however, means with his sophists, as Eck at Leipzig also foolishly pretended, that one should not try or test the teachings of the fathers, but accept them with all diligence; although everyone knows that they have all been wrong many times.
But if we are to test, as St. Paul says here, what else are we to use as a testing stone but the Scriptures? It must be clearer and more certain than the teaching of the fathers. How else can we test and judge from it which is right or wrong? The goat, being much more learned than St. Paul, wants to reverse this; he pretends that we should not follow the mere text, but the interpretation of the fathers, and makes the fathers judges and testers of God and divine words; so that he proves how true it is that no foolishness is alone. Such jugglery has never been heard from the ancient fathers; it is a new discovery of the pope and his sects, the high schools, that they do not want to see the Scriptures merely, but according to the fathers' interpretation, so that they may escape the sword.
And because the goat has become a new philosopher, I must also give him his Aristo
teles and prove how learned his Rhadinus is inside. Aristotle wrote, and nature teaches the peasants without Aristotle, that one should not prove dark and uncertain things with dark and uncertain, much less light with darkness; but what is dark and uncertain must be illuminated with light and certainty. Because all the fathers prove their things with the Scriptures, it is not to be believed that they were so mad and nonsensical (as would follow from Emser's philosophy and sword) that they took the Scriptures for a dark mist (as Emser reviles and blasphemes), so that they made their doctrine clear and enlightened it; but they have certainly considered the Scriptures to be the main light and the clearest and most certain, to which they refer and rely as the most public and clearest doctrine, which should judge and test all doctrine.
St. Augustine also did this and wrote that he did not believe any teacher, no matter how holy and learned he was, because he proved his teaching with Scripture or clear reason. From which we learn 1) how the fathers are to be read, namely, that we should not pay attention to what they say, but whether they also lead clear Scripture or reason. But Emser and the Pabst's sect are not to be blamed for shying away from doing and suffering such things, and for inventing other little stories. For if they were to let themselves be forced to prove their cause with clear writings, help God, the abomination would be found, and they would never want to deny that their sect was the regiment of the end-Christ, seducing all the world under the name of the church and priesthood; as I will once bring to light, if God exists. That is why it is almost necessary for them to blaspheme and revile the Scriptures, to push them under the bench and pretend that they are a dark mist, that one must follow the interpretation of the fathers and seek the light in the darkness. One should not need the teaching of the fathers any further than to come to the Scriptures as they came, and then remain with the Scriptures alone. Thus Emser thinks that they should also remain beside the Scriptures as something special, as if the Scriptures were not enough for our teaching.
1) In turn.
But to see even further the wondrous art of the dear goat, if the scripture is a dark mist, what dare you fence with it against me, and pretend to hit me with the edge? Can you blow cold and hot from one mouth? Is the Scripture both a dark mist and a bright light in your head? Because you take three different weapons, the sword, the spear and the sword; the sword cannot be the spear or the sword. And therefore, where you wield the sword, that is, God's word, you must not wield the sword, that is, the interpretation of the fathers. How quickly have you changed your mind, saying that the word of God is a dark mist, that we cannot rule it with our reason, and yet you rule it when you wield the sword? Yes, I realize that you have stripped your reason in the piece that no one can do what you can do, that is, that you no longer have reason, so that you may be like those who have reason. You see what I mean, you noble goat; how careful you are in your writing!
It also follows from the three weapons that you want to make us spiritual with the words and teachings of men. For if the spear and the sword are something else than the sword, and the sword is the word of God, which alone is truth, then the spear and the sword must be the word of men and lies. For what is not God's word is a lie, Ps. 116:11: "All men are liars." Therefore I have said that your spear is Goliath's spear and your sword is Joab's sword. But if the sword is also God's word, interpreted by the fathers, and the spear is also God's word, then they are not three different weapons, but only one, namely, the sword, which is in all three. For with you another thing can happen, let alone a sword in a sword. I think you went to school too foolishly, the donkey read you over. I wish you would stay at home with your dreams and your own little friends, and practice such frivolous jiggery-pokery in your verses, leaving God's word in peace, which cannot stand such frivolous poems.
We have no more, because One Word That
is spear, sword, sword and all weapons, so that we may fight against the opponent, which is the holy word of God. Hereby you see, I hope, your monkey game with the three weapons. Another time take such a thing before you, which you can prove with writing or reason, then your carnival will be laughed at less. Of the spear and sword no one knows to say but your dream. And so you are answered to all teachers you may lead, be it your very first named Aristotle, plus Gerson and Scotus. And if thou hast not enough, take a calendar before thee, and make the number great, lest meanwhile it be known how thou shalt shun and flee the Scriptures, as the devil the cross.
They themselves have invented a reason to fasten such a spear and sword, so that they may not remain with the Scriptures and be found more unlearned than the laity. For they have no shame where Scripture is concerned; they know well that their customs and doctrines of men are as butter in the sun, and thus they say: "Yes, not everything is written in Scripture that is to be done in the church, but Christ commanded the apostles and their successors to teach and to order, as St. John says, John 21:25. John says, Jn. 21:25: "Many more signs hath Jesus wrought, which are not written in this book: and if it should be written all, I suppose the world would not understand the books." Behold, the fine interpreters of the holy [Scriptures], 1) how prettily they can weave a quest 2) and excuse to their shame from the leaves of this holy fig tree and gospel.
Therefore, just as if they had done all that is written in the Scriptures, and were too little written; so that no one (except Christ) has yet fully fulfilled one tittle of the Scriptures. John speaks thus:
1) In the original printings, the word "Scripture" is probably only missing by mistake, which the Jena edition has designated in the margin as an insertion.
2) In the old prints: "a questing". The expression is probably derived from yuaestio. The verb "questen" occurs in the meaning: to arouse questions, to cause disputes.
Christ's miraculous signs are not yet all written; and do not say that all things are not written which we are to do. Yes, he clearly states soon after what we are to do, and says [John 20:31]: "But these signs are written that you should believe"; which faith is also the work that we Christians are to do, as he himself says John 6:29. So these commentators come along and say: not everything is written that we should do. John says of Christ's signs; so they interpret it as laws and works of men. Christ's miraculous sign and our deeds are to be one thing. Thank you, you good fellows, you know how to interpret the Scriptures well; and Emser in particular, who does not hit the letter here, strikes me with the edge of the spirit, just as if he had proven the elevation of the saints by the saying Ps. 150, 1: Laudate Dominum in sanctis ejus ["Praise the Lord in his sanctuary"]. That God may command you blasphemers for once; how miserably you imitate us!
And if it were already said of the laws and works of men, which may not be, should one therefore strive to write so many books that the world would not understand, and to carry out the very things that the apostle wants to have left behind? Indeed, there is enough written in Scripture that there is no need to have more commandments and laws; indeed, there is no authority left on earth to make Christian laws, as I have proved many times. And if those who pretend to do so were speaking from the Spirit, they would undoubtedly not so blasphemously pervert this saying of St. John to their false cause. What a distortion gives clear testimony to the spirit out of which they claim to be lawmakers.
They have another saying, John 14:26, where Christ said at the supper, "The Holy Ghost, whom my Father shall send in my name, shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you." Here they pretend that Christ did not leave it all written in the gospel; do not see the clear words of Christ; for he thus speaks, "the Holy Spirit will remind you," not what you are to set and command, but, "what I have commanded and said unto you." So again Christ's commandment must mean as much as men.
Commandment. The disciples could not grasp and bear all that he said to them at that time; therefore he said that the spirit should tell them again what they had forgotten and not understood [John 16:12], which is what happened. Christ was so diligent 1) to prevent anyone from establishing the law of men in his church, that he also wanted to say all things beforehand, even though they were not remembered or understood. The Pabst's sect still turns it around and wants to lead it to human laws, what Christ preached against human laws; nevertheless, they do not want to be heretics, but masters of all Christians.
The pope's sect is up to its ears in Manichaean heresy about this piece; they also pretended that the Holy Spirit was promised to teach more than was written in the Scriptures; which St. Augustine masterfully overcomes against Felix and proves that it was all fulfilled and written through the apostles what the promised Holy Spirit was supposed to teach.
Item, since Christ says to the disciples [Luc. 10, 16.]: "He who hears you hears me", they also imply that they may make laws as they wish; and drive us with the same word into their law, yes, into their money net; although Christ only speaks of the gospel, which he lays out for the apostles to preach, and for us to hear. So, since he says to Peter [Matth. 16, 19.]: "What you will bind, shall be bound", they also draw from this, the pope may make laws as he likes; so Christ only says the words to bind and loose from sins. Thus they all base their thing not only on their own fabricated lies, but also (which is unmistakable) on the perversion, poisoning and defilement of the holy divine word, and yet they alone want to be masters of all Christians, to heresy anyone 2) who does not worship such their abominations and blasphemies.
Therefore, it is an atrocious, unchristian blasphemy on the part of Emser that he does not want the Roman custom and law to be kept any less than they are in the Scriptures, even though they are not common to all of Christendom.
1) D. i. prevented.
2) I.e., to make a heretic.
1) are still kept, because Greeks and Oriental Christians (whether Emser's and Pabst's sect is annoyed) have not accepted them; and even if they were already quite common Christians, it would not be an error of faith not to keep them. To keep the laws of men does not make a Christian; to leave them does not make an un-Christian; although it is not right what the mob keeps and does, to despise without cause and wantonly; again, it is also tyrannical and inhuman, yes, diabolical, to burden without cause, drive and force with the laws of men a Christian, let alone a whole or large mob.
Therefore I let the laws of the pope and of men be kept, whoever would and would want to, where it would be possible that the faith and God's word would not be suppressed thereby. But I do not want that, to keep silent, that one makes a fear [and] distress out of it and calls all those damned sund] heretics. heretics who do not keep them, even if they otherwise keep all articles of faith. As Emser also confesses here, that I do not touch any article of faith; and yet will not let myself be a Christian. In baptism we did not swear and pay homage to the pope, but to Christ; if he leads us into imperial law, human law, violence, hands, dungeon, death and all suffering, we are obliged to follow. The pope has also sworn to him not to teach us his own word, but Christ's word, and to go ahead. If he does not do this, he is a murderer and a thief; as John 10:1, 8 calls such wolves Christ himself. Now let us hear some of his lies.
First, he lies that I want to cut off the head of the church and then cure the body. Such his own coincidence, like the spear and sword, has pleased him. In the same book, I wrote nothing about the papacy, but only about its improvement and annoyance. That is true, in other books I have written, required by their hustle and bustle, that the Pabst is not out of God's order; I hope I have also received it without Emser's thanks. Thus I have not rejected him, as the liar Emser lies, and my little books clearly prove. If I had wanted that at that time, why should I have
1) I. e. made known.
then give advice to reform [the] pope's position? So that I have ever proved at that time that I want him to remain 2) and hold; otherwise I should have said that he should not be reformed, but destroyed.
Even if the pope would already become equal to other bishops, which will not happen before the last day (because Christ himself must depose such an enemy, whom we cannot reform), the head of the church would not be taken off, as Emser lies. He thinks he has won that the pope is the head of the church; there is still a long way to go. "Christ is the head of the church" [Eph. 5:23], the pope is often a heretic and a knave, and that it is quite disgraceful of Emser to give the church a heretic and a knave as its head, which is much worse than if he cut off its head. Also the pope commonly dies, and yet the church does not live without a head. For as she lives without ceasing, so must her head live without ceasing.
Emser lies again that I wanted the hands of laymen to be washed in the blood of priests; vain fire seeks his holy priesthood and Christian love; and if I were dead, he would be allowed to pass off such lies as truth, as Hus did. So I wrote against Silvester per Contentionem, as the noble poet and rhetor well knows. If heretics are burned, why should we not much more attack the pope and his sects with the sword and wash our hands in their blood, where he teaches what Silvester writes, namely, that the Holy Scriptures have their power from the pope. As I do not like burning heretics, so I do not like killing a Christian, I know that is not evangelical. I have indicated what they would be worthy of, where heretics are worthy of fire. Nor is it necessary to attack you with the sword.
The nobility and secular power can well advise such women 4) and childish people with a letter and order, if he only despises your tyrannical mirror fencing and false ban, and lets you say: So shall it be
2) remain here probably in the meaning: let remain.
3) like all people in general.
4) D. i. female people. -
you must well follow. Even though you stand up to it with burning, banishing, raving and raging against the public truth, it looks as if you would like to make a Bohemian example of yourselves and fulfill the prophecy about which it is said that the priests are to be slain. If the same rumor happens to you, you must not blame me; just go on, you are on the right track. Where there is no counsel, there is no help. You should soon realize whether you will thus dampen the game, even if it is ruled and snowed by all the bishops, Emsians, Ecks and popes. I hope you have seen to it that no one should disturb the pope but yourselves, his creatures, as the prophet says [Dan. 8:25].
But tell me, dear Emser, if you are allowed to write that it is necessary and right to burn heretics, and you think that you do not soil your hands in Christian blood here; why should it not also be right that you, Silvester with Pabst and all your sects should be strangled most shamefully, if you are allowed to write not only heretically, but end-Christianly and, which all devils are not allowed to say, that the Gospel is confirmed by the Pabst, and its power is in the Pabst's power, and what the Pabst does, the church has done? Which heretic has ever condemned and annihilated God's word in the abyss at once? Therefore I still say: If heretics deserve the fire, you should be killed a thousand times with the pope. Nevertheless, I do not want it to happen. Your judge is not far away, he will find you well and unruly; do not let your wait be long. But I would rather that you come before him with repentance and penance, God help you, amen. But I would rather that the Roman Curtisans, 1) like other thieves and robbers, were fed by force, where they otherwise do not want to leave it.
That you also swarm that I disgrace the priesthood, and pretend that St. Paul was consecrated by the apostles and St. Peter carried a plate. St. Paul was consecrated by the apostles, and St. Peter wore a plate, and you spout many useless words about the consecration and priesthood, and that "spiritual" means three things, spirituals, ecclesiastisum, reIigiosum, and not all Chri-
1) Courtiers.
The most spiritual, spirituales, I let flow by, so that I am not laughed at with you. Would you like to say that laying hands on the head means more than consecrating. Who can prevent you? If you have not told more than lies, and as some preach. St. Bartholomew prayed rosaries and Our Lady's Psalter. I do not need logic here. Spiritual I call Spirituales and pious Christians; Ecclesiatisum, religiosum I do not know in this trade. I meant, it should once the bare sword hit me with the edge; so neither scabbard, nor sword, nor man is present.
So you also lie that I have made all laymen bishops, priests and clergymen in such a way that they may also do the office as soon as they are not called; keep silent, as pious you are, that I write next to it: No one should refrain from being called, except in the case of extreme necessity. And what shall I say? There is almost one lie after another in your book. I fear you must lie, blaspheme, hate and rage yourself to death. In the past, it was good to write against the heretics, who, even if they were mistaken, nevertheless, as honest people, let the lies stand and got to the point. My persecutors let go of the matter and, like the boys, only give in to lies. So that you do not get tired of hearing your lies, let us do something good again, from the letter and spirit, which is your main piece in this book.
From the letter and spirit.
St. Paul, 2 Cor. 3:6, says: "The letter killeth, but the Spirit maketh alive." This my Emser draws and interprets to the effect that the Scriptures have two senses: one external, the other hidden. And he calls the two senses written and spiritual. The written sense is supposed to kill; the spiritual sense is supposed to make alive, relies here on Origen, Dionysius and several others who have taught in this way; thinks he has almost got it right, should not look at the light scripture. Because he has the doctrine of men, he would also like me to follow him, to abandon the Scriptures and take the doctrine of men. I do not want to do that, even though I may also be in error.
and will give cause in this very example, and show clearly how Origen, Jerome, Dionysius and some more have erred and erred in this; and how Emser builds on the sand, and that it is necessary to hold the fathers' books against the Scriptures, and judge according to their light.
First, if their opinion were correct, that the spiritual sense makes alive and the written sense kills, then we would have to confess that all sinners are holy, all saints are sinners. Yes, Christ himself with all the angels would have to be alive and dead at the same time. We want to make this so clear that even Emser, with all his lying powers, should not resist. And take before us from St. Paul, Gal. 4, 22: "Abraham had two sons", Isaac and Ishmael, from two wives, Sarah and Agar; this is said according to the written sense and letter. Now this is the meaning of Christ, God the Holy Spirit, and all the angels and saints, who hold fast that it is according to the written sense and letter; and it is truly so. How now, Emser? Where is your Origen? Dear, say here, are you another man who does not cut with the scabbard, and only wounds with the edge, that the letter and the written sense kill Christ and the Holy Spirit with all the angels and saints? What could anyone say more blasphemously than that the truth in all Scripture is deadly and harmful, as Emser rages here?
Again, that Abraham is Christ, the two wives are two testaments, the two sons are two testaments people, as St. Paul interprets, Gal, 4, 24, this is the spiritual sense (as you say). Now not only the saints have the same sense, but also the worst sinners, yes, even the devils in hell. So now, my Emsian, strike freshly with the edge, say that all devils and boys are alive and holy, because the spirit makes alive. Now confess rightly, is it not true, if you take this piece of Origen, Dionysius, Jerome and many more, you have taken almost all their art? Is not the Scripture clearer here than all of them? With which I try, judge, set them all down, so that no one can deny it,
Because with the same saying of St. Paul, which they have for their reason? namely 2 Cor. 3, 6: "The letter kills, the spirit makes alive"; what do I do here for glosses? Is the text itself not so clear against them that everyone must say yes?
So one must act in the whole scripture, also in the old figures. As, that the Jews were not allowed to eat sow nor hare, therefore, that the sow and hare did not chew the cud, that was the written literal sense. Now David, all the holy prophets and Christ himself with his disciples understood and kept it, and if they had not understood and kept it, they would have been against God. How then did the letter not kill them?
Again, that the sow means carnal doctrine, or what one wants to interpret spiritually through it, may well be understood by great mortal sinners, and the devils before that almost well understood; how then do they not become alive from the spirit? Where are you, man with the cutting sword of Leipzig? Dear, go and write more of me, as I have vowed the ceremonies, they are sanctae, justae, bonae, a bono Deo datae sheilig, gerecht, gut, vom guten GOtt gegeben]. Of course it is so, as you now see and must confess yourself. Did I not tell you that you do not know what is spirit and what is letter in the Scriptures? That thou wouldst wait for thine own, and leave the scripture in peace. Now see what good it does to raise up many teachers and build on their Scriptures.
Further, St. Paul, Rom. 7, 14. 7., says: "The divine law is spiritual, but I am carnal"; and names one of the ten commandments, namely: Non concupiseos, "thou shalt desire no evil"; disputes there with rich words and wisdom how the same spiritual law kills. What do you want to do here, Emser? Where are you, man with the spear, rapier and cutting sword? St. Paul says here that the spiritual law kills; you say that the spiritual sense makes alive. Pipe up, let your art be heard! Which is the written, and which the spiritual sense in this commandment, Non concupisces? You cannot ever deny that no other sense is understood here than that which these mere
And he ever speaks of the evil lusts of the flesh; nor does St. Paul call the law spiritual, saying: it is dead; and you say that it would be better to read a poetical fable than such a sense of the Scriptures. Thus St. Paul means: whoever understands any other than this scriptural sense of evil lusts, understands nothing at all in this commandment. How finely Emser agrees with St. Paul, like the donkey with the nightingale! One must act in such a way of all God's commandments, be they ceremonies or others, small or great, that it is even obvious how Emser is so pitifully lacking here and less than a child can in the Scriptures.
Also, such his erroneous, false mind lasts to the disgrace of the whole holy scripture and his own great disgrace. All teachers' diligence and effort is nowhere else executed, but that one invents the written sense; which also applies to them alone, that also Augustine writes: Figura nibil probst, that is, Emser's spiritual sense is not valid; but this is the highest, best, strongest and, in short, the whole substance, essence and reason of the holy Scriptures is such that, if one were to do away with it, the whole Scriptures would already be nothing. But the spiritual one, which Emser inflates, is not valid in any dispute, does not hold the sting either, and nothing is attached to it, if no one knew it, as I have proved in the Book of the Pabst. For if no one knew that Aaron was spiritually Christ, there would be no power in it, nor can it be proved. Aaron must remain badly Aaron in the simple sense, unless the spirit itself interprets it differently; which then is a new scriptural sense, as St. Paul to the Hebrews, Cap. 9 and 10, makes Christ out of Aaron.
How then are you 1) so bold, Emser, that you may say that this written sense is deadly! 2) you turn the page, not even knowing what you are saying, that it is better to read a fable of Virgil than such a sense of the Scriptures. That is just the whole scripture condemned, and the devil's lies or fables preferred to the holy word of God; since they do not appeal to anyone.
1) "nun" is missing in the Jena edition.
2) d. i. chat.
that has a meaning that is valid without this one, which you teach [as] deadly and to be shunned. This is called striking with the edge, and rightly Emser's spiritual interpretation; this is how one should strike the heretic Luther. Turn over the page, Emser, and you will find it; the meaning that you call spiritual and living is just that, if one adheres to it alone and lets the written one go, it would be better to read a poet's fable for it; for it is dangerous, and without it the Scriptures exist, but without it they cannot exist. That is why Origen was justified a long time ago in having his books banned; he gave himself too much to the same spiritual sense, which was not necessary, and abandoned the necessary scriptural sense. For in this way the Scriptures perish, and one never again makes good theologians; the one right main sense that the letters give must do it alone.
The Holy Spirit is the most simple writer and speaker that is in heaven and earth, therefore his words can have no more than a simple meaning, which we call the written or literal sense of tongues. But since things, by his simple words, mean simple things, something further and other things, and thus one thing means another, then the words are over and the tongues cease. 3) So do all other things not mentioned in Scripture, since all God's works and creatures are living signs and words of God, as Augustine says, and all teachers. But this is not to say that the Scriptures or God's Word have more than one meaning.
The fact that a painted picture means a living man, without word and scripture, should not make you say that the word picture has two senses: a written one, which means the picture; a spiritual one, which means the living man. So, even though the things described in the Scriptures mean something more, let not the Scriptures therefore have two senses, but let them keep the one to which the words refer, and then give the spirits of the walkers leave to interpret the words in many different ways.
3) "also" is missing in the Jena edition.
But that they watch, and do not chase away or hide themselves, as happens to the gem-stealers, as also happened to Origen. It is much safer and more certain to stick to the words and simple mind, there is the right pasture and dwelling of all spirits.
Now see, how fine Emser drives along with his ambivalent Bible, makes that none remains certain. Since St. Peter [1 Ep. 2,9] says: We are all priests; he says: Let it be said in the spiritual sense, not in the written sense. But if I ask, why not in the written sense? he says, because the written sense is dead. No one hears what he says, and does not see how he himself first of all disgraces his priesthood; teaches clearly that it is not the living, spiritual priesthood, but the written, deadly, harmful priesthood, that it is also better to be a poet-priest than to be such a written priest. For that which is not spirit does not live, nor is it understood by spiritual sense, so it must certainly be deadly, harmful and worse than pagan and understood by letters, if the high supra-spiritual Emserian theology is to exist otherwise. Therefore it would be good for a blacksmith to remain a blacksmith, a versifex a versifex, and let those wield the spiritual sword who have strength and marrow in their fists and arms. The Scripture does not suffer such splitting of the letter and spirit, as Emser outrages, there is only a simple priesthood and a simple mind in it.
Many sensible people have erred here, who call the letter an obscure word, as Augustine also did in his day. As if I said: Emser is a coarse donkey; and a simple-minded person, who followed the words, understood that Emser was a right donkey with long ears and four feet, he would have been deceived by the letter, if I had wanted to indicate by such a flowery word that he had a coarse, incomprehensible head. Such flowery words are taught to boys in schools and are called schemata in Greek and figurae in Latin, because they are used to disguise and decorate speech,
1) In the Wittenberg and Jena editions: "who" in the sense of "which".
just as one adorns a body with a jewel.
The Scriptures are full of the same flowers, especially in the prophets. So John and Christ, Luc. 3, 7, call the Jews genimina viperarum, serpents, and St. Paul calls them dogs, Phil. 3, 2; Ps. 110, 3: "The dew of your children will come from the mother of the dawn"; item v. 2.God will send out of Zion the scepter of your power," which means that Christ's children will not be born out of a woman's womb or womb, but without man's work, like the dew from heaven, out of the morning glories of the Christian church. Item, Christ, Matth. 5, 13: "You are the salt of the earth and light of the world." But St. Paul does not mean such a letter. It belongs to grammar and children's school.
If you can now humble yourself and not despise me so much, listen to me, I will do to you as I owe my Christian duty to my enemy, and my God's gift will not be alien to you 2); I will teach you this matter better than you have received so far (without speaking of glory) from any teacher, except St. Augustine, if you had read him, de Spir. et Lit. All that you call spiritual sense with Origen and Jerome, you will not find one letter in the whole Bible that agrees with you. St. Paul calls it mysteria, hidden, secret senses; therefore the very oldest fathers called it anagogas [the supplying mind].
(i.e. remotiores sensus, separatas intelligentias; sometimes also allegorias, as St. Paul himself calls it Gal. 4, 24. But there is still no spirit, although the spirit gives such things, as well as the letter and all goods, as we see in 1 Cor. 14, 2: "The spirit speaks the secret senses." But here some, out of ignorance, have given the Scriptures four senses, literal, allegoric, anagogic, tropologic [literal, spiritual, deeper, figurative], 3) that there is no reason anywhere.
2) i.e. withdraw.
3) Cf. Table Talks. Walch, St. Louis Edition, Vol. XXII, 1341; Cap. 52, § 5.
Therefore, it is not well called a scriptural sense, because Paul interprets the letter much differently than they do. Those who call it a grammatical, historical sense do better. And it would be better to call it the tongue or language sense, as St. Paul, 1 Cor. 14, 3. ff, reads; therefore, as the tongue or language reads, it is understood by everyone. For which 1) language or tongue hears that Abraham had two sons by two wives, Gal. 4, 24, remains in the same sense, thinks no further than the tongue or language gives, until the spirit moves on and opens the hidden mind of Christ and two testaments and people. This is called mysteria (mystery, like Paul, Eph. 5, 32., mysterium means Christ and the church in one flesh; but of man and woman the scripture and letter reads, Gen. 2, 24. But here it is necessary that each one does not seal mysteria from himself, as some have done and still do; the spirit must do it itself, or it must be proven from the scripture, as I have written in the booklet of the papacy 2).
Therefore Paul's saying, 2 Cor. 3, 6: "The letter kills, the spirit makes alive", rhymes with these two senses: written and spiritual, just as Emser's head rhymes with philosophy and theology. But how and why Origen, Jerome and some more fathers also drew and forced this saying, I will now leave aside; they probably drew more sayings in this way to defend the Jews and heretics, as everyone publicly knows and can prove. But this is to be thought too good for them, and not to be followed in it, as the unclean beasts do, who have no difference in the fathers' work and doctrine, and pick up everything they find, until they follow them only in the parts where the dear fathers as men have stumbled, and let them go, where they have acted well; as I would easily prove in all doctrines and lives, which are now held the very best.
Now let us take the saying of the spirit and
1) which - who these.
2) This refers to Luther's writing against Alveld, No. 44 of this volume: "Vom Pabstthum zu Rom wider den Romanisten zu Leipzig.
letters. St. Paul in the same place does not write a bag of these two senses, but of two kinds of sermons or preaching. One is of the Old Testament, the other of the New Testament. The old testament preaches the letter; the new preaches the spirit. And lest, like Bock Emser, I say my dream, let us hear the apostle's own clear words, as he says of the ministers or preachers of the New Testament, which are thus, 2 Cor. 3:3 ff: "Ye are an epistle of Christ, made and written by our preaching, not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in tables of flesh of the hearts. Therefore, we have no need of a foreign letter of ark to you. We trust in God through Christ; not that we are skillful enough to remember anything of ourselves; but our skill is of God, who has made us skillful to be ministers and preachers of the New Testament, not of the letter, but of the Spirit; for the letter killeth, but the Spirit quickeneth. "2c
Are these not clear words of sermons said? Here we see clearly that St. Paul mentions two tables and two sermons. Moses' tablets were made of stone, since the law is inscribed with God's fingers, Ex. 24:12 [31:18]; Christ's tablets (or, as he says here), Christ's letters are the hearts of Christians, in which not letters, as in Moses' tablets, but the Spirit of God is written through the Gospel preaching and apostleship. Now what is all this said? The letter is nothing else, 3) but the divine law or commandment, which was given in the Old Testament through Moses and preached and taught through Aaron's priesthood. And therefore it is called the letter, that it is written with letters in the stone tablets and books, and remains a letter, gives also nothing more. For no man is made better by the law, but only worse; because the law neither helps, nor gives grace, but only commands and requires to do that which man is neither able nor willing to do. But the spirit, the divine grace, gives strength.
3) In the old prints: not different.
and powers of the heart, yes, makes a new man who gains pleasure in God's commandments and does everything he should with joy.
This spirit cannot be written in letters, cannot be written with ink in stone or books, as the law can be written; but is only written in the heart and is a living writing of the Holy Spirit without any means; therefore St. Paul calls it "Christ's letter", not Moses' tablets, "which is not written with ink, but with the Spirit of God". By this Spirit or grace man does what the law requires, and pays the law; and thus he is made free from the letter which kills him, and lives by the grace of the Spirit. For everything that does not have this grace of the living Spirit is dead, although the whole law shines outwardly. Therefore the apostle gives the law that it is dead, makes no one alive and keeps eternally in death, where grace does not come and redeem and make alive.
These are now the two sermons. The priests, preachers and sermons of the Old Testament act no more than the law of God; the Spirit and grace have never been preached publicly. But in the New Testament, grace and the Spirit are preached, given to us through Christ; since the preaching of the New Testament is nothing else, but that Christ is offered and presented to all men out of the mercy of God, so that all who believe in him shall receive the grace of God and the Holy Spirit, through which all sin is forgiven, all laws are fulfilled, and they shall become children of God and be eternally saved. Therefore, St. Paul of the New Testament calls preaching ministerium Spiritus, "a ministry of the Spirit", 2 Cor. 3, 6.This is a ministry of preaching, through which the Spirit and grace of God are presented and offered to all those who have been weighed down, killed and made merciful by the law; which law he calls ministerium literas, "a ministry of the letter," that is, a ministry of preaching, through which nothing more than the letter or 1) law is given, from which no life follows; the law is also not fulfilled with it, and the law is not fulfilled.
1) Jena edition: and.
Man cannot do enough for it either. Therefore it remains a letter, and in the letter it becomes no more without killing man, that is, it shows him what he should do and yet cannot. Thus he recognizes how he is dead and in disgrace before God, whose commandment he does not do and yet should do.
From this it is clear that the apostle's word, when he says: the letter kills, the spirit makes alive, could be said in other words: The law kills, but the grace of God makes alive; or thus: Grace gives help and does everything that the law demands and is not able to do by itself. Therefore St. Paul calls God's law a law of death and sin, and says, Rom. 8, 2-4: "The law of the living Spirit in Christ has redeemed me from the law of sin and death. For it was impossible for the law to help me; indeed, it was only made worse by the wickedness of the old flesh; therefore God sent His Son into our flesh, and made Him like unto our sinful flesh, and so put away our sin by the accepted sin of Christ in His suffering, that the law might be fulfilled in us also."
So we see how St. Paul masterfully teaches to understand Christ, God's grace and the New Testament, that it is no different than how Christ entered into our sin, bore it in his flesh on the cross and destroyed it, so that all who believed in him might also be freed from sin through him and receive grace to henceforth do enough to the law of God and the deadly letter, and thus live eternally. See, this is called ministry Spiritus, non literas, preaching of the spirit, preaching of grace, preaching of right indulgence, preaching of Christ, that is, the New Testament; of which there would be much to speak, if the evil spirit had not blinded the wager through the pope and led it into the abyss of utter darkness with the doctrines of men.
Now we see that all commandments are deadly, because even divine commandments are deadly; for everything that is not spirit or grace is dead. Therefore, it is a gross lack of understanding that allegories, tropologies, and the like are called spirit; so that all of them may be put into letters, and not
But grace has no vessel but the heart. Just as not all men receive the life of this spirit, yes, several let the servants of this spirit speak to them in vain and preach such abundant grace, they do not believe the gospel; so also not all receive the service of the letter or the preaching of the law, they do not want to be killed; that is, they do not understand God's law; they go, seeing neither letter nor spirit. And that we further present Bock Emser's blind mind: he thinks that the letter is to be avoided and the death of the letter is to be fled; so it is with those who read the fathers' books alone and leave the Scriptures lying around, juggle with their spears and swords and make a dark mist out of the Scriptures and a light out of the fathers' teaching.
The apostle does not want that one should avoid the letter, nor flee its death; yes, he complains in the same place [2 Cor. 3, 7.] that a cover hangs over the law for the Jews, as before the face of Moses, 2 Mos. 34, 33. that they do not see the letter, its death and clarity. He wants the letter to be preached and made clear, the cover to be removed from Moses' face. This is how it works: Whoever understands the law of God correctly and looks at it without a cover under the eyes, finds that all men's works are sin and that there is nothing good in them, unless the grace of the Spirit comes into them. And this is also the end of the law and the opinion of it, of which Paul says 2 Cor. 4, 4. They did not see the end of Moses, because it wants to make everyone sinners and all our things sins and thereby show us our misery, death and merit and lead us into our right knowledge, as St. Paul Rom. 7, 4. Paul says Rom. 7, 7: "The law gives knowledge of sin"; and Rom. 11, 32: "The Scriptures resolve all men to sin, that the mouth of all the world may be stopped"; and know that in the sight of God no man is righteous without grace, though he do the works of the law.
Who now want to raise their good works and praise free will, do not let all human works be sin, still find something good in nature, as the Jews and our Sophists do with the Pope;
These are the ones who do not want to let Moshe's face shine clearly, hang a cover over the law and do not look it right under the eyes, do not want to let their thing be sin or death before God, that is, they do not want to recognize themselves rightly, nor be humble, they strengthen their own arrogance. They flee the letter and its right understanding, as the Jews fled Moses' face; therefore their mind remains blind, and they never come to the life of the spirit.
So it is not possible for a man to hear the gospel and have the grace of the Spirit quicken him, unless he first hears the law and is given the letter to die; for grace is not given to those who thirst for it. Life helps only the dead, grace only sinners, the spirit only the letter, and one without the other no one can have. Therefore, that which Emser calls the letter and death is in truth nothing else than the curtain and harmful ignorance of the letter and damned escape of this blessed death; indeed, it is far from being such good understanding. So far is the poor blind man from the Scripture, and pretends to strike with the cutting sword. That is, I mean, hit himself in the cheeks.
It would be my faithful advice that such unlearned heads leave their bookmaking in order. For because they foolishly introduce some of the fathers' sayings, they make a nose of the poor people, so that they fall on it and commit such errors, which they may never let go of; and such little books may not come off without harm; which ruin is the same foolish book writer guilty of before God. So, who will give Emsern the grace to eradicate such error and lies from his booklet as he is guilty of? It would have been better for him, as Christ says [Matth. 18, 6], if a millstone had been tied to his neck and he had been drowned in the sea, because he not only writes erroneous, harmful, annoying teachings, but also blasphemes the very best teachings of Christ to the extreme, poisons them and drives poor people away.
Woe to you, Emser! If you had resisted
1) Jen. Edition: the.
ret, until God had called you and driven you, then he would also have worked with you, given you his spirit to write usefully. But now you do as Jeremiah, Cap. 23, 21, says: Currebant, et non mittebam eos, prophetabant, et non sum locutus eis ["I did not send the prophets, nor did they run; I did not speak to them, nor did they prophesy"]. The hateful and lying spirit has driven you; therefore you write no more but lies and error. I can do him no more, I warn everyone of your poison. And if I had not feared the same poor, I would not have thought thee worthy to answer as I did before. Tu enim es ipsa inscitia in his rebus ["For you are ignorance itself in these matters"].
But that we come back to ours: It is true that where one preaches the law and the letter alone, as was done in the Old Testament, and does not also preach the Spirit, there is death without life, sin without grace, torment without consolation; there are miserable captive consciences that must finally despair and die in their sins, and thus are eternally damned by such preaching. As in our times the murderous sophists have done and still do in their Summis and Confessionalibus, in which they drive and torture the people with their sins, to repent, confess, atone and do enough; then teach good works and preach good doctrine, as they say, and never present the Spirit and Christ to the afflicted consciences; that now in all the world Christ is unknown, the gospel is under the bank, and the whole ministry of the New Testament is silent; and they only are the very best who explain Moses and the commandments; which yet are almost rare. The more part go about with fool's work, and teach the spiritual law, Pabst's laws, doctrines of men, and their statutes; there they hang in, there they remain in, teaching daily, and never coming to know the truth, as St. Paul says [2 Tim. 3:7].
If God's commandment, preached and explained in the best possible way, is harmful and condemnable, as St. Paul says here, then what do the sophists and goats pretend to do to make people pious with the teachings of men and their own laws?
and increase good works? Truly, since the law kills and condemns everything that is not grace and the Spirit, they do no more with their many laws and works than to give the law much to kill and condemn. And thus lose all their toil and labor in vain, and the more they do, the worse they become; because it is impossible to satisfy the law of God with works and doctrines, for which the Spirit alone is sufficient. That is why the Scriptures call such their nature Aven 6t toil and labor, and the same lost multitude Bethaven, the church or henchmen of toil [Jos. 7, 2. Hos. 5, 8.]; item, Amos 7, 16. Bethishac, the church of deceit, that among them everyone is deceived by such their false doctrine, work and life.
So I have advised and still advise that one does not pretend to a reformation, as Emser fools, to correct this human doctrine and spiritual law; for it is impossible: but that one burns it altogether, abolishes it, destroys it and converts it, or as little as one can; and again, practice the two mere offices of the letter and the spirit; which may not be practiced, human doctrine remains behind. And it is right that they give way to the letter and spirit of God, because they are a hindrance and detriment to it. We have more to preach in the letter and spirit than we are able, even though we have preached from the beginning of the world to the end.
And even though we are already in the New Testament and should only have the preaching of the Spirit, because we are still living in the flesh and blood, it is necessary to preach the letter as well, so that people are first killed by the law and all their presumption is destroyed, so that they recognize themselves and become spiritually hungry and thirsty for mercy, and thus prepare the people for the preaching of the Spirit. As it is written about St. John, that he prepared the people for Christ with the preaching of repentance, which was the ministry of the letter, and then led them to Christ, saying [John 1:29], "Behold, he is the Lamb of God, who takes away all the sin of the world"; which was the ministry of the Spirit.
Now these are two of God's works, praised many times in Scripture, that He kills and makes alive, He wounds and heals, He forgives and He heals.
1318 Erl. 27, 270-372. IX. Luther's dispute with Emser. W. XVIII, 1616-1618. 1319
He saves and helps, he condemns and makes blessed, he lowers and lifts up, he defiles and honors, as it is written in Deut. 32, 39, 1 Sam. 2, 6-8, Ps. 113, 7 and more places. What works he does by these two offices: the first by the letter; the other by the Spirit. The letter makes that no one can remain before his wrath; the Spirit makes that no one can perish before his grace 1). Ah, this is such a rich bargain, of which to speak incessantly; but the pope and the laws of men have covered it up for us, and fastened an iron curtain over it, that God may have mercy, amen.
From this everyone can easily understand what St. Paul means, Rom. 7, 12, 13, when he says: "The divine law is good, right, holy and spiritual, and yet a deadly letter; because it shows how man should be good, right, holy, spiritual and equal to all things, as the law shows; otherwise he is evil, unjust, sinful, carnal and unequal to the law in every measure. This inequality leads to eternal death, wrath and disgrace of God, who wants his law to be fulfilled to the last letter and tittle [Deut. 27, 26]. Thus, from the mirror and appearance of the letter or law, man is made to know himself, how he is dead and in disgrace to God; which knowledge frightens him and drives him to seek the spirit, which will also make him good, pious, holy and spiritual, equal to the law of all things, and bring him to God's grace. So the law is dear to him, and the letter never kills him, but lives in the spirit, as the law requires; indeed, he no longer needs a law to teach him, for he now knows it by heart, since everything that the law requires has now become nature and essence through the spirit.
So let us conclude this with the fine saying of St. Augustine, Ps. 17, where he nicely and briefly understands what the letter is and says: The letter is nothing else than the law without grace. So we may say again, that the Spirit is nothing else than grace without law. Now where the letter is, or law without grace, there
1) Jena edition: before his graces.
there is no cessation of making, teaching and working the law, and yet it helps nothing, no one becomes better from it, everything remains dead in the letter. Again, "where the Spirit of God is, there is liberty," as St. Paul says [2 Cor. 3, 17.There is no need of doctrine or law, and yet everything happens that is supposed to happen; just as if a man has a healthy, good face, no one is allowed to teach him how to see, he has a free face, and more than all doctrine can help or give him; but if he is unhealthy, there is no more freedom, not enough doctrine can be found to help him guard and keep him, he must have his own care and rule for every eye, so that he may see. So St. Paul means, 1 Tim. 1, 9: "No law is given to the righteous," because he has everything from the Spirit that the law requires. And this is what he means when he says [2 Cor. 3:6]: "God has made us preachers of the Spirit and not of the letter"; that in the New Testament only grace and not the law should be preached, so that people become fundamentally pious through the Spirit.
Where are you now, Goliath Emser, with your spear and sword? You have girded this sword on yourself and had your head cut off with it. How could you find a saying in the whole Bible that serves me so well against you as this one, where you put out your reason and comfort and boast of cutting with the edge, if it does not come to you that you touch the scabbard or pommel? Do you see how spiritually you torture this saying and make it so that the letter is called the written sense, the spirit the spiritual sense, and want one to flee the letter and death. What a fine swordsman you are! How you have done such a fine thing with the famous swordsman!
Now that I have girded off thy sword and cut off thy head from thy presumption, let us return to thy spear, sword and whole armor [1 Sam. 17:51, 54]. I hope I will strip a dead Goliath and carry his head upward, so that everyone can see your wicked threats and Goliathic blasphemies [ibid. v. 8 ff]. Let us see where the pope, your idol, will stay with his laws and the whole army of these Philistines with their human teachings.
If the pope with his bishops and priests is a pious faithful follower and heir to the chair of the apostles, then I hope he is guilty of also carrying out their office and preaching the spirit, according to these words of St. Paul. But if he is to preach the Spirit, he must preach no laws, but freedom also from God's laws, as has been said. So I ask, where do the pope and priesthood come from? who not only never preach this spirit, but also do not explain the letter correctly, but push their own law, spiritual law and vain human doctrine, consecrated salt, water, vigils, masses and whatever else you show of the same jugglery, into all the world, obscure God's law, rehang the curtain of Moses, which the apostles took down, and in addition imprison the world in their law, destroy Christian freedom, disturb the spirit and chase away grace; And for such an abominable evil take, rob and steal all our money and goods?
St. Paul says that through the preaching of the Spirit also the clarity of Moses, that is, the law of God, is abolished, so that only the clarity of the Spirit shines in the church; so the Pope does not only reintroduce Moses to us (which would still be a grace), but covers the cloth before his eyes again, yes, with his innumerable laws he builds a stone wall before him, so that now neither letter nor spirit is recognized or preached, but only fables of human doctrine, since Christ says of Matth. 15:8, 9: "It is in vain that they serve me with the laws and doctrines of men: for thereby they come nigh unto me with their mouth: but their heart is far from me."
Where does such a pope come from with his priesthood? He is not the heir to the apostles' chair, for he ever violates their ministry and doctrine with his teaching. St. Paul stands strong here and says: "We are ministers or preachers of the Spirit, not of the letter." How does the pope say? We are preachers neither of the Spirit nor of the letter, but of our own dream, which is nowhere written. Where does it come from? I will tell you. Christ calls him, Matth. 24, 15. 23. ff.: "When you shall see the abomination in the holy city", that is, the Pabst with his own teachings in the church and apostle chair.
He who reads this, let him understand. For in those days there will arise many false teachers, prophets and Christians, who will say, "Here and there is Christ, and will deceive many," that is, they will present the doctrine of men, so that one will seek Christ here and there, thinking to find him by works and ceremonies; if only he can be found in the heart, spirit and faith in all places, all times, all persons.
And St. Paul, 2 Thess. 2, 3. 9.: "The man who only imposes sin and corruption will come forth by the effect of the devil." And Daniel 8:23-25: "At the end of the Roman Empire there shall arise a king whose strength shall be in show and appearance" (that is, in the doctrines of men, who teach only outward ways and appearances; as there are bishops, clergymen, and monks, life in their garments and outward works and manner). "He will disturb all things whimsically, horribly, and will also be quick in such deception, and will make and increase understanding of human law.
Now hear what God says more of your idolatry and doctrines of men, St. Paul, Col. 2:8: "Beware lest any man deceive you through seeming vain doctrine, through philosophy, through doctrines of men, through commandments of temporal outward things, which teach not after the manner of Christ." But what these are, follow and say [vv. 20-23.], "If ye have died with Christ, why are ye led with the laws of men; which teach you, that thou shalt not eat, that thou shalt not drink, that thou shalt not put on, that thou shalt not touch; which yet are all temporal things, which consume themselves under the hand wherein go the commandments and laws of men; and have a seeming as if it were deliciously, wisely ordered." And yet superstition and false foolish humility, only aimed at hurting the body and disguising it, and in this their sensual animal state is satisfied, get no further.
Where is the cutting edge of the Boeckian spirit here? Did not St. Paul here give the pope, bishop, priest, monastic life masterly on day? which only stands in that who does not eat this, who does not drink this, who does not drink this?
They do not touch the money, who does not wear the clothes, the color, and so henceforth, their spirituality placed on the temporal things that pass under hands, give no more than appearance and color of holiness, and yet deceive everyone with it and bring the world under themselves with foolish humility. This is the king, whose strength consists only in his gifts, not in his armor, nor in his sword, nor in the word of God, Daniel 8:24, 25.
Christ says of Matthew 7:15: "Beware of false teachers, which come unto you in sheep's clothing, and inwardly they are ravening wolves." What are sheep's clothing, for such outward holiness in garments, shoes, plates, food, drink, days and places, which are all temporal things; but inwardly in the faith, which gives an eternal holiness and stands on eternal goods, they are nothing at all, even only destroyers of it and ravening wolves; that also St. Paul, 2 Tim. 3:7, confesses and says, "They have a gift of godliness," and there is nothing behind it, "always teaching and learning, but never coming to the true knowledge." If all this were to be done away with, as is only right, and changed, where would the papacy remain, which alone stands on this? Christ Himself must abolish it by the last day [2 Thess. 2, 8.), otherwise nothing will come of it. Here we see clearly that we are to flee the sheep's clothing; these are the laws and works of men.
Item, St. Paul, Gal. 1, 8: "Whoever teaches you otherwise than you have learned, whether it be an angel from heaven, shall be destroyed. And here, Col. 2, 7, 8: "Beware of what is not taught according to Christ. Here St. Paul wants nothing to be taught apart from the Scriptures. What do you want to say to this, Emser? Perhaps you will introduce St. Augustine, Benedictus, Franciscus, Dominic and the Fathers, all of whom taught and held sacred, yet human doctrine. I answer: This is not enough for me in regard to the Scriptures. God's word is more than all angels and saints and all creatures. So no one can say that these saints have not erred; who can assure us that they have not erred in this either, as Aaron and
all the elect should err here? because the Scripture lies clearly there for me. I want and must be overcome with scripture, not with uncertain life and teachings of men, however holy they always are.
For this purpose, the same saints kept and left their teaching free, not making commandments out of it, so that whoever wanted to live in this way could do so and, if he wanted to, resign again. And if they had so nearly erred that they had made a commandment and law out of it, which I do not believe, I would count them there, of which Ezekiel says, [14, 9.]: "If a prophet shall err, then I, God Himself, have made him err"; and count them in the number, since Christ, Matth. 24, 24. of says that the regiment of the end-christ will so nearly glitter with such erroneous teachings and do wonders, "that he would also deceive the elect, if it were possible". So these holy fathers may have miraculously escaped the dangers of human doctrine with the spirit they had in faith, and yet their successors will be lost altogether, holding only their works and human doctrine with a weakening of their faith and spirit. But your pope, who should leave such teachings free, as they had the saints, makes necessary, eternal commandments and laws out of them with his confirmation, just as he also leads with his laws.
I also think you know that in the Old Testament the people were as highly obliged to listen to their priests as we are to listen to ours; nor would God suffer them to teach their own doctrine, and forbade it. Therefore the word vocem meam, "my voice", is so often used in Moses and all the prophets. 1) And Deut. 4, 2, he commanded: "You shall not detract from my words, nor add to them"; and Mal. 2, 7. He says: "The people shall seek God's commandment and teaching from the priest's mouth, for he is God's messenger."
And Matth. 23, 2. says Christ, they shall hear the scribes, because they sat on Mosi's seat, that is, because they taught Mosi's law. Again, all who teach their laws, all Scripture calls false prophets, idolaters, deceivers, seducers, wolves,
1) Wittenb. Ed.: brought forward.
They are raging beasts, of whom he says Jer. 23:32: "They have deceived my people, and I have not sent them nor commanded them to teach them. They were all sent, that is, ordained priests, to teach the law to half the people, but they had no command to teach their own law. Item [vv. 21, 22]: "The prophets I did not send, and yet they preached; I commanded them nothing, nor did they teach. If they had continued in my doctrine, and had preached my words to the people, I could have converted them from their wicked life."
Where will you stay, Pabst, before these sayings? Where are you, Emser, who pretends that one should have more than God's word? God says here that one should not teach anything else than his word, otherwise he may not convert anyone. From this he teaches us what is more than God's word, which is certainly error, seductive, unchristian, lying and deceiving, which does nothing more than hinder God's work and grace in us. And for this reason St. Paul calls the end-Christian hominem peccati et filium perditionis ["the man of sin and the child of perdition"], because by his own law and doctrine he will turn all the world away from God and thus prevent it and God from coming together [2 Thess. 2, 3. 4.], and thus be a master of all sin and corruption; and yet pretend to the name and appearance of Christ, calling himself Sanctissimum [Most Holy], and Vicarium Dei [Governor of God], and Caput Ecclesiae [Head of the Church], and persecuting all who disobey him therein. 1) As then all this is more than too obviously recognized in the pope.
And what is the greatest effort in all prophets, but to fight against the doctrine of men and to preserve God's word only in the people? All idolatry is nothing else but the doctrine of men; there are the calves of Bethaven, Hos. 10, 5; item, the calf of Aaron, Ex. 32, 2. 4; the idol Baal, 1 Kings 18, 26, and the like. And who can be wary enough of such teachings, since Aaron, the chief priest, himself believed in the golden calf?
1) Wittenb. Edition: horchen.
Christ said in Matth. 24, 24 that such shining and glittering would also deceive the elect. If the pope did not have such a great following and shine, he could never be the final Christian.
There must be appearances and attachments of all bishops, all priests, all monks, all universities, all princes, all powerful people; only one piece does not let God cover it, there the ears of the donkey stick out, that is, it does not respect the word of God, does not preach it, has enough that one preaches its doctrine. By his singing you can tell what kind of bird he is, as John saw in Revelation, Cap. 13, 11, a beast that had two horns, as if it were a lamb, and yet spoke like a dragon. Thus the Papist crowd is to be regarded as if they were Christians, but they preach like the devil. Daniel, Cap. 11, 37-30.The end-Christian will not respect the God of his ancestors, will not practice his doctrine, will not have wives, but will honor his god Mausim in his city; that is, he will only give away marriage as a pretense, to him and his papists, and will set up the idol of the oil Mausim, his decree and his doctrine, in the place of God and his gospel, and will bind the clergy to external places, as Christ says: "Here is Christ, there is Christ," Matth. 24, 23.
Item, Jer. 19, 5, of the great service of Baal, that they also sacrificed and burned their children, thinking they were doing God a great service, God says, "He did not command it, nor did it come into his heart" 2c From this it also becomes clear that nothing should be preached and taught to the people that God has not commanded nor wanted. Now we are sure that the pope with his papists has no commandment from God to practice his own teachings in Christendom, and is only a vain devil's specter to hinder God with it and his commandment and all people's blessedness. Therefore, my goat should first prove and make it clear that the spear and the sword are right before God; then he thinks it is enough that the spear is long and the sword short; it should be enough that this is called custom and that is called the doctrine of men: and I should leave the Scriptures and judge according to his head.
And that thou mayest also see thy prudence's overbond, listen: I have well known the doctrine and custom of men, that thou mightest see against me; how should I not know them, if I fight against them? What do you do then, great philosopher, that you bring up against me the very thing I dispute, when you should protect it with other strength? If I were lying in front of a city with an army, and shot against the walls and towers so that [it] thundered, and you became hostilely angry with me inside, and set out to resist me, and yet did no more, for you showed me with your hand the very same walls and towers that I had shot at, shouted hostilely that I should look at them, and pretended that you had put me down with them: what should I think of you? I would order a cooper to put a hoop or two around your head, so that it would not burst with great nonsense. So, even if you hear how I write and shoot against human doctrine and custom, you will not let them stand, they have writing for themselves; nor are you so clever, you do not protect them beforehand with writing, but merely present them and show them to me as if I had never seen them, you want to have won with them and broken out cursors 2) so that everyone sees how the dog days ride you.
St. Augustine against the Donatist Petilianus considered it a great insult that Ticonius introduced thunderbolts of Scripture against him, and he answered no more than his ancestors' human doctrine, thinking that it was a foolish answer; and I, who also introduce vain Scripture, should consider Bock Emser's answer to be delicious, precious wisdom, if it is only man's delusion and conceit, set without Scripture's foundation; and defies it at once, calling it sword and habit. Therefore you would be well advised to stay at home with your spear and sword, to fight against me with scripture, as I do against you. Where is now your philosophy, which teaches not petere principium? I mean, it is a felting 3), and your Aristotle an arch-
1) D. i. flushness.
2) People protected with a kukraß.
3) D. i. doltishness.
stultus? This is how it should be with a versifex if he wants to be a philosopher and theologian; just like a donkey walks with the bagpipe.
If even now the Manichaean heresy rose up and pretended that there was not enough given to us in the Scriptures, but that the Holy Spirit had awakened them, one should follow them; how would you resist them with all your papists? Would you do no more here than point fingers at your doctrine? Or would you say, "Too slow, we ourselves have already invented this, that one should believe and hold more than the Scriptures give? How well shall you Papists stand, if you strengthen your enemies with your own examples and allow them to teach and live apart from the Scriptures?
Is it not shameful and worthy of shame that we ourselves unabashedly not only confess, but also boast and praise that our thing is not founded in the Scriptures, so high that by such Scripture-less human deeds [as] good Christians we cry ourselves out like cuckoos, and call all others heretics because of it, whether they, known by ourselves, have the whole Scriptures for themselves? Which, if we were not so foolish, should be so grievous to us, when our enemies put it upon us, that we should stake life and limb upon it. Who does not mock us when we ourselves confess that the adversary's cause has the Scriptures and our cause does not have the Scriptures? What could we sing more shamefully of ourselves and more honestly of our enemies? Nor do we want to recite such gross foolishness for wisdom to all the world. Truly, here it would be time to court such brave war heroes in their vaginas.
Also, what did I want in all my books, because that is exactly what Emser confesses to me here, and yet complains about me with great seriousness and murderous cries? Have I not also said that the nature of the pope and all papists is only human doctrine and custom without all scripture, as Emser wants to dissuade me from with all his storm? what do I mean other than just the same? That everyone may understand the proper distinction between divine Scripture and human doctrine or custom, and that a Christian heart may not exchange one for another, straw for gold, hay for silver, and wood for wood.
Precious stones were bought, as St. Paul teaches, 1 Cor. 2, 12, also St. Augustine in many places, in addition to the sacred carnal law, if the highly learned Licentiat sacrorum canonum would have considered it soberly.
Why does the goat scold me so badly, when we are completely at one and agree on things? Perhaps I have sinned in that I have spoken rudely, have not called the science of man a short sword, and habit a long spear? That makes me no versifex. Also, because he has no reason to write little books, for that he shows his art, how he can masterfully write names, call the doctrine of man short swords, the habit long spears, it would have helped me nothing, if I had already called it so. Perhaps he would have invented to teach us how human doctrine is called Bockshorn, and habit Bocksbart, and would have knocked me over and entangled me with it. Philosophy makes such wise, reasonable masters and Arstultus 1) through the Sophists.
So then Bock Emser does vain murderous screaming about me throughout the whole book for the sake of his end-Christian main at Rome, and has great honor for it; it is due to me to also scream about him once for the sake of my main in heaven, blasphemed and scorned by him. He may pretend that the Holy Spirit and Christ have not taught us enough, that the Scriptures are too little, and that God's word must have additions. And whoever does not have more than God's word, scripture and doctrine, let him be poisonous, heretic, apostate, the very worst on earth; and all who walk in such words of God and doctrines, and do not also hold human doctrine, let them be condemned, cursed, burned.
And so, Christ and the Holy Spirit must also be guilty and partially deserving, yes, especially deserving of such blasphemy, because by their words and teaching they have made and daily maintain such blasphemous, cursed, damned people. Behold, is not this the very greatest blasphemer ever heard? Who ever heard more blasphemous, more poisonous, more hellish, more heretical, more usurious, more nonsensical words, than here Emser from his poisonous
1) Arstultus - arch-fool, for Aristotle.
And what is the reason why such a poor creature spits and sprays so horribly at its God Creator that it is even horrible to hear about it. And such a poor creature spits and sprays at its God Creator in such a terrible, horrible way that it is also horrible to hear and speak of it.
If he could indicate in which part the Holy Spirit had taught too little, and in which the Scriptures needed man's addition, there would be some apparent cause. But now he himself confesses that the Scripture is on our part, and does not know how to reprove us in the Scripture; and freely says that his human work is not in the Scripture; and yet pours out such blasphemy on us, that is, on the Scripture, known from himself: I would not have thought that any devil in hell itself could have done such a thing. I only want to say this so that you, dear Bock, see that if loud cries of murder and angry amplification 2) could strengthen your cause, I could strengthen my cause much better with it. But my cause does not need it, it is firmly enough founded in Scripture. Yours does, because it is built on human dreams and scrinium pectoris 3).
From all this, I hope, everyone now sees what Einser's spear and sword are, and what he has done with the famous swordsman; I will correct it for him when he returns; I do not swear by my priesthood nor holiness; otherwise I will be sure enough for him. I want to conclude here from the three main pieces of his booklet, the sword, spear and sword, which are so 4) overcome, the whole book built on it is overcome. And that I also declare my opinion, because Emser gives in to me, that I have not acted against the articles of faith, nor against the Scriptures, so that he is ever my unwilling, unfavorable and so much the stronger witness that I am a right pious Christian, and without cause lied to by him as a heretic; so I want to dissuade him of one more thing, that he does not provide himself, nor does he like to let go.
Namely, he should give us freedom from the laws of men, that is, that it is up to us to follow them or not to follow them.
2) i.e. to make extensive, to raise high.
3) This is the shrine in the heart of the pope.
4) Meaning: since these have been overcome, that is, etc.
1330 Erl. S7, LM-S8S. IX. Luther's dispute with Emser. W. xvni, issi-iezz. 1331
Or if we ever have to live under them, as I have also taught and still teach, yet grant and allow that we may say they are neither necessary nor useful to us, nor that we are obliged to keep them, and that the pope is a tyrant, has no right to make them, and does wrong in them; and that we do not owe them to the pope out of duty or right, but keep them out of good free will to serve him. Just as Christ, Matt. 5:25, says that we are to be "willing to the adversary"; nor are those to be called heretics who do not keep them. All this shall be left to us, and we will prove it so.
If we have the Scriptures, and the Scriptures have us, as Emser confesses, in which God is pleased without all doubt, in which we are praised more than too much as pious Christians, and our blasphemers must give the lie to themselves: what more do you people want from us? Whom do ye heresy, if ye heresy us, who [, as] ye yourselves confess, are agreed with the Scriptures? Can you condemn those whom God justifies? Do not the truth strike you through your Caiphassic and Baalams mouths? Are you not further set in office than to lead us to God and God's word and to feed us with God's word? As Christ says, Matth. 4, 4: "Man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of God." What then do you pretend to drive us on, yea, to snatch from God to you, and to drive from his word to your doctrine and custom? is this shepherding or wolfing?
Therefore I say, let us go free, Emser, and yield, as your conscience urges you, that the pope is a tyrant, has no right to make laws, and that they are neither necessary nor useful to us; That the conscience may remain with the pope and you papists, who are thieves, robbers, wolves, seducers, traitors, Judas with your laws; so we will gladly keep and bear them with all our hearts, as Christ did his cords and cross, where Judas brought him, the pope's forefather. So they are without harm to us, so we suffer them no differently than who would take our coat, skirt, money and goods, life.
So we also suffer that you burden our Christian freedom with your foolish, useless laws; nevertheless remain
our conscience beside it free and unburdened by you. But if you want to insist (as you do) that you have a right to do so, and we should accept and approve it as a right; just as if a murderer forced me to say that he had a right to my life and property: Here, Emser, we want to cry out as long as we have breath, and say no. For here you want to catch our conscience, that we should be afraid as of the right, which is nevertheless wrong, and thus catch and strangle with innumerable ropes; as you do with the wrongful ban and force the people to follow your knavery.
We want to suffer injustice from you, but we will never tolerate it. So now tell your idol, the pope, that he may make laws over me as many as he likes, and I will keep them all. But also tell him that he has no right to do so and that I do not owe it to him. But I will gladly suffer injustice from him, as Christ teaches, Matth. 5, 40; so I will no longer act against the pope, and all things shall be evil. 1) What more do you want from me?
Have I not taught thus in Galatians 2) and all the little books? But that the pope drives all the world as if he had the right to do so, he has deceived countless souls and led them into hell. Therefore he is called Homo peccati et filius perditionis, 2 Thess. 2, 3, that he has captured the consciences and forced them to approve his injustice, and thus makes the world full of sin and destruction. For whoever believes that the pope has the right and authority to make laws, thinks as soon as he does so that he must consider it necessary and good, and suffers it as not an authority and injustice. So he does it unwillingly and would like to be rid of the law, and yet he cannot; so he suffocates in sins. For whoever does a thing unwillingly, which he must do, or thinks he must do, sins in his heart. And so all the commandments of the pope (of which there are innumerable) are vain chokers of the souls, so that he does no more than cause sin and destruction in all the world and thus disturbs all of Christendom; as Daniel proclaimed, Cap. 9, 27; that Christ has made him,
1) I.e.: Everything should be even. - All thing == quite.
2) I.e. in the first declaration of Galatians, from the year 1519.
Matth. 24,15., therefore Adominationem calls his Greuels. Of course, little or no one escapes him, because those who die in the cradle.
Do you understand me now, Emser? I do not desire to be free from the laws and teachings of men; I only desire to be free from conscience, and that all Christians bless themselves with all crosses before the faith that believes that the pope is right in his rule. For this faith wipes out Christ's faith and washes away sin and corruption into all the world. It follows, then, how pious and honorable the pope and you papists are, who do no more than to practice such superstition, deceive the world, and destroy Christian faith, leading all souls to the devil; if you should preach only Christ's faith and freedom from the laws of men, that you remain Ministri Spiritus et non Literae [ministers of the spirit and not of the letter], 2 Cor. 3, 6.
Just as I do not desire to be free from Emser's blasphemy, hatred and envy; but I desire to be free in conscience, that I may hold that Emser does me violence and wrong. For if I were to approve it as a right, my conscience would already be caught and would not be released until Emser stopped hating. That would perhaps never happen. For because I should approve it and yet do not do it with will (as I cannot), I sin against my conscience without ceasing. So now all the world sins without ceasing and corrupts, who believes that the pope does right with his ruling and dominating and dominions, and yet no one does it with will; for the pontificate hates everyone, without who wants to enjoy it, so that it is called proprie [actually] abominatio [abomination]. Thus the pope, with his false conscience and superstition, has ensnared all the world, making it sin without thanksgiving, without ceasing, and ruining it. Woe to you, you abominable abomination! Come, Lord Jesus Christ, and deliver us from the end of Christ, push his chair into the abyss of hell, as he deserves, so that sin and destruction may cease, amen.
From the Papists Indelicacy.
That is enough for this time. Now, that we see further Emser's and all the papists' lies and mischief also in the fathers' writings and
Habits, since they build on. Emser and all papists say that St. Peter sat and was bishop at Rome for five and twenty years. And this gross, great lie has existed longer than a thousand years, that ever a long spear would have become of it, so habitually enough, to base the truth on Emser's dreams; for also St. Jerome is led into this error. So early the papists started to lie, and so from then on they inherited and multiplied the lies from one to the other, until vain lies have become of the pope. Now we want to make this lie of the five and twenty years of St. Peter in Rome so clear that also Emser must take hold.
St. Lucas, Cap. 3, 1-3, writes that John the Baptist began to preach in the fifteenth year of the emperor Tiberius; and although no one really knows how long it 1) lasted, let us leave it at common speech that Christ preached four and a half years, namely until the nineteenth or twentieth year of Tiberius, and in the same year was crucified, resurrected and gave the Holy Spirit to the apostles. Tiberius reigned in this way until the fourth and twentieth year. After him Caius 2) four years, after Claudius fourteen years, after Nero also fourteen years. So from the twentieth year of Tiberius to the last year of Nero there will be six and thirty years, in which St. Peter (as they say) is supposed to have been killed by Nero.
Now if St. Peter sat five and twenty years in Rome, beginning in the fourth year of Claudius, as they say, he was only eleven years in Jerusalem and Antioch after Christ's ascension. Item, they say, he sat at Antioch seven years, and thus only six years at Jerusalem. Here St. Paul comes right among the liars and lashes out, writing Gal. 1, 18. 19. 2, 1. 9. 11. that he first saw Peter at Jerusalem for three years after his conversion; which was at least the fourth year after our Lord's ascension: and after that he found Peter, James and John at Jerusalem for fourteen years; that is, too many years.
1) The sermon of John the Baptist.
2) D. i. C. Caligula..
sum eighteen years, which St. Paul alone gives to Peter in Jerusalem. Who knows how long he stayed there after that?
To the eighteen or perhaps twenty years add the seven years at Antioch and the five and twenty years at Rome, so St. Peter will be crucified in the six or seven and fortieth year after the Ascension of Christ by the Emperor Nero, who was dead ten years before, as in the six and thirtieth. That is, I mean, cast among the doves. This is how it is with those who build on human doctrine and custom and do not look at the Scriptures, picking up the Fathers' Scriptures as they find them. How now, Emser? Who then would have a good sword and spear, that he might illuminate this dark mist of Scripture, and make six years of the eighteen years which St. Paul gives to Peter at Jerusalem, so that seven years might endure at Antioch, and five and twenty years at Rome! Truly, the Scripture is a dark mist here.
About this they say that St. Peter came to Rome in the fourth year, some in the other year of Claudius, and thus give seven and twenty years to Peter in Rome and three years in Jerusalem. Also in this way St. Lucas, Apost. 18, 2. agrees with Paul, Gal. 1, 18. 19. and says: that Claudius expelled all Jews from Rome, among whom he names Aquila and Priscilla; how then could St. Peter have come to Rome under Claudius? In short, I have not read more unstable and uncertain histories than of St. Peter's being in Rome; that there are also many who say freely in public. St. Peter never came to Rome. This is what you papists do with your lies and inconstant writing. One says he was martyred with St. Paul for a day and a year, the other for two years, and everything that is written about it wavers.
Although I believe that St. Peter was in Rome, I still do not want to die on it as an article of faith. Nor do I know how to maintain it, nor to prove it; indeed, no one may prove it (to my mind). It is also not an article of faith, no one is a heretic because of it, whether he does not believe that St. Peter ever sat in Rome. However, it is also sacrilege.
to deny it before it is thoroughly refuted. The safest thing is to let it remain a delusion and doubt. For we are no longer obliged to believe without what God has commanded us to believe in the Scriptures, to which no one should add or subtract, as Moses, Deut. 12:32, teaches and Paul, Gal. 3:15, says: "No man's testament changes or increases;" how much more should no one change or increase God's testament!
But I fear that it was by the special counsel of God that St. Paul and not St. Peter's journey to Rome came into the Scriptures. For he had well foreseen how the papists would build their papacy on it. Therefore he set them in mud and sand before they began to build, and left no certain foundation. For where it cannot be proved with certainty by Scripture that St. Peter sat in Rome (which is not possible), the papacy already lies in the muck and is nothing at all. For as it is not necessary to believe that St. Peter was at Rome, since the Scriptures do not exist; so it is also not necessary to believe that the pope is the heir to his chair and pope. Now behold, whereon the pope sitteth; and what do they with their goings-on, that we may but find the more their false, impotent cause, and see [how they] run themselves off their horse with their impetuous 1) raving.
Therefore, I conclude here that it is not necessary to consider the Pope as the heir of St. Peter's chair, until they make it certain from the Scriptures that St. Peter sat in Rome. Now, papists, be wise and fresh! Seek spear, sword and sword and dispel this fog of Scripture.
But I think whether there was not a mistake with the five and twenty years of St. Peter in Rome, that someone may have said or written that St. Peter came to Rome only after the fifth and twentieth year, and that some have understood that he was five and twenty years in Rome. For if he had been eighteen years in Jerusalem, as St. Paul says, Gal. 1:18, 19, and seven in Antioch, as they say, then the five and twenty years are full here, and
1) I.e. impetuous.
would then have been eleven years in Rome, crucified by Nero in the last year, that is in the sixth and thirtieth year after the Lord's ascension. So it could also be a mistake that he came to Rome in the third or fourth year of Claudius; if it happened in the third or fourth year of Nero, and thus lived eleven years with Nero, until the last, the fourteenth year of Nero. It could not have happened differently, he came differently to Rome, which I let remain as it remains.
Of the conjugal priesthood.
Since I have advised, if a pious priest were infirmly burdened with wife and child and desired to marry them, he should follow me fresh and do the same. Then you scream murder, chaste goat, and say: "Now, let the raging devil follow you in my place; and you praise your unheard-of and unproven chastity highly, and your goat stinks in your nose like balm. I answer, "O holy, holy virgin of St. Ems, how has your chastity become so ironclad and so obdurate and merciless against poor sinners?
Nor have I advised your dear chastity to follow me, as you pervert my words and poison the people with them according to the custom of your Christian love and divine priesthood, but I have advised a poor parish priest, with little children, who otherwise would be pious and honest; all of which your holiness knows well that nothing concerns you. I have given nothing to canons, vicars, wicked priests who have whores with them, and emperors, nor have I taken anything from them; but you have firmly presumed and thought: Well, it must be a lie and a scolding on the monk, if I am to break it from an old fence. And you rage against me only with the laws of men; just as if you had fought that the doctrines of men should be valid with me, and you think that it is unnecessary to establish them first with writings.
Your lily-white chastity should not tell me what the doctrine of men puts into this, which I well knew, challenged for this, would need neither goat nor donkey instruction, but answer that St. Paul, 1 Tim.
4, 2. 3., not as a man but as God Himself speaks and clearly says: "Let it be the devil's doctrine to forbid marriage." Here an iron eater should bare his teeth 1) and bite a hole in my harness; so you flee from this saying as if your horns were burning, fall silent and disappear like a water bubble. Strike me also once with such a sword; I will hold thee without all shifting.
How often shall I shout at you, coarse unlearned papists, that you once lead Scripture! Scripture, scripture, scripture! do you not hear, you deaf goat and coarse ass? Hui, goat, be angry, and push me once! but do not go too far, lest you run off. Are you not ashamed, great teachers of the world, that you so often let yourselves be knocked about the Scriptures? so that you should defy the most beneficial and appear to me. You cannot deny that no teacher has ever come on earth who has forbidden marriage, meat, eggs, milk, butter, and the like, and then sold them again, except the pope alone, especially so far into all the world? There have been heretics who have rejected marriage, but there have been few of them, and no common law has ever come out of them. So you cannot punish nor deny St. Paul, 2) that such papal commandments are the devil's commandments, as his words clearly read, and you must let the pope be the devil's apostle and end-Christ here, and you cannot deny it. In spite of you!
So tell me, is it fair that Christian people, before the priests, should be obedient to the devil and follow his apostle, the pope? And whether the priesthood, hitherto driven or seduced by force or deceit, would [have] obeyed, whether they had not power to give leave to the devil and his apostle? Or must they knowingly, without need, without courage and will persist in the devil's laws? Where are you, Emser? Do you not hear? Do you sleep with Baal? [1 Kings 18:17] Or hast thou gone over the field? It is not asked here whether your chastity will follow me or not; I do not ask whether the devil will follow me in your place. For your sake and for the sake of all devils
1) blecken - to make look, to make see.
2) deny, deny in denial.
No one here cares about wanting and following. Want, want, follow and rave about it, until you have had enough. But here lies the Has, there look up with equal eyes, can you differently, whether such commandment is right or wrong? Knock the apostle over here, are you so wicked!
And that I speak according to you highly expert in grammar, logic, philosophy and rights, do not make me out of a propositio de inesse modalem de necesse [out of a sentence that states the "being", the determination of the way that it takes place "with necessity"], you sharp logician, not jus ex facto his right out of a fact], you highly learned licentiate of the holy burnt right, and not out of your own facere [doing a common debere must, thou green poet and grammarian, thou wouldst then run here but to the archstultus, and seek secundum quid simpliciter its particular, which is general instead of Hades, as thou doest in the priesthood, since thou callest sacerdotium simpliciter sPriesthood par excellence] the written, literal, external, mortal, yea, the void priesthood, and secundum quid [in a certain respect the some, spiritual, true, living priesthood. You know very well what secundum quid et simpliciter means, and you are as good a logician as you are a theologian. If I could not do logic and philosophy, you big asses should refrain from pretending to be logicians and philosophers, if you know as much about it as an ass knows about music, and if you already speak the "little words" like the nuns speak the psaltery and the parakeet the language; yet you know neither use nor application of them, sicut rusticus opibus suis arguitur, non ornatur [just as for the peasant his wealth is a punishment, not an adornment].
But I will give you some advice here, take your short sword, since you strangle the cuirassers with it, say: Let this saying be a dark mist, we may not understand it without the interpretation of the fathers, and persuade us with your high spirit that we may not know what is prohibere [forbidding], nubere [marrying], doctrinae [teaching], daemones [devils], abstinere [abstain], cibi [food], Deus [God], creare [to create], and
Make it that prohibere means to command and imkere means to remain without marriage, daemones means the church, Deus means pope, creare means to be obedient, as you have otherwise taken power from yourself to change and turn all things of your liking. Of all this you have a good example and teaching from Saint Aristotle, who also calls non ens [not existing] what the others call ens [existing]; again ens, what they call non ens; and has just invented actum et potentiam [reality and possibility], per 86 [in itself] and per accidens [incidentally], like you the spear and sword, scabbard and edge. Also your spiritual right assists you, which makes sin where otherwise there is none, and right where there is none; sicut patet in ceremoniis [as one clearly stands at the ceremonies. Therefore it is not bad for you, if you have to explain such philosophia and spiritual right in the dark scriptures.
So then, if the devil's apostle pope is publicly found in this prohibition, let your humble chastity listen to what will follow from it. First of all, all priesthood is guilty by their soul's blessedness to flee, maledict, resist the pope here as the devil himself, and to tear up the solemn vow made in the consecration, which is made to the devil and not to God; as your holy law itself says, in malis promissis non expedit servare fidem [if one has promised evil, it is not useful to keep it]. I do not advise all this, but St. Paul stands strong here and judges all this himself, since he says that such teaching is of the devil and not of God. Secondly, it follows that all bishops and priests who follow the pope in this are also messengers and helpers of the devil. And so it is clear that the papacy with its priesthood is the devil's kingdom and end-Christian regiment; and Emser is the devil's and end-Christian champion. For accepting and defending the devil's doctrine can never be well interpreted; who wants to refute me here? In spite of all you papists! Only look for Kürisser and strike with the edge, you wretched Emser.
But that you say that St. Paul's word goes against Faustus and Jovinianus, who have refuted Jerome and Augustine, respect
I, you have run in the carnival larva of the time. St. Jerome punishes Jovinianus for praising marriage; so you say that he forbade marriage. So well you have read Jerome and Histories. So Faustus was a Manichaean, whom Augustine does not challenge on account of marriage. You rude ass-head, shouldn't you be more careful to write in such matters? Some have been called Tatiani; but their thing is nothing against the pope's prohibition. And even if it were so, it is enough for me that the pope, like them, is also a heretic with them, who gathers almost all heresy into a basic soup, as the Romans did their pantheon in former times; of that another time.
How finely you also reject St. Ulrich's epistle, 1) although I do not build on it. I do not want to checkmate you with the teachings of men, but with the Scriptures. But if it had been for you, it would have had to apply, because Scotus, Gerson, Beda, and whoever else you want must apply. Isn't it a fine logic: St. Ulrich's epistle is not found at Augsburg, therefore it is not St. Ulrich's? Quintilian's book is not found in Rome, nor in the French country, therefore it is not Quintilian's. Emser's book is not found in Dresden, therefore it is not Emser's. Did Malvasier or Rastrum 2) teach you logic? And who told you that St. Ulrich's epistle was not found in Augsburg, but your logic, which ex individua infert universalem [which infers the general from the particular].
Methinks thou hast written this book to no other opinion than that thou thoughtest all the world to be vain Hieronymus Emser or Hieronymus Walther, and your like coarse woods; so even thou plumpest along without all thought and attention. Just as you write that in our time it is necessary cause to burn the heretics, because now the pressure easily multiplies books and errors; which did not happen before: and you do not have so much brain in your coarse head that you would think behind you, as Johan-
1) Cf. Mathesius, Luthers Leben, St. Louis edition, page 59.
2) Malvasia a sweet wine; Rastrum or Raster Leipzig beer.
nes Hus and Hieronymus zu Costnitz burned before printing was invented.
In the same way, you liken me to the apothecaries who write good titles on their boxes and have poison in them. So I also write the name of Jesus on my poisonous little books (although not I, but the printers do it through the book), which I do only on the first leaf. Where have you ever seen such apothecaries? Or must the apothecaries also become murderers and traitors for my sake? Your raging hatred does not let you make a word right. Ecclesiasticus has said: "The heart of fools is in their mouth, and the mouth of the wise is in their heart. [Sir. 21, 28. Therefore fools speak out what they can think of; but the wise mean themselves before. What good thing should you write, if you so industriously, thoughtlessly spit out what falls into your mouth, and always bash your own cheeks?
Therefore I still advise, as before, not to the chaste Emsians or miraculous goats, but to the poor bunch of fallen priests: Whoever cannot keep himself, enter into marriage and yet live without sin, he cannot live without unwillingness, regardless of the pope with his devil and devil's prohibitions, let not his unwilling, forced promise, made to the bishop in the devil's stead, be contested; it is not done out of heart and will. And if the pope had not done more misfortune than this prohibition, he would still be enough of an end-Christ that he would be called Homo peccati et filius perditionis (2 Thess. 2, 3], and abominatio (Dan. 9, 27). There are probably so many sins and corruptions from the one prohibition. And if you, Bock, would take yourself by the nose, you would also have to confess, it would not have brought you much holiness. Until 3) chaste, thank God; just see how long; you are not yet over the hill. Do not despise your poor fallen neighbors and do not eat, you great giant, all the defiled, sick little children.
One more thing I want to say, and with it an end: You and Murnar, with many others, almost lift up for me, 4) that I am of the ecclesiastical vices.
3) D. i. be.
4) I. e. makes a big fuss about it, puts a lot of burden on me.
Only stir up and keep silent about the aristocracy's and the worldly power's criminal vices. If you then see my so great infirmities, why do you not do it and fulfill my error? What do you mean and do to me that you do not want to do yourselves? Yes, why do you not punish the vices of the clergy? Shall I write all things in one book? and if I had done so, you should have found a cause and said: I would not have stayed on the track, would have called the nobility and scolded them for it; as you do that I taught mendicants to few, and blame me for being an unclean bird in my nest.
What could I write that your raging hatred would not blaspheme? if you blaspheme God's word and work and seek nothing but to blaspheme and lie. But I will answer you: I have punished the nobility and the world more than I have punished you clergy, namely in the book of good works, 1) Ten Commandments 2) and to the German nobility 3): I have never really touched upon the spiritual vices 4) other than unchastity, avarice, hatred, gluttony, courtliness, sloth, without in this one book to the] German nobility, since I have not generally denounced the clergy, but the avarice of the pope and the Roman court and a small part of its abominable nature. Dear fellows, the truth hurts you, therefore you seek cause against me; the sheep has made the wolf's water muddy.
I want to tell you further, I have not yet come to the point of attacking public vices of spiritual and secular status. My work is directed at the vices that you papists consider virtue, so that you have filled the world with glitter and superstition, as indulgences, mass, vigils, churches, clothes and, in short, all your human doctrines that you consider sacred. For the sake of the pure faith, I am struggling to strip you of your carnival larvae; I am still far from the customs and works. If we had the faith again of your diabolical laws and
1) Walch, St. Louis edition, vol. X, 1298.
2) Walch, old edition, vol. ill, 1692.
3) Walch, St. Louis Edition, Vol. X, 264.
4) That is, the vices of the clergy.
The people who were redeemed by the sects easily wanted to teach morals and punish vices.
And if the spiritual state would be pure in faith and faithful in God's word before, we would easily lead the nobility and worldly state where it should go. But now that we ourselves are not useful, what is the use of much punishing and barking there? It is a small thing for evil customs and works against false teachings and afterbelief, in which the spiritual class is drowned. That is why I did not write an elaborate booklet to the nobility, but only indicated rough manners, which they could certainly improve. But we clergymen need to teach the faith and the word of God against the laws of men and superstition, which is higher from works than heaven is from earth, as Isaiah, Cap. 55, 9, says. You clergymen are accustomed to have your things praised, honored, and money given for them; and where you are met with a little, you are afraid that heaven will fall upon you; you want the people punished without any mercy in all the books; you are to be called grace-juniors, suffering everything and always interpreting it for the best. This is what you call honoring the priesthood; if you do not, it is called desecrating the priesthood.
Here I will leave it with Emsern for this time. For what he gaffes about the mass, brotherhoods, raising saints, vows and other points is herewith sufficiently answered. Because his booklet helps me too well in four pieces.
The first, that he flees the Scriptures, as the devil flees the holy cross, and only intends to lead me out of the Scriptures; this he will not and cannot end, whether God wills.
The other is that he lies so unchristian, insolently, wantonly, imposing errors on me that he thinks up himself, so that he might find enough to write about for eternity; from this I realize that he was not serious about writing against my teachings, but wanted to atone for his lust with blasphemies and lies.
The third, he freely confesses that I do not act contrary to the articles of faith nor scripture; for which I thank him kindly. For I have never desired more, even from my best friends, even from God Himself, than such glory and praise as my deadliest enemy himself gives me.
The fourth, he confesses that his thing apart from the Scriptures hangs only in human doctrine and custom and wants to drag me into it. Now I have sought no more with all my writing, nor yet seek anything from the pope and all my enemies, for such confession that their thing would be known unfounded in Scripture. From this it is easy to notice how a wise man Bock Emser is, who writes against me and confesses and praises everything he disputes as being founded in Scripture (that is) in God's Word; and yet rages and rages against God's Word for God's sake; that he certainly does not need a sneeze root; but it would be necessary to lead him to St. Cyriacus with chains. But if he comes back, what is left now, I can still pay him well. It is enough now that I do not overwhelm the reader.
To the Murnar.
And that you, dear Murnar, do not think that your good opinion is despised by me. For I want to believe you for the first time before all who paint you differently. And although you are full of bitter and evil treacherous words, your friendly (as you write) admonition is well received by me. But mine is far too little to answer you all in particular. But since you are Emser's companion in that you base your thing on human doctrine and custom and do not answer me by writing, I will also have answered you on Emser; for I do not sense lies in you, as in Emser.
You are ever strange men of war to me, that you do not want to join me in the field, you shoot many blind shots in vain, your skin is so afraid of the Scriptures. I have written against your doctrine of men and your custom; so you go along, as if you had won that the doctrine of men and the custom of men is right; and you press me only for the consequence, and thereby you want to tear me away from the Scriptures. Help God, can I not bring you into the Scriptures?
What do you teach me with such great art, because even the rudest peasant or child, yes, even the natural fools could teach me? There is no natural fool so great, no devil so wicked, who does not know and confess that one should follow what is right. Listen
I admit a syllogism, you poor flat-earned papists, that I ever present it clearly to you: Istara wajorera oouooäo: Omno donura ost kaeienäum [This sentence I admit: All good things must be done] What is it necessary that you argue with me about it? Are you not wiser than that? But here you shall meet me, since I attack you, and fight against the minorow [the subordinate clause]: 0wai8 äootriva dominant et 60v8U6tuZo a mo impuZnatA 68t dona [All human doctrine and custom, which is fought by me, is good]. Here I lie in the field, dear fellows, the castle I storm. Here defend yourselves and be fresh. May you save yourselves there and lay me down, you must not care for the Conclusio [conclusion], will gladly follow from the heart and say: Ergo äootrina dominura 6t oon8U6tuäo L w6 iwpuZnatL 68t kaownäa ^Consequently, one must thun the human doctrine and habit, which I have fought against.
But now you do not protect the minorem [the subordinate clause] and only drive the majorow [the superordinate clause] and set Conclusion [the conclusion], you do just like the builders in Babylon, when they called stones and brought water. I strike you on the heads; so you bind the feet. I set the roof on fire, and you put out the fire in the cellar. How? do you want to make a carnival play out of the seriousness? Make me drink, and I will knock on the jug and make you pour. Dear brothers, drink from empty jugs and count money from empty pockets; I have not yet learned that art.
You also threaten to replicate many books and defy your art with a large stock, so that you want to deter me, and immediately place the victory on the long and much writing; whether you ever might not win with reason, but with the amount and length you could overwork me 1) because I am already well loaded, and you want to drive me idle and single hero working and laboring man. Why do you not take before you idle and unburdened fellows like yourself or a wicked woman who also likes to have the last word? But do you take me for a fool, my dear Murnar, that I should be with you or with anyone else on this account?
1) Thus the old printings. The Jena edition puts as a conjecture in the margin: übermögen.
who could talk the most and have the last word? Such fame would have been without need for you. It would be enough notice if you were to be weighed by your tongue, where the rash would fall. It is more likely that the Rhine will dry up than that you will be short of words.
But does that mean to advise the people and teach them rightly, to insist only on many words, to direct the matter to delay, to wander about on the plan, and not to think of meeting, to hold out for the poor people, and to open their mouths in vain?
Have you not read, Ubi plurima verba, ibi frequenter egestas [Where there are most words, there is often armuth? But I am careful, if you were to deal with writings, you would quickly lose the triplicating and much space would be left on a sheet of paper. You have not yet tried what art and work writing is, dear Murnar. You never write; you only speak your own mind, leave my writing unresolved; reserve for yourself, I don't know, how great an art; just as if I had nothing more to do than write one book after another with you alone, or if I don't do that, give it to you.
You have my little books and introduced scripture; take them before you, also lead scripture, leave the chattering wordsmith Thomas Murnar at home, refute my scripture with better scripture, show the reason for your teaching, go out to the light. Why dost thou provoke and defy so long? Only ride freshly on me and see that you meet, I will not lack yours, you must not hide your art from anyone. If it is right, it will not shun the light. Otherwise, your writing looks as if you want to get a fame and shout and do not seek me with faithful seriousness, as you pretend. If you can teach me otherwise with writings, you shall not doubt, I will follow you. Thou knowest well how all fathers have often erred; so custom and long usage are not sure what they are in the sight of God, and he requires his word of us, not man's doctrine nor custom. Therefore I will have scripture; scripture, Murnar! Murnar, scripture! or find another fighter. I have more to do than to wait for your scriptless chatter.
I don't want your mere rationes [rational reasons] either; they are too lazy and good for nothing. I will show you this with one that has dazzled you the very finest. Since I had called the Christian church a spiritual assembly, you mocked me as if I wanted to build a church like Plato wanted to build a city that was nowhere; and you let your coincidence please you as heartily as if you had almost hit it right. Say: Would this not be a fine city, if spiritual walls, spiritual towers, spiritual guns, spiritual horses and everything were spiritual? And is your final opinion that the Christian church should not exist without a physical city, space and goods.
Do I answer: Dear Murnar, shall I deny the Scripture for the sake of ration and set you above God? Why do you not answer my sayings? As: Non est respectus personarum apud Deum [With God there is no respect of person, Eph. 6, 9.]; Et regnum Dei intra vos est. Et regnum Dei non venit cum observatione. Nec dicent: Ecce hic aut illic est [The kingdom of God is within you. And the kingdom of God does not come with outward gestures. Nor will it be said, Behold, here or there it is, Luc. 17, 20. 21.]. And Christ Joh. 3, 6.: "That which is born of the Spirit is spirit." I mean ever, you call the Kingdom of God the Christian Church, or us, in which God lives and reigns? How then shall I follow your reason and deny Christ, who here clearly says: There is no place, space, nor outward way in the kingdom of God, and it is not here nor there; but a spirit in our inward being? But you say that it is here and there.
What do you say to St. Stephen, Apost. 7, 48: "The supreme God does not dwell in built cities"? Dear, let your reason see heave and make the non [not] an etiam [also] and say: God's house is also in built cities. And Is. 66, 1. which St. Stephen introduces, says: "Where is the room where I dwell? Where is the house that you make for me?" Dear Isaiah, don't you know? Murnar will tell you, I suppose. It is at Rome, or where the pope and Christians are. Nay, saith he, but my spirit dwelleth in a poor humble spirit,
1) D. i. Incursion.
who honors my word, Isa. 66, 2. How do you think, Murnar? I mean, you are now also riding along finely with your church on physical horses, cities and towers. Behold, thy best piece in thy booklet, how finely it meets with Scripture! Therefore let your reason sleep and show me a letter in the Scriptures, that in time space, city or building belong to the church, then I will demand no more and soon follow.
And that thou mayest see how nothing so pointedly put forward with reason may not be refuted with counter-reason: Is therefore the temporal space or place ecclesiastical, that Christians may not live on earth without temporal space; so would the wine, bread, yea, the belly alone, that is in it, be ecclesiastical also? Is therefore the slobber, snot and filth of the body nature or piece, that the body may not be without it? Your cowl would not be without lice; shall the lice therefore be monks' cowls? The Christian church may not be without torture, persecution and death, yes, also [not] without sin; shall therefore torture, death, persecution and sin be church and life?
You want to build the church half on temporal things, to mix bodily and spiritual, to unite sin and grace; so St. Paul says: Conversatio nostra est in coelis [Our walk is in heaven, Phil. 3, 20.], and Christianity only lives, that it temporally flees and leaves place, space, property, honor, body and everything that is here, and goes through to eternal life, not otherwise than as it goes through sin, torture, suffering and death. Do you see, my Murnar, what this is, theologizing with mere reason without Scripture? Do you think, if you replicate this, that I could not replicate it again? But where is the finite truth in the end?
So I decide that the Christian church is not attached to any place, person or time; and although the unlearned crowd, the pope with his cardinals, bishops, priests and monks, will not understand such things, nor let them be true; nevertheless stand firm with me Lord omnes [all], even the children on the gaff, with the whole crowd of Christendom in all the world, and come to me against the dyed and invented church of the
Pabst and his papists. But if you ask how this happens, I answer recently: All Christians in the world pray thus: "I believe in the Holy Spirit, a holy Christian church, communion of saints. If the article is true, it follows that the holy Christian church no one can see nor feel; neither may say, behold, here or there it is. For what one believes, one does not see or feel. As St. Paul, Ebr. 11, 1, teaches. Again, what one sees or feels, one does not believe.
Isn't that clear enough, dear Murnar and Emser? Let's see, what do you want to say here against? Are not the children and peasants here more learned than the pope, cardinals, bishops, priests and monks? Where are you Junkers, who presume to interpret the Scriptures, to explain the faith? And almost shout that the common man understands nothing in it? It turns out differently here that the pope and his bishops with their appendages are not able to do as much as the rude peasants and children.
Now hold them against each other, the holy church of Christ and the great church of the pope. The holy church of Christ thus speaks: I believe a holy Christian church; the great church of the pope thus speaks: I see a holy Christian church. The latter says: The church is neither here nor there; the latter says: The church is here and there. This one says: The church is not in any person; this one says: The church is in the pope. This one says: The church is not built on a temporal thing; this one says: The church is built on the pope.
What do you think, Murnar, are you not fine fellows? How finely do you interpret the Scriptures? As St. Peter said of you, 2 Petr. 2, 3: Et in avaritia fictis verbis vos cauponabuntur [For the sake of avarice, they will handle fictitious words around you]. Is it not so that the pope seeks nothing else with his papacy, but the goods and money of all the world, cares nothing at all for the gospel and faith? yet he and you with him make up, and pretend that you want to interpret Scripture and teach faith; if there is no unlearned people on earth, but the popes, cardinals, bishops, priests and monks; that it is a miracle where anyone is found learned among them.
From this blind sacrilege it has come about that in no place in the world are there so many sects, schisms and errors as in the papist church. For the papacy, because it builds the church on one place and person, has become the head and origin of all sects that have followed it and disturbed the Christian life 1) in food and drink, in clothes and shoes, in plates and hair, in place and space, in day and hour. For in these things goes the spirituality and holiness of the papist church, as said above; the order fasts one time, the other another time; the one does not eat meat, the one does not eat eggs; the one wears black, the one wears white; the one is a Carthusian, the one a Venetian, and so henceforth make innumerable sects and ways, besides which the faith and right Christian life go to ruin. All this is caused by the blindness that one wants to see the Christian church and not believe, and seeks a Christian pious life not in faith but in works, of which St. Paul writes much to the Colossians. But it is broken down, and the blindness has confirmed the regiment to the pope.
But that you should follow the saying, Matth. 16, 18...:
Do it Peter etc. [You are Peter 2c] with large letters and say: this is the text from which the Pabstacy has been proven so far, does not frighten me, dear Murnar; it has also not been necessary to indicate to me that the Pabstacy has been proven from the text so far. We do not ask now whether it is proven from the text, but whether it is right and well proven from it. Then you should use large letters, let the insurmountable Murnar see, and answer me correctly. For I have no stronger text against the Pabstacy in the whole of Scripture than this very saying, which you consider to be the one, strongest reason for the Pabstacy. If then I take it from you and overturn it so clearly that you may grasp it, I hope you will confess that I have won, and admit to me that I am overturning the groundless pabstry before your eyes and proclaiming all of you, together with the pope, to be false, lying trafficers in Scripture. Therefore listen to me, it has
1) bound to a place, as Walch, old ed., vol. XX, 14 and 65: "remains discussed in its places."
No papist has ever bitten open this little nut, nor shall any ever bite it open again.
Christ says Matth. 16, 18: "The infernal gates shall not be able to prevail against the rock and the church built on the rock"; is it not true, Murnar? Now you cannot deny that the infernal gates prevail daily over the papists, and that the papacy with the pope often does evil and errs; can you also deny this, Murnar? You ever see that those live the worst who hold the pope the hardest; so the infernal gates certainly rule over them: so it follows that the rock and the church, since Christ says that the infernal gates shall not rule over them, rhyme with the pope and his church, "as light with darkness and Christ with evil", 2 Cor. 6, 14. 15.
If you then want to establish the papacy with this sentence, then I urge you with all right that you indicate such a pope and papacy, since there are no sins in it, that the infernal gates have no power over it. When will you do that, Murnar? Hui, now build a bodily city of the church and ride along finely; but be careful that you do not fall on the plan. It is dangerous for you to ride here.
Because this sentence does not suffer a sinful pope and papacy, and no one can know which pope is without sin; in addition, several parts sin openly, and thus no certain person nor state can be indicated, over which the infernal gates do not prevail; I think it is clear enough that the holy Christian church cannot be shown bodily, but only believed; and will remain before Murnar and all papists a spiritual city, which in spirit is built on the rock, Christ.
And herewith, I hope, the papacy lies in the ashes, because the one basic saying contradicts it. And is the 2) Pabstthum building based on this saying, as if a mad man builds a straw hat on the fire. We still want to be blind and therefore deceive, make Petra Petrum and all sinful popes, where the infernal gates rule; that yet Christ does not suffer or must be punished lies.
2) Jen. Ed.: des.
What is the use of you, Murnar, and all the papists, that you impose many fathers in this saying? They have erred as men; so you want to take error for a reason and truth. But to me the main saying of Christ is more valid than all teachers and fathers, however holy and learned they may be. Christ's words are clear enough and need no gloss. Now do your diligence with all papists and direct my papacy again to this saying and make your word true; otherwise I will not answer you on any other thing. For because I have found thee false here in the main part, thou shalt not be worthy of faith until this lie be wiped out.
Herewith I want to have answered this time your scriptless gibberish, only that I do not despise you. But what other people think of your little book, I let you know from these following rhymes, which, sent to me from the Rhine, indicate how unnecessary it is to answer you. I am surprised that you chatterers and scribes are so bold to come on the scene, since you see so many sensible and reasonable judges watching. I myself would not have answered you as well as this rhymer:
A rhyme by Doet. Murnar.
Doctor Murner, as I report. But he did not sleep one night. Two new books were added.
For this he almost vomits himself up. Doctor Luther's writings, although he completely misses the mark; like a blind man, he fights far and wide, but does not hit the right target.
Beside the porridge around simply, but he does not want to grab. The fox he cruelly attacks and yet no way bites not. The writing he forces on his poem, On long custom his things richt, So that Widerpart satiated not.
Much new law he flicht einher, der doch der Luther achten nicht.
He wants to darken bright light, if it cannot be hidden. That's why I believe it will happen that Martin Luther does not answer him.
What do you think such people should think of you, Bock Emser, who present vain lies and the most unskilful monkey play, dreamed up from your own head? For although Murnar is at one with you, he has abstained from lies, which are your best deed in your booklet. Oh mend your ways, dear brothers, the Scriptures are coming to light, people's eyes are waking up; you will have to decorate your things differently, or the bright light will disgrace you. I warn you faithfully. God help us all to the right truth, amen.