72. king Henry VIII in England writing,*)

In it, against Luther's book of the Babylonian Captivity, he wanted to assert the seven sacraments.

Translated from the Latin by M. Joh. Frick.

Assertion of the Seven Sacraments against Martin Luther, published by the most invincible king in England and France and

Lord in Ireland, Henry, of that name the Eighth, Anno 1521.

To Our Most Holy Lord, Lord Leo the Tenth, Roman Pontiff, Henry, by the Grace of God King in England and France and Lord in Ireland, wishes eternal bliss.

Since we are accustomed to spend our young years partly in war and partly in various other occupations for the good of the common good, we do not doubt that you, most holy father, will be surprised that we are now taking upon ourselves the work of such a person, who has devoted his entire life to studies, and who wants to prevent a great heresy that has taken root. Your Holiness, however, will, I believe, cease to be surprised when he will consider the causes which have impelled us to write this laborious document (which we do not like to admit to be equal to). For we have had to perceive how all kinds of sects have arisen from the weeds scattered in the Lord's field, how heresies have grown up in the faith, and how such a terrible discord has spread throughout Christendom that no true and righteous Christian can any longer endure this great evil, which is spreading so far, but rather sees the utmost necessity before him to oppose it with all his might. Accordingly, no one should be surprised that we, too, who are not strong in strength, but in faithfulness and good will to such a godly, so useful and so

We have set ourselves the task of proving both our reverence for Your Holiness and our zeal in the service of Christ, and our obedience to the adorable God, trusting completely that although our scholarship is so poor that it cannot be considered anything at all, nevertheless, through His grace, He will work with us in such a way that what we have not been able to accomplish through our scholarship, He Himself will be able to do according to His great power, that it should not be considered anything at all, the Lord will work with us through His grace in such a way that what we have not been able to accomplish through our science, He Himself will accomplish according to His goodness and great power and will help our weakness in knowledge through His strength. And although we do not deny that there are many everywhere who could have taken on this task more capably and done more justice to it, we are not so inexperienced in the sciences, especially in the theological sciences, that we should be ashamed to try something in writing, however small it may be, in a common matter, according to our ability. For since we learned from experience, as soon as we got a little older, that religion has a strong influence on the administration of common things, we began to take no little care of their consideration, and in doing this we found great pleasure in it; although it is not unknown to us that we did not get very far in it. At least, in our opinion, we have gained as much as is necessary, with the help, or rather the impetus, of that which can equip even an unlearned person and make him capable, I mean godliness and the sensitive pain over the offended religion, to thoroughly expose the fraud of the Lutheran heresy. In such confidence, we have dared to

*This writing appeared first in Latin in London in 1521 under the title: ^äsertio sextsm sacrarnentorum aävorsus Älartiuum Imtüsruiu; then it was printed again many times, among others in Antwerp in 1522, then, without indication of the place, in 1523; in Leyden in 1561; in Paris in 1562; in Naples in 1728; in the collection of the writings of Johann Fischer, bishop of Rochester, Würzburg in 1597, and in Abrah. Bzovii annai. aä nun. 1521, thorn. XlX, r>. Hieronymus Emser translated them into German and published them in 1522 under the title: Schutz und Handhabung der sieben Sacramenten wider Martinum Luther, von dem unüberwindlichsten König in Engelland und Frankreich und Herr in Hibernia, Hrn.

and our thoughts to Your Holiness, so that they may submit to public judgment under His name, who holds the office of Christ's governor on earth. For we are of the opinion that, since this heresy, which has been going on for some time among Christians, has been torn from the hands of the people, as it were, by virtue of your emphatic and salutary pronouncement, whatever of it still lies in the hearts, which have been seduced either by trickery or by flattering promises, must also be rooted out and banished in a proper way, or with proper reasons. For since minds are of such a kind that they prefer to be led rather than to be dragged by force, mild means must also be used with them. Whether we will achieve anything with them or not, we leave to the judgment of Your Holiness, to whose opinion we also entrust everything that would be an oversight on our part to be improved.

To the readers.

Although I lack both eloquence and erudition, I am driven by faithfulness and godliness, so that I may not be accused of any ingratitude, to defend my mother, Christ's bride (the church); but oh that it could only be done with as great ability as will on my part! But if others were in a better position to carry out this work, I nevertheless considered it my duty to take care of the church as much as possible, even though I am not at all learned, and to oppose the poisonous arrows of the enemy rushing toward her. To do this, the time and the present condition require. For before someone attacked, it was not necessary to defend oneself. But now that an enemy has arisen who could not be more harmful, who, by inspiration of the devil, under the pretext of love, driven by anger and hatred, spits out a snake venom both against the church and against the Catholic faith, it is necessary that against a general enemy of the Christian faith all servants of Christ, whatever their age, sex, or rank, stand up, and those who lack strength at least show their guilt by a zealous desire. And now we must protect ourselves with double weapons, namely with heavenly and with earthly ones. With heavenly weapons, so that the one who, through an illusory love, both brings others to ruin and himself to ruin, may be won over by true love and win over others, and so that one may have the victory over the one who fights with an illusory doctrine through the true doctrine.

victory. But with earthly ones, so that if the enemy is of such obstinate wickedness that he does not respect a holy council and throws a loving punishment to the wind, he may be brought to obedience by the chastisement, so that he who does not want to do good may refrain from doing evil, and he who has done great harm by wickedness may benefit others by the example of the punishment executed on him. Has such a harmful evil ever infiltrated Christ's army? Has such a poisonous serpent ever crept in as he who wrote of the Babylonian captivity of the Church, who twisted the holy Scriptures according to his own mind against the sacraments of Christ, who scornfully traversed the customs described by the ancient Fathers of the Church? who does not respect the most holy men, the most ancient interpreters of the Holy Scriptures, who calls the Holy Roman See Babylon, who calls the highest priesthood a tyranny, who considers the salvific conclusions of the whole Church a captivity, and who changes the name of the most holy pope into Antichrist? O what an abominable pride, insult and division does not this one blow and push away! What an abominable infernal wolf is not he who endeavors to scatter the host of Christ! What a mighty member of Satan is he who seeks to tear Christians, as members of Christ, from their head! How corrupt is not the heart, how accursed the intention of him who seeks out again the buried divisions, adds new ones to the old ones, and brings to light again the heresies that should have remained in eternal darkness, as the hound of hell, and considers himself the one according to whose word, with disregard of the old ones, everything should be directed, we would rather say, the whole church should fall over a heap!

What we shall say of its wickedness I know not, which we consider greater than a tongue could utter or a pen describe. Therefore we admonish and ask all believers in Christ, and for the sake of the name of Christ, which we confess, that those who want to read Luther's writings (if he is otherwise the author of the "Babylonian Captivity") may read them with caution and care, so that, as Virgilius said that he reads gold out of the dung of Ennii, they also read good in the midst of evil, but not, if they find something that pleases them, let themselves be so taken in by it that they imbibe poison at the same time as honey. For it would be better to do without both than to swallow both. So that this does not happen, then

I wish that the author will one day change his mind, so that he will convert and live, and withdraw his books, which are full of malice, according to Augustine's example, to whose order he belongs, and recant his errors. If Luther refuses to do so, it will soon happen that if Christian princes join together and take care of their office, his errors and he himself, if he persists in error, will be consumed by fire. However, we have considered it good to show the readers some passages in the book of the Babylonian captivity in which the poison is mainly contained. From this it will be clear with what a wounded conscience he went to this work, who, by pretending to the common best, was up to nothing but pure evil.

The proof of what we have now said must not be carried far. For lest someone run up and down and be made doubtful, Luther betrays himself and his meaning soon in the beginning. For who should doubt where he is aiming his sights when he has read even the first line?

The indulgence is a knavery of the Roman sycophants.

(1) Just as every animal is recognized primarily by its face, or is distinguished from others; so it is clear from this first sentence what a festering and rotten heart, whose mouth is full of bitterness, passes over from such a leech. For what he formerly wrote about indulgences, most people saw as depriving the pope of his power and the faithful of their blessed hope and comfort, and as forcibly moving people's minds so that they would trust in the riches of their penance and pay no attention to the treasure of the church and the free grace of God. And yet, all that he wrote at that time was still interpreted for the best, because he only said most of it and did not prove it, sometimes also demanded to be taught, and promised to follow the one who would teach him better. But what the supposed saint, who ascribes everything to the spirit, which nevertheless shuns and hates falsehood, wrote in simplicity, can easily be recognized from the fact that as soon as he was reminded by someone in a salutary way, he immediately repays good with evil, scolds and reviles; from which it can be seen how far he had come in anger and nonsense. Before, he confessed that the indulgence still had at least this power, that

he frees not only from guilt but also from punishment, which either the church has awarded or the priest has imposed. Now, however, not through his erudition (as he speaks), but through his malice, he has lapsed into contradicting himself and rejecting indulgences altogether, saying that they are nothing but pure fraud; good for nothing but depriving people of money and faith in God. Everyone can see how maliciously he not only raves, but also how furiously. For if indulgences are of no use, but, as Luther says, are vain deceit, then not only Pope Leo the Tenth (whose holy and blameless life and blameless conduct from his youth onward are very well known throughout the world) must of necessity be a part of it, as Luther himself confesses in a letter to the pope), but also for many hundred years after each other all Roman popes were frauds, who (as Luther himself also states) used to grant indulgences, one for one year, the other for three years; some granted some quadragenas, others a certain part of the whole penance, as the third part or half; still others granted plenary indulgences for guilt and punishment. Thus, if Luther wrote the truth, they were all impostors. But with how much stronger reason is it assumed that this single brother is a sick sheep than that so many popes should have been faithless shepherds from long ago. For Luther shows quite clearly (as we have already said) what kind of man he is; how little love is to be found in him, since he is not afraid to blaspheme so much against such great, such holy popes. If God says to all in the third book of Moses: there shall be no blasphemer nor ear-blower among the people; what is to be thought of Luther, who scatters such an atrocious blasphemy, not against a single man, but against so many and so venerable rulers, and not only gossips about it in a single city, but trumpets it throughout the whole world? If in the fifth book of Moses he is called cursed who secretly strikes his neighbor, how much greater a curse is he guilty of who publicly rails against his superiors? If, finally, according to the evangelist, he who hates his brother is a murderer and lacks eternal life, is not he who hates his father a murderer of fathers and worthy of eternal death? If he goes so far as to claim that indulgences have no power on earth, I will probably enter into a dispute with him in vain about what he can do to help those in purgatory.

2 Moreover, what is the use of speaking of the means by which we are delivered from purgatory to one who denies the whole doctrine of purgatory? And therefore, because he cannot bear that the pope absolves someone from it, he takes the liberty that he does not want to leave anyone in this place. What is the use of arguing with him, since he argues with himself? What good will it do me to argue with him by means of evidence that he should admit what he has denied before, since he now denies exactly what he has already admitted before. Now, however much one may dispute about papal indulgences, one must stand firm and firm by the words of Christ, in which he entrusts the keys of the kingdom of heaven to Petro, when he said: "Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven," Matth. 16. Item: "Whose soever sins you forgive, they are forgiven them; and whose soever sins you retain, they are retained." Now since it is clear from these words that every priest has the power to absolve from mortal sins and to take away eternal punishment, to whom should it [not] seem strange that the chief priest has no right over temporal punishments? But someone might object: Luther will not accept that a priest binds or loosens anything, or that the pope has a greater power than another bishop. But what is it to me what he accepts or does not accept, who accepted most of what he now does not want to accept shortly before, and now alone confuses everything that the whole church believed for so many centuries? For I do not think of other things on which the new reprover does not speak well, so that if the popes who granted indulgences had sinned, the whole assembly of the faithful, who unanimously accepted them for so long, would not be free of sins. But I think that one should rather stick to their judgment and to the custom observed by the saints than to follow Luther alone, who nonsensically condemns the whole church, and not only calls its head a foolish name, but is also not afraid to make a cry that the papal name is an empty name, and that in fact the papal regime can be regarded as nothing else than the Babylonian empire and the tyranny of Nimrod, the mighty hunter. Therefore, he asks the readers and booksellers to burn everything he has written before about the papacy and to keep this single sentence:

The Pabstthum is the mighty hunt of the Roman bishop.

This is certainly not a foolish wish, according to which he wants all his previous writings to be burned with fire. For most of it is worth nothing better. However, this sentence deserves it even more, which he alone wants to have preserved, after everything else has been removed from the way, as such a truth, which alone is worthy of eternal remembrance. Who should not be astonished here again at its inconstancy, except to whom its wickedness is already known before? Before, he denied that the papal power came from God and admitted that it was from men. Now, however, he is not at one with himself and claims that it does not come from either of them, but that the pope has arrogated the power to himself on his own authority. For this reason, he long ago held that the Roman Pontiff had been given dominion over the Catholic Church only according to human will, for the sake of the common good. And he asserted this so strongly that he also showed great disgust at the division of the Bohemians, because they had declared obedience to the Roman See, and said that those who did not obey the pope were committing a mortal sin. By writing such things not so long ago, he is now falling into the very thing he cursed at that time. The same steadfastness can be inferred from the fact that, since he taught in a public sermon that banishment or exclusion from the congregation was a useful means and that one had to bear it willingly and patiently, he himself, after he had been banished soon thereafter, and rightly so, He himself, after he had been banished soon after, and rightly so, carried the sentence against him so impatiently that he broke out in a rage into unheard-of and disgusting invectives, vituperations and blasphemies, as if he wanted to indicate by his rage that those who are cast out of the bosom of the church, which is our mother, would immediately be seized by the Furies and plagued by the devils. But I ask how he, who saw this only a short time ago, has now learned so quickly that he saw nothing at that time. Has he got new eyes? Or does he see more sharply now that his usual pride has been joined by anger and hatred? Or does he see further through the excellent eyeglasses he uses?

4. I will not act so inequitably against the pope as to enter anxiously and carefully into an inquiry about his right, as when

Such a thing would still be doubtful. At present, it is already enough that his adversary has gone so far in his rage that he denies himself all faith and clearly indicates that he himself is not sure of his cause because of his malice and does not know what he is saying. For he cannot deny that the whole faithful church recognizes and reveres the Holy Roman See as the mother and as the head, which only either the remoteness of the place or all kinds of danger prevent from coming. However, if it is otherwise true what those who come here from India testify, even Indians, who are separated by so many countries, seas and wastelands, submit to the Roman pope. Therefore, if the pope received such a great and extensive power neither by divine command nor according to human will, but arrogated it to himself, Luther may tell us when he had invaded the possession of such a great dominion. The beginning of such an amazing power cannot have remained unknown, especially if it was made in the memory of men. If he says that it arose about one or two human ages ago, he may prove this to us from history. Otherwise, however, if the thing were so old that one did not know anything about its origin, he would recognize that, according to all laws, that whose right exceeds all men's memory in such a way that one cannot know what kind of beginning it had, must be considered to have had a rightful beginning; indeed, it is known that all peoples agree that it is forbidden by the laws to set in motion (or to cast doubt on) that which has stood immobile for a long time. Certainly, if someone looks up the books of history, he will find that already before times, soon after the world was reconciled (by Christ), mostly all churches in Christendom made themselves submissive to the Roman one. Yes, we will perceive that even Greece, although she herself attained a dominion, nevertheless, as far as the highest spiritual dignity is concerned, kept it with the Roman church, except at the time of a division that arose. How much the Roman See should be granted, however, is clearly indicated by St. Jerome, who, although he himself was not a Roman, openly confessed that it would be enough if the Roman pope proved his prestige; others might object to whatever they wanted. Since Luther now speaks so bluntly, completely contrary to his previous opinion, that the pope has no authority over the Catholic Church, not even according to human law, but that he has no authority over the Roman Catholic Church.

has arbitrarily arrogated to himself a dominion: so I wonder very much that he imagines his readers either so credulous, or so stupid, to believe that a priest, unarmed and surrounded with no attendants (such he must have been before he intruded himself to the power as Luther speaks), could have thought and imagined, without basing himself on a right and relying on a respectable title, to have such a dominion over so many bishops, I will not say how anyone could imagine that all peoples, cities, kingdoms, countries, should have been so profligate with their property, with their right and their freedom, that they should grant to a foreign priest, to whom they owe nothing, so much power over themselves as he would hardly dare to demand himself. But what lies in this? Luther may believe what he likes in this, but at least he is merely admitting that his mind is clouded, his foolish heart darkened, and that he is given to doing and speaking in a wrong way what is not proper. How true is not the saying of the apostle: "If I could prophesy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and have all faith, so that I might remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing," 1 Cor. 13. But how far Luther is from the same (love) can be seen not only because he is consumed with wrath himself, but even more because he wants to drag everyone with him to destruction by taking pains to make everyone disobey the pope, to whom he himself is connected by a threefold bond, namely as a Christian, as a priest and as a brother; but for this very reason God will also punish him threefold. He does not think that obedience is much better than sacrifice, nor does he consider, because in the fifth book of Moses it is written: "Where anyone would act presumptuously, that he would not obey the priest who stands there in the office of the Lord his God, or the judge, he shall die", Deut. 17, what severe punishment he deserves who does not obey the highest priest and highest judge on earth. For the little monk, both at that time, when he was summoned to appear before the pope, when he was paid the expenses and promised protection, nevertheless refused to come without safe conduct, and now, too, he is violently confusing the church and stirring up the whole body to rebel against the head, which to contradict is an astonishing wickedness, and to continue in wickedness is to be considered an idolatrous sin.

Therefore, since Luther, through his hatred, plunges himself into ruin and refuses to obey the divine law, as he who seeks to establish his own law, we Christians should also take care, lest (as the apostle says) through the transgression of one man we become sinners of many, according to Romans 5, but rather bear an abhorrence of his wickedness and sing to the Lord with the prophet the song: "I am an enemy to the wicked, but I love your law.

5 Whether these two pieces, that indulgences are to be completely abolished and that the supreme power is to be taken away from the pope, of which we have explained our opinion, are very ungodly, Luther only needs them as preludes to overthrow the sacraments so that he can go around in his whole book. He himself admits that this book was meant to be a prelude to another work, in which, I believe, he seriously set out to attack the entire faith with hostility. Although I am very surprised if he will publish something with such zeal that he can flourish from poison even more than this whole prelude is puffed up, in which he left only three of seven sacraments, and that only for a time, by indicating that he will also eradicate these at the earliest. For one of these three he picked up soon after in the very same book to show what he would present in the following.

(6) To this he seems to pave the way by saying that when he wants to speak with the Scripture, he does not set more than One Sacrament and Three Sacramental Signs. If someone examines with diligence how he acts these three sacraments, which he at present regards either as three, or as one among three different signs, he will realize that he has acted them in such a way that he leaves no one in doubt that he has in mind to completely eliminate all three sacraments in his time. So that you, reader, may get behind the deceitfulness of this serpent with easier effort, just pay close attention to all his traces; walk very slowly, but do not walk too safely in the midst of his thorns and thistles, loopholes and caves, so that he does not secretly pursue you and let a deadly poison drip into your heels. For if you [do not] 1) enter it, it will lie there inert and rot from its own poison.

Therefore, let us begin there,

1) The "not" is inserted by us to give a sense to this dark sentence. The sense is perhaps: If one leaves him alone, he will perish by his own poison.

where he began, namely, with the venerable Sacrament of the Body of Christ, in which he first of all changed the name and preferred to call it the Sacrament of Bread, thereby indicating that he could not suffer us to remember the name of the Sacrament of the Body of Christ; and if he could only have found a pretense under which he could have put an evil name, he would not have refrained from doing so. St. Ambrose departs very far from his meaning when he says: "Although one sees the form of the bread and wine on the altar, one should firmly believe that it is nothing other than the flesh and blood of Christ. From which words it is quite clear that Ambrose believes that no other essence remains mixed with the essence of the body of Christ, by saying that what appears to have the form of bread and wine is nothing other than the body and blood of Christ. If Ambrose had only said that it was flesh and blood, Luther would perhaps have said that Ambrose, by admitting that it was flesh and blood, did not deny that the bread and the wine were there at the same time, as Luther himself writes that the substance of the flesh unites with the substance of the bread and the essence of the blood unites with the essential wine. But since Ambrose says that there is nothing else than flesh and blood, he obviously contradicts Luther, who says: the bread is at the same time with the flesh, and the wine is at the same time with the blood. However, even if what Luther asserts were as true as it is false, that the bread remains united with the body of Christ, Luther did not need to exclude the name of the body of Christ from the sacrament, in which, according to his confession, the true body of Christ is present. For if the essence of the bread were present at the same time as the body of Christ, which he argues for, there is no reason why the lesser substance should take away the name of the nobler and higher one. It is true that the apostle himself, because he wished to be guided by the concept of the hearers, who were still simple and inexperienced, called the sacrament bread; but now that one has been so long established in this doctrine of faith, one should not change such a venerable name, which presents the essence of the sacrament to those who hear it called, into a name that draws hearts and minds away from the body of Christ and toward the bread. Luther would probably not have made this change if he had not had in mind to gradually change the people, of whom he could already foresee it, from the name of the sacrament to the name of Christ.

to bring the body of Christ to the worship of the bread, of which we will speak more soon.

8 Meanwhile, let us examine how deceitfully, under the pretense of love for the laity, he endeavored to incite them to hate the clergy. Then he decided to make the church's faith suspect, so that its reputation would fall, and in this way he paved the way to overthrow the most noble pieces of the Christian religion: so he started from such a point that he believed the mob would quickly fall in with him. He touched again the old sore, which had long ago sickened the Bohemians, that the laity did not partake of the Lord's Supper in either form. And since he first wrote about this matter in such a way that he only said that the pope would do well to draw a general conclusion that the laity received the sacrament under both forms, he left it alone after someone contradicted him as to who it was, We do not know who it was, he did not stop at what he said, but went so far in malice that he accused the entire clergy of impiety because they did not carry it out, and could not wait until the matter would be dealt with at a concilio. We do not want to talk about the first one here. However, although we do not understand the reasons why the Church does not conclude that both forms should be given to the laity, we do not doubt that it was done for good reasons, that it was not done before, and that such reasons exist even now, why the whole Sacrament is not distributed among them. Nor can we give our complete approval to the idea that the entire clergy should have been so foolish for so many centuries as to be guilty of an eternal punishment for the sake of a cause from which no temporal advantage accrued to it, since it is rather to be seen from this that it placed itself in no danger, rather, it can be seen from this that they did not put themselves in any danger, because God the Lord not only allowed this to happen, but also wrote that it should be so, and took them up into heaven and allowed them to be given great honor on earth among the people who worship Him. Among them was also, to say nothing of others, the highly learned and holy Thomas Aquinas, whom I remember here so much better, because Luther, according to his malice, can hear nothing of the holiness of this man; but blasphemes him, before whom all Christians show their reverence, with unwashed lips everywhere. Although there are many others who do not stand in the number of the saints, but who, one may either refer to

The people who see the doctrine or life are of such a nature that Luther cannot be compared with them. These are also not of the same opinion with Luther in this. Among them are Peter Lombard (magister sententiarum) and Nicolaus de Lyra, as well as many others whom Christians can trust more than Luther. For behold how fickle Luther is and how he contradicts himself. In one place he says that Christ did not allow all believers to drink of the Lord's Supper, but said, "Drink of it, all of you. Soon afterward, however, out of concern that the laity, whom he flatters out of hatred for the clergy, might take offense at this, he adds these words: "Not that those sin against Christ who enjoy only one form, because Christ prescribes nothing for us, but leaves it to our liberty, saying: As often as you do it, do it in remembrance of me; but those only provide it who refuse to give both forms to those who want to use their liberty in this. There you obviously see that he first said that there was a command, and here he claims that nothing is prescribed, but that it is in everyone's freedom. Now what need is there for us to contradict him, since he so often contradicts himself? And yet, when all is taken together, he does not entirely absolve the laity from sin when the matter is sharply examined, nor does he prove that the clergy, whom he so cruelly attacks, commit sin. For he places the whole sin in the fact that the priests deprived the laity, against their will, of the freedom to take the other form.

(9) Therefore, if anyone should ask him how he knows that this use has arisen against the will of the people, he will not be able to explain it, as we think. Why then does he condemn the whole clergy for depriving the laity of their right, against their will, since he can produce no proof that it was done against their will? Would it not have been much better to say that, since such a decree could not have been made without their will, the laity would have consented to it, according to the custom established by so many centuries? At least, considering how little the clergy can obtain from the laity, and how they cannot prevent even this, that they do not almost bury their dead under the altar themselves, we cannot well believe that the mob would allow that against their will, to their detriment in such an important matter, they should be deprived of the least of their rights; rather, we believe that this decree was made for considerable reasons with the good will of the laity. But

I am surprised that Luther is so displeased that the laity have been deprived of the other form, since he does not mind that the children are deprived of both forms, because he himself cannot deny that they received the Lord's Supper before. What custom, if it has been justly abolished, although Christ says, Drink ye all of it, and no one doubts that there were important causes for it, although now no one is aware of them: why should we not also imagine that the custom, according to which the laity formerly, and perhaps not for a very long time, were accustomed to take the Sacrament under both forms, has been abolished for just and lawful causes, although unknown to us? Moreover, if he examines this point carefully according to the account of the evangelists, and takes all liberty from the church in this, why does he not also wish that the Lord's Supper should always be partaken of during, or rather after, the evening meal? After all, it is no more proper to do something at this sacrament which you ought not to do than to omit something which ought to have been done by you. If, then, according to the custom of the whole church, it is wrong for the laity to be deprived of the form of wine, how may Luther mix wine with water? For I do not consider him so bold that he should consecrate wine without water; but that he mixes it with water he has learned neither from the first supper of the Lord, nor from the narrative of Paul, but only from the custom of the church; and if he keeps it with the same in one piece, why does he argue so pompously against it in another? Luther, however, may shout what he will about it; yet I consider it safer to believe that the Lord's Supper is rightly distributed among the laity only in one form, than that for so many centuries the whole clergy (as he says) should have been condemned on account of this single cause. For he calls all of them ungodly, and so ungodly that they have fallen into the sin of offended evangelical majesty. If one asks who are to be considered heretics and sectarians, he says, not the Bohemians, not the Greeks, because they are based on the gospel; but you Romans are heretics and godless sectarians, as you take the liberty of inventing something contrary to the clear letter of Scripture. If Luther accepts nothing but the clear letter of the Scriptures, why does he not also (as we have already said) want the Lord's Supper to be partaken of in the evening? for the Scriptures tell us that Christ kept it in the evening. How much more will

Luther believe that it was not by human invention but by God Himself that it was introduced into the Church that the laity do not take the Lord's Supper under both forms, from which also the ordinance was introduced that it should be received sober? For "it pleased the Holy Spirit," as St. Augustine says, "that the body of the Lord, which the apostles received at supper after other common foods, should be taken before other foods soberly in the church." It is therefore probable that the Holy Spirit, who governs the church of Christ, as he changed the sacrament of the Lord's Supper to such an extent that not those who had eaten supper, but sober persons, should receive it, so also arranged that the laity should no longer partake of both kinds of food, but only of one kind. For whoever has been able to change one, why should he not also be able to change the other? Luther thus betrays himself as to what he has in mind, because he is now so flattering the Bohemians, whose infidelity he has long since maligned. For none of those whom he calls papists and the pope's foxtails flatters the Roman leader as much as Luther flatters the common rabble in Bohemia. He does this not without reason. For he sees well that it will soon happen that the Germans, whom he has long deceived under the pretense of sheep simplicity, will finally cast out the recognized wolf. And that is why he first ingratiates himself with the Bohemians and makes friends with the unjust Mammon, so that, once he is driven out of his country, those whose errors he has crept into will accept him into their fatherland. But in order to make himself all the more popular with them for the sake of a strange deed, he undertakes to strike down all the prestige of church customs and, if he should succeed in this (which God wants to avert), to set everything in motion. For he takes on more than he will achieve. He takes care of the laymen in such a way that he thinks differently than he outwardly pretends: in one hand he offers them bread caressingly, in the other he carries a scorpion. For he first speaks widely of allowing the laity to take both forms, and who does not believe that he intends to increase the devotion of the laity to the Sacrament? But only notice where he aims afterwards. For he finally concludes the whole lecture in such a way that he demands that this too should be permitted, that the laity should no longer be compelled to go to communion on Easter, and that no time should be prescribed for them to receive the same, but that it should be

It is left to the freedom of each one, and also that no one should take it more than once in his whole life, and that on the day of death, which is uncertain, and on which, when it has come to that, very few want to take it. Thus he, who before asserted that the sacrament should be given to the laity under both forms, concedes on the other hand that it is well to take no form at all, and makes this a liberty that the laity may abstain from the whole sacrament. Therefore, as friendly as this serpent looks at you, it still tries to pierce you with its poisonous tail, and it is quite clear that this torments him even more, that the laity take one form, than that they must abstain from the other. For just as the old serpent, after having been cast out of heaven, begrudged man paradise; so Luther, after having been banished through his own fault, so that he now completely lacks the wholesome use of both forms, seeks to draw all others into this snare, so that they may gradually get into the habit of taking no form at all, but such as are now no longer bound to receive both forms.

(10) The further you get in his book, the more his malicious intention catches your eye. For this is called with him the other prison, that one wants to prevent people from believing that the true bread and the true wine are still there after the Consecration. In this Luther wants to persuade us, against the opinion that all of Christendom accepts and has held to be true for so many hundred years, that Christ's body and blood are present in the Lord's Supper in such a way that the essence of the true bread and the true wine remains; and I think that he will deny the essence of the body and blood one day, if it occurs to him, and improve his opinion in this way, as he has already done three times, namely, on the point of indulgences, of the authority of the pope, and of the communion of the laity. In the meantime, he pretends that he wrote this because he was moved to do so by pity for the prisons in which the Israelite people served Babylon. So he calls the whole church a Babylon: the faith of the church he calls a servitude, and the merciful man offers freedom to all and sundry who want to separate themselves from the church and let themselves be infected by this rotten and cut-off limb. But it is well worth the effort to investigate how he attracts people to this more than servile freedom.

11. its main and most noble reason is

This one, "one should not do violence to the words of God, neither by a man nor by an angel, but one should, as much as possible", as he speaks, "remain with the proper meaning and not fall without urgent need on an improper and vague one, so that one does not give the adversaries the opportunity to mock the whole Scripture. But now we do violence to the words of God when we say that what Christ himself calls bread means only the accidental qualities of bread, and what Christ calls wine means only the form of wine. Thus, true bread and true wine remain on the altar. So that one does not do violence to the words of Christ if one takes the mere form for the essence. For since the evangelists clearly write that Christ took bread and blessed it, and since the book of Acts, as well as Paul, call it bread afterwards, true bread and true wine must be understood as a true cup. For even they themselves do not say that the cup is changed". This, then, is Luther's great and (as he himself calls it) most noble reason, which I hope will be explained in such a way that everyone can immediately see that it contains nothing important. For first of all, the fact that the evangelists write clearly what he says proves nothing so clearly for Luther, even though they speak clearly; on the other hand, they remain silent about what would still prove something for him. "Do they not write" (he says), "Christ took the bread and blessed it?" What is it then? That he took bread and blessed it, we ourselves confess; but that he gave bread to the disciples after he had made his body of it, we constantly deny, and the evangelists write nothing of it. In order that the matter may be clearer and all evasions prevented, let us hear the evangelists themselves. Matthew, Cap. 26, tells it thus: "And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, saying, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it:

1) This is not how Luther continues here, but what this and the two following sentences contain is a reversal of what Luther says in the "Babylonian Captivity": "It is therefore an inconsistent and new edition of words that bread is taken for the external appearance (specie) or the accidental qualities of bread, and wine for the external appearance and the accidental qualities of wine." King Henry wants his readers to believe as if Luther denies the essential and true presence of the body and blood of Jesus Christ in Holy Communion.

This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins." Marci's words are thus, Cap. 14: "And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave it to them, saying, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, and they all drank of it. And he said unto them, This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many." At last Lucas, cap. 22, the words thus, "And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave to them, saying, This is my body which is given for you. This do in remembrance of me. The same also took the cup after supper, saying, This is the cup, the new testament in my blood, which is poured out for you."

(12) From all these words of the evangelists I see no place where the sacrament after blessing is called bread or wine, but only body and blood. They say that Christ took the bread in his hand, which we all admit; but after the apostles took it, it is no longer called bread, but the body. Luther, however, seeks to interpret the words of the evangelist according to his own opinion and to turn them in this way: Take, eat, this, that is, this bread (he says), which he took and broke, is my body. This is Luther's interpretation; but it is not Christ's words, or the understanding of his words. If he had given the bread, which he took, to his disciples just as he took it, and had not first changed it into his body, and in presenting it had said: Take and eat, then one would quite rightly say that he had presented to them what he had taken in his hand. For what he would then have presented to them would have been nothing else (but bread). But because he changed the bread into his flesh before he gave it to the apostles to eat, they did not receive the bread that he had taken, but his body into which he had changed the bread. Just as if someone, after taking seed, gave another the flower that had grown from it, he would not have given what he had taken, even though here the common order of nature had produced one thing from another; so much less did Christ give to the apostles what he had taken in his hand, after he himself had changed the bread he had taken into his flesh by an astonishing miraculous work: because Aaron took the rod in his hand and threw the rod out of his hand, therefore the essence of the rod remained with the serpent; or, again, the essence of the rod remained with the serpent.

Serpent with the taken back rod. If with the serpent the rod could not remain, how much less can the bread remain with the flesh of Christ, as such an incomparable substance? For what Luther cleverly, or rather washes, "he remains with his simple faith, since Christ did not say of the wine: this is my blood, but this is my blood", I wonder what came into the man's mind when he wrote this. For who does not see how little this would help him and how it would rather seem to benefit him if Christ had said: this is my body. At least Luther would have had the opportunity to refer the article of proof to the wine. Now, although the word vinum generis is neutrius, Christ does not say: hoc, this, but hic, this is my blood, and although the word panis generis is masculini, he does say: hoc, this is my body, not hic, so that both articles indicate that Christ offers neither bread nor wine, but his body and blood. For that Luther wants the pronoun hoc to refer to the body, not according to the presentation of Christ, but according to the occasion of the Latin and Greek language, and therefore refers us to the Hebrew, is this not something ridiculous? For if the Hebrew language has no genus neutrum, neither can it show so clearly to which of the two Christ drew the article as the Latin or Greek. For if in the Hebrew language the article were in the genere masculino, as if to say: hic est corpus meum; still the matter would remain doubtful, because this expression could be regarded as forced, according to the requirements of the language, which has no neutrum. But since the words panis and corpus are not the same deneris among the Latins, he who translated them from the Greek language would have connected the article with bread, if he had not found in the evangelist that the proving article went to the body. Moreover, since Luther admits that there is also a different genus in Greek, he could easily have seen that the evangelists, who wrote in Greek, would have placed an article that was appropriate to the word panis, if they had not, because they knew the meaning of their Lord, wanted to remind the Christians of the article that is appropriate to the word corpus, that Christ did not give the disciples bread, but his body. Therefore, Luther's explanation, according to his own opinion, teaches us that the words of Christ: "Take and eat, this is my body, that is, this bread, which is not mine,

but Christ himself, contrary to his own words, that what Christ handed them was not bread, as it appeared to them, but his body (if the evangelists relate Christ's words correctly), for otherwise he could have said, not hoc (which would have to be interpreted by the), but rather expressly: hic panis est corpus meum, this bread is my body, to teach the disciples that, as Luther now wants the church to believe, both Christ's body and bread were present in the Lord's Supper. But he spoke in this way so that he would clearly show that only the body is present, but not bread at the same time.

Because Luther so pompously claims what Christ also says about the cup, of which no one says that it is transformed, I am very surprised how the man is not at all ashamed of such appropriate foolishness. When Christ says, "This cup is the new testament in my blood," what does that do for Luther? What does it mean other than that what he gives to his disciples is his blood? Will Luther be able to tell us from these words of Christ that the essence of the wine remains because Christ speaks of the blood, or that the wine cannot be changed into the blood because the cup still remains? If Luther had rather chosen a prelude from another matter, in which he could have played with less danger. For since he acquits the Bohemians and Greeks of heresy in such a way that he cries out that all Romans are heretics, Luther rather reveals himself to be a heretic who not only denies the faith that the whole church professes, but also suggests much worse things to believe than either the Greeks or the Bohemians ever believed. We have written this only to the end, so that we may make clear from the words of Christ and the evangelists that one cannot prove what he boasts of doing from them, but that it is clear from them that there is no bread in the Lord's Supper. But that he objects that in the Acts of the Apostles the Lord's Supper is called bread, we wish he had put on a place. We find none which is not doubtful, and which does not seem to be much more about a common meal than about the sacramental. However, we readily admit that the apostle does not call it bread only once, and either in his speech he follows the custom of the Scriptures, which sometimes call something not what it really is, but what it was before, as when it says that the rod of Aaron means the rods of the sorcerers, which at that time were not rods, but the rods of the sorcerers.

It was enough for him to entertain a people who were still inexperienced in the faith with milk food and not to demand more of them at first than that the people should believe that the body of Christ was in the Lord's Supper and that he would then gradually feed them with stronger food when they had reached a manly age in Christ. This is also what happened in the Acts of the Apostles, where St. Peter, while addressing the people and inculcating them to believe in Christ, had misgivings about speaking so clearly about the divinity of Christ. Thus, they did not imprudently present hidden secrets that were doubtful to the people. But Christ did not hesitate to teach his apostles, whom he had so long established in his teaching, even at the first institution of the sacrament, that the substance of the bread and wine was no longer left, but that both the bread and the wine, of which only the form existed, had been changed into his body and blood. Which he taught so clearly that one must wonder how anyone could have come up afterwards and cast doubt on such a clear thing. For how could he have spoken more clearly that nothing of the bread remained, than when he said, This is my body? For he did not say, In this is my body, or, With what you see is my body, as if the body existed in the bread, or at the same time with the bread, but he says, This is my body; by which he evidently indicates (so that he may shut up those who bark about it) that the whole of what he presents to them is his body. Which, after he had presented it to the disciples, even if he had immediately given it the name of bread (which he did not do), no one, if he had at the same time reminded his hearers that what he called bread was nothing else than his body, into which the bread had been completely changed by him, could have doubted what Christ wanted to indicate by the name of bread. And so this paraphrase (for Luther also paraphrased the words) clearly shows that the word bread, in that the bread is changed into the body without doing the slightest violence to the word of God, means the form of the bread, but not the essence of it, unless Luther remains so precise in the actual understanding of the words that he believes that Christ was also in heaven a wheat or barley loaf, because he says of himself: I am the bread that came from heaven; or a barley loaf.

A vine filled with true natural grapes, because he says: I am a true vine, and my Father is a vinedresser; or the elect would receive the reward in heaven by a bodily pleasure, because Christ says: I will appoint for you the kingdom, as my Father has appointed for me, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom.

Luther takes a lot of trouble to overturn the arguments of the newer ones, so that they want to defend and prove the transformation, so that they take the reasons from Aristotelian philosophy. In this he seems to apply more diligence than the matter itself requires. For the church does not believe because they argue in this way, but because the church has believed this way from the beginning; and so that no one should waver, it has come to the conclusion that one must believe this way. Therefore they cite philosophical reasons in order to be able to show to some extent that nothing absurd follows from this belief; or that the transformation of the word (sic) into a new substance necessarily cancels the former substance and leaves nothing of it.

15. For Luther says that this doctrine of transformation arose only three hundred years ago, after the church had previously believed in Christ for over twelve hundred years, and that in the meantime the adventurous word "transformation" (as he calls it) had never been thought of: so, if he only wants to argue about it, hopefully no one will impose on him that he should believe the transformation, if he only believes that the bread is transformed into the body and the wine into the blood in such a way that nothing remains of the bread and wine but the form, which those who accept the transformation want to have with this single word. But since the church has once declared that this is true, why should Luther, even though the church has now finally settled the matter, nevertheless, if the ancients had not taught the opposite, and no one had ever thought of it before, not obey the present decree of the whole church, and think that it has finally been revealed to the church what had been hidden from it before? For as the Spirit blows where he wills, John 3, so he also blows when he wills.

Now this matter is not so new as Luther imagines, who, saying that the doctrine of transubstantiation arose only three hundred years ago, allows us at least four hundred years. For that is how many years have passed, in my opinion, since Hugo a Sancto Victore wrote a book about the sacraments from

in which you will find, if not the name of transubstantiation, then the matter and the doctrine. For thus his words are: Since it is therefore a single sacrament, three distinct things are presented to us therein: namely, a visible form, a true body, and the power of spiritual grace. Here you see that he sets the figure of bread, not a true bread; an essential body, not the figure of the body. And soon after he speaks even more clearly: "For what we see is the form of bread and wine, but what we believe under such a form is the true body and blood of Jesus Christ, which hung on the cross and flowed out of his side. Likewise, in another place, he speaks much more clearly: Through the sanctifying word, the true essence of the bread and wine is changed into the true body and blood of Christ, so that only the form of the bread and wine remains, and one substance passes into another. From this it is evident that this doctrine of transformation is somewhat older than Luther imagines. But in order that we may be stronger against him, let us show that what he claims to be a thing newly invented three hundred years ago was a doctrine of the holy fathers more than a thousand years ago.

For it is known that more than a thousand years ago the faithful were of the opinion that the whole substance of the bread and wine was truly changed into the body and blood of Christ. All the more we must be surprised that Luther is not ashamed to claim that this doctrine of transubstantiation arose only three hundred years ago. Who does not know that Eusebius, bishop of Emesa, 1) has been dead for more than six hundred years? Who, as it were, out of concern that people might appear who would undertake such a thing, proclaimed so many years ago: Let all doubt of unbelief be removed," he said, "because he who made all things is also a witness of the truth. Now the invisible priest has changed the visible creatures into the substance of his body and blood by a secret power and said: take and eat, this is my body; and again, take and drink, this is my blood. Does not this holy man clearly say that the substance of the bread and wine is transformed into the substance of the body and blood? What does St. Augustine want to have differently, if

1) He lived in the fourth century. The six hundred years are to be assumed from the time before the three hundred years that Luther sets.

158XIII Luther's Dispute with Henry VIII. W. xix, i88-isi. 159

he says: "But we worship in the visible form of bread and wine the invisible things, that is, body and blood? What can be said more clearly? For he does not say, in the bread and wine; but, in the form of the bread and wine. Luther denies that it is to be called bread, because it is only the form of bread, and thinks that Augustine would well have understood by the form of bread that which constituted the true essence of bread. Likewise Gregorius Nyssenus says: "Bread is bread before it is blessed, but after it is blessed it becomes the body of Christ through a mystery and is to be called so. What he says it is before blessing, he says it is no longer after blessing. Yes, also Theophilus explains the words: this is my body, so: what I give now, and what you take. The bread, however, is not only an image of the body of Christ, but is changed into the actual body of Christ; and soon after he says: "If we could see the body and the blood, we would not dare to take it. For this reason the Lord takes care of our weakness and preserves the form of the bread and the wine, but transforms the bread and the wine into the true body and the true blood. Here the holy and highly learned man steps on Luther's foot twice. First, he teaches that the article hoc must not be interpreted as Luther interprets it: hoc, that is, hic panis, this bread; but hoc, that is, what I now give and what you take. Then he clearly says that only the form of the bread and the wine would remain, and their substance would be changed into the body and the blood. And what else do those want who accept the transformation than what Theophilus said here, not only in the next three hundred years, when he had already been dead for several hundred years before the name of transubstantiation came up? What shall I cite St. Cyril, who not only says this, but speaks almost in this way? For he says: "We should not be afraid of the body and blood that are on the holy altar. God the Lord takes care of our weakness; brings a life force into the wafers and transforms them into the true actual body. Moreover, lest anyone should say that the ancient Fathers believed that in the Lord's Supper the body of Christ was thus, that the bread remained bread, this is opposed not only by what we have said (which is obviously opposed), but also by what we have quoted above from St. Ambrose, when he says: "Although it seems to be the form of the bread and the wine, yet after the blessing it is to be taken for nothing else than the body and the blood of Christ. There you see,

that the holy father says that not only is there body and blood, but also nothing else is there, even though it seems that bread and wine are still present. And he who says this did not say it only within the next three hundred years, from which Luther derives the origin of the doctrine of transubstantiation, but he wrote it more than a thousand years ago. Nor do I think that any of the ancient holy fathers would so easily have approved of Luther's similarity, taken from a red-hot iron. For no one has ever said that iron is transformed into fire in such a way that only the form of iron remains after the substance of it has been transformed into the substance of fire, which the ancients consistently believed about the bread and body of Christ. Or even if someone had said it, he understood it differently. Thus one swallow does not make a summer, and one must rather excuse him, whoever he may be, for not having had the insight in a matter not yet sufficiently investigated at that time, than to follow it against the faith of all others and of the whole church and against such an old doctrine, which he himself, whoever he may be, if he had only been pious, would undoubtedly have accepted where he should now live. For he who regards the holy body of Christ as it should be, will much rather give his approval that two substances should be united with each other, than that another body should remain mixed with the venerable body of Christ. For no substance is worthy to be mixed with the substance that created all substances.

18 Moreover, I think that this comparison of Luther, since he wants the bread to remain with the body, just as in the one person of Christ the divine nature remains with the human nature, would have been much less appropriate to the fathers of old. For as the highly learned and holy old fathers testify now and then that the bread is changed into the body; so none was so godless or so inexperienced that he would have believed that mankind would be changed into the Godhead, unless Luther invented a completely new person, that as the Godhead took on and accepted mankind, so also God and man would take on bread and wine. If he believes this, then, in our opinion, all who are not heretics must consider him a heretic. Therefore, to put an end to the point about transformation, it is clear from the words of Christ Himself and from the sayings of holy men that this teaching, which is now

the church is the true doctrine, since it is believed that the substance of the bread and wine does not remain in the Lord's Supper. From this, then, the conclusion is to be drawn that Luther's mutual doctrine is a completely false and heretical doctrine.

19 One has to wonder how he could promise the people any benefit from this teaching. Should someone (as he says himself) consider himself a heretic because he agrees with Luther? But now Luther himself admits that one can believe without danger in this matter what the whole church believes. On the other hand, the whole church considers the one who agrees with Luther to be a heretic. Accordingly, Luther must not entice anyone dear to him to his opinion, which condemns the whole church; rather, he should advise those against whom he has a true love to join those who, according to his own confession, are in no danger. So this way of Luther is slippery and wrong. He disputes with the general doctrine not only of the present time, but of all times, and does not free those who hold with him from captivity, but leads them out of the freedom of faith, that is (as Luther himself says), he drags them out of a secure place captive in error, and brings them to a precipitous, impassable, uncertain, doubtful and highly dangerous place, and whoever enters into this danger perishes in it.

20) After the man who is very free for evil has overcome these two prisons, which he invented, he now also (as he pretends) assaults the third prison and sets a liberty, by which he ties up the whole church, as 1) the brightest cloud of which this more than church-robbing man dares to disperse, to destroy the pillar of fire, to break the ark of the covenant, and to cancel the few propitiatory sacrifices, which are often offered for the sin of the people. For he deprives the mass, as much as he can, of all the benefit that flows from it to the people, saying that the mass is not a good work and that it is of no use to the people. Whether we should be more astonished at the man's godlessness, or at his foolish hope, or rather at his silly arrogance, we do not know. For although he himself says that so many bars have been set against him, he brings nothing with him to reject a single one, but does not act differently than if he wanted to break through the rocks with a reed. He sees well and admits himself that the sayings of the old fathers, the canon of the mass, and the custom of the whole church, which now is protected by

1) The word "than" seems to be too much.

The man who has been in use for so many centuries and who has been confirmed by the applause of so many peoples, stands in the way. What does he now want to oppose so many, so strong and so insurmountable battle formations as a defense? He swarmed in the streets, endeavored to spread discord and sedition, to incite the mob against the fathers, and in order to induce them to apostatize, he lied, according to his foolish craftiness, of which he could easily be convicted, that he had the general over the whole army, namely Christ, in his camp, and pretended that he was blowing the trumpet of the Gospel before him. Has a more foolish stratagem ever been invented than this one? For who ever lived who was either so godless or so stupid, who held that the church, as the spiritual body of Christ, was so torn as to believe that where the joints of the limbs are, this is torn away from the head, and that he who has the flesh, should have left the church for whose sake he came into the flesh, and should have departed from it, with which he had promised to remain until the end of the world, for so many hundreds of years, and should at last have gone over to Luther as a sworn enemy. But let us see what arts he needs to make what he said seem as if Christ stood for him. After long digressions he describes the Mass, then he makes a distinction between the Mass and the Sacrifice of the Mass, makes an examination of the Lord's Supper, and examines the words of Christ that he uses since he instituted the Sacrament of the Mass. After he had found the word "testament" in it as such a hidden thing, he began, as if the enemies had already been defeated, to make the victory twice as great, emphasizing in words his invention (of which he prides himself) and showing quite pompously, as a hitherto unheard secret, what a testament is. He cries out that it must be remembered and well understood that a will is a promise made by a dying man, according to which he bequeaths his property and appoints certain persons as heirs. Therefore, he says, the sacrament of the Mass is nothing else than Christ's testament; but this testament is nothing else than the promise of eternal inheritance, to which he gives us Christians, whom he has appointed as heirs, his body and blood, as a sign of the certain promise. He repeats this, emphasizes it and impresses it ten times, and wants it to be regarded as an immovable foundation on which he builds wood, hay and stubble. For if this foundation were laid (that the messt is Christ's testament),

He dares," he says, "to reverse all ungodliness that ungodly men have introduced into this sacrament, and to show clearly that to receive the Lord's Supper one must bring faith alone; but one should not worry so much about works, whatever they may be: The more errant the conscience, and the more it bites and gnaws because of sins, the holier one goes; on the other hand, the more cheerful, holy, and cleansed of sins one takes, the worse one goes. 1)

21. Moreover, he says, the mass is not a good work, the mass is not a sacrifice, the mass is only useful for the ministers of the mass, but it does not help the people, it serves neither the dead nor the living, it is an ungodly error if one reads the mass for sins, for a human concern, It is a vain and ungodly thing for the brotherhoods and annual memorial feasts of the deceased, one should abolish such maintenance of the clergy, monks, canons, brothers and religious, 2) as we call them. So much, yes, so indescribably much good, he boasts to have found, because he recognized that this holy sacrament is Christ's testament. Now he also goes after the teachers of scholastic theology. He is against all those who speak to the people: That even though some wrote as much as they could, and others spoke as much as they could and taught about the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, neither of them understood anything about the testament, but ungodly withheld from the people this incomparable good (of which nothing was known before), that the laity, neither living nor deceased, would never have any benefit from the Mass. For the sake of ignorance of this matter, he calls all present-day clergy and monks, with the bishops and all their superiors, idols and those who live in a very dangerous state. Therefore, we do not examine this secret of Luther's (of which he makes so much boast), which applies the description of a testament quite exactly to the sacrament, to what extent it is founded; however, I do not see why he so boastfully states this invention as a new invention, and indeed for his own. We do not know whom he hears preaching there; at least we have heard this simile acted out by the brethren not only once, but more often than we would have liked, when they did not present only what Luther now claims to be something new and only invented: Christ is the testator, he has in the

1) What shameful slanders!

2) i.e. religious.

They said that he had made a will in the Last Supper, that he had promised an inheritance, that he had called it the kingdom of heaven, that he had appointed the assembly of believers as heirs, that this sacrament was a sacred sign, which was used as a pledge and seal; Not only, we say, did they recite this, but they also explained the number of witnesses, the handwriting, and other customs belonging to a testament from the books of legal scholars, and applied everything regularly to the sacrament, and indeed they did this more skillfully and more thoroughly than Luther, because they drew to the testament not only what Christ did in the Lord's Supper, but also what he suffered on the cross. Only in this do they fail to meet Luther, in that they have not invented the wonderful and hitherto unheard-of advantages of the mass, by which both the clergy would lose everything good in the present life and the people the enjoyment of the life to come. For the laity would not grant the priests any temporal benefit because of the mass, if they were persuaded that they would not derive any spiritual good from it. But it is worth the effort to see from what kind of tree Luther reads such wholesome fruits. Thus, after he has often precisely inculcated that the sacrament of the Lord's Supper is a sign of the testament, but that the testament is nothing but a promise of inheritance, he thinks that it follows from this that the mass can be neither a good work nor a sacrifice, which, even if someone admits it to him, he must also admit to a whole register of evils, by which he confuses the whole church. But whoever will deny it to him, his great effort will accomplish nothing. For one must be almost ashamed to relate the arguments with which he proves his opinion. So utterly useless and bad are they in so high a matter. For he concludes thus, as his own words read: You have heard that the Mass is nothing but a divine promise or bequest of Christ, confirmed with the Sacrament of His Body and Blood. If this is true, then you see that the Mass can in no way be a work, nor can it be kept by anyone other than in faith alone; but faith is not a work, but the teacher and life of works.

It is marvelous that, since Luther was in such great birth pains, he gave birth to nothing but an empty wind, which, although he considers it so strong that it is capable of uprooting trees, seems to us, on the other hand, to be so weak that it cannot even move a reed. For if you pull off the blanket of words in which he wraps his absurd opinion, as if he were a monkey, you will see that he is a monkey.

into a purple robe: if you take away the clamor with which he, as if the matter were already clearly proven, so often rages and rages against the whole church and, before he has even entered into a dispute, jumps and leaps as a wild victor, you will find that nothing remains but a mere and wretched sophistry. For what does he say with such a rambling circumlocution of words but: the mass is a promise, therefore it cannot be called a work. Who should not pity the man when he is so ignorant that he will not see his folly? or who should not be unwilling when he is with himself, and yet considers all Christians so stupid that they cannot see such obvious folly? Of the testament and the promise and the whole description and application of the testament to the sacrament, we do not want to get into a fight with him. We do not want to trouble him as much as he might encounter others who would tear down a good part of his foundation and reproach him both that the New Testament is a promise of the evangelical law, just as the old one was a promise of the Mosaic law, and also claim that Luther did not handle this testament wisely enough. For he who makes the will does not have to express verbally and by name what he leaves to the heir whom he has appointed as sole heir, nor is the forgiveness of sins, of which Luther says that it is bequeathed hereditarily, so much as the kingdom of heaven, but rather the way to heaven. If someone wanted to push these and other things strongly, he could perhaps shake the construction of the Lutheran foundation with armor from another side. But we want to leave that to those who feel like it. We do not want to move the foundation that he claims to be immovable, but only to show him that the building he has placed on the foundation can easily collapse on its own.

(23) In order that this may be the more clearly understood, let us consider a little the origin of the matter, and examine the Mass according to its first pattern. In the Holy Supper, in which he instituted this sacrament, the Lord Christ made his body and blood out of bread and wine and gave them to the disciples to eat and drink, and then, after a few hours, he offered this same body and blood on the altar of the cross as a sacrifice to his Father for the sins of the people. After this was done, the testament was completed. In the Lord's Supper he, since he had been

When he was very close to death, he made his will known by a testament, as dying people are wont to do, what they should do in his memory after his death. When he instituted the sacrament, he said to his disciples when he offered them his body and blood: "Do this in remembrance of me. If someone carefully considers this, he will see that Christ, the eternal High Priest, instead of all the other sacrifices which were offered after the priesthood of the Mosaic Law, which lasted for a time (most of which were a model of this most holy sacrifice), instituted one sacrifice, the most high sacrifice, which is the fulfillment and, as it were, the completion of all sacrifices, which was both to be offered to God and to be given to the people to eat. And just as Christ was the priest, so the disciples represented the people, as they did not bless themselves, but took the blessed things from the hand of their priest. But the Lord immediately chose them as priests and commanded that they themselves should hold this sacrament in his memory. What is this but that they should consecrate it and not only take it among themselves, but also distribute it to the people and offer it to God? For if Luther objects here that the priest cannot sacrifice because Christ did not sacrifice in the Lord's Supper, he is remembering what he himself said, that a testament becomes firm through the death of the one who made it, and has no force beforehand, nor is it completed until the death of the one who made it. Accordingly, not only what Christ did beforehand in the Lord's Supper belongs to the testament, but also his sacrifice on the cross. For on the cross he completed the sacrifice which had begun in the Lord's Supper, and by this alone is the commemoration of the whole thing, namely, of the blessing in the Lord's Supper and of the sacrifice on the cross, solemnly celebrated and presented through the sacrament of the Mass, and in such a way that through it death is presented even better than the Lord's Supper. For the apostle, when he wrote to the Corinthians, "As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, do not add, 'You will have the Lord's Supper,' but, 'You will proclaim the death of the Lord.

Now let us come to the excellent reasons with which Luther proves that the mass is neither a good work nor a sacrifice; and although it would be better to deal first with the sacrifice, since he has raised the first question of the work, we will follow him. Thus, when he concludes: the Mass is a promise,

Therefore it is not a good work, because no promise is a work, so we say that the mass which the priest says is not really a promise any more than the blessing of Christ was, and at the same time we ask him whether Christ did not do a work at that time? If he denies this, it should truly surprise us that, since he who makes an image of wood does a work, Christ should have done no work at all. Yes, that it was a good work, which he did, no one will doubt. For if the woman who poured an ointment on his head did a good work, who can doubt that Christ did a good work, both in giving his body to men to eat and in offering it as a sacrifice to God? If no one but such a one can deny that Christ did a good work in a highly important matter, then neither can it be denied that in the mass the priest does a good work, since he does nothing else in the mass than what Christ did in the Lord's Supper and on the cross. For this is indicated by the words of Christ: "Do this in remembrance of me. But what did he intend in these words that they should present and do in the mass other than what he himself did in the Lord's Supper and on the cross? For in the Lord's Supper he instituted the sacrament and began in it that which he accomplished on the cross. For from this the occasion seems to have arisen that, according to the custom of the church, water was mixed with the wine in the cup, because water and blood flowed from the side of Christ who was dead on the cross. Since it cannot be denied that Christ did a good work both in the Lord's Supper and on the cross, and that the priest presents and does the same thing in the mass, how can it be invented that the mass is not a good work? Therefore, when Luther treats the matter in such a way that, because the communion of one layman does not help another layman, the mass of the priest is also of no use to the people, he himself is blind in wanting to blind others, because he does not see that the benefit comes from this, because a layman now only takes from the hand of the priest, as the apostles initially took from the hand of Christ; but the priest does what Christ did at that time. For he offers to God the very same body that Christ offered. Therefore, it is also clear what a bad argument this is, since he compares the mass with the sacrament of baptism or marriage, and concludes from this that because a layman cannot be baptized for another layman, or take a wife for another layman, he cannot be baptized for another layman.

If the priest does not say mass for someone else, he cannot say mass for anyone else. For he has completely removed matrimony from the sacraments and, in a hidden way, also baptism, because he says that it is no more than a single actual sacrament. Why, then, does he now compare baptism and matrimony with the sacrament of the Mass, if he does not consider them sacraments? Although he admits that both are sacraments (which they are in fact), he should not have compared either of them with the sacrament of the Mass in such a way that this sacrament, which is the body of Him who is the Lord of all sacraments, could not replace the other sacraments, which he himself also instituted, because of a peculiar privilege, since it is clear that just as in all other sacraments the priest serves by offering it to all, so also in this sacrament, when he offers in the mass, he serves and communicates something good to all. Otherwise, if Luther remains so strict that all sacraments are equal to one another, and that in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper the priest has no preference over the laity, why does he not also strongly urge that the priest always communicate from another's hand, and that he not be permitted to take the sacrament for himself, even if he can already administer it to others, just as he also cannot absolve himself, even if he already has the keys of repentance. For what he says about faith, which must be present in all, because each one's own faith, not the faith of the priest, is useful, just as Abraham (as he says) did not believe for all the other Jews, is true, but does not prove his proposition at all. For even Christ, who sacrificed himself on the cross, did not save the people without their own faith, lest anyone think that the mass of any priest does this, but which mass of any priest is useful for salvation to those whose own faith deserves that they may share in the immense good which the mass imparts to many. Although it can also sometimes serve to bring about the infusion of faith into an unbeliever, Christ's death and suffering brought about the grace that was to be imparted to the Gentiles, through which they were to come to faith in Christ by means of the preaching of the Word. But Luther himself realizes that it is easy to tear down what he has built up, if the mass can be a sacrifice offered to God. He promises to remove this bar, and in order that he may seem to do this all the more faithfully and vigorously, he first makes himself a few one-size-fits-all statements.

which are contrary to his opinion. Now (he speaks) also the other annoyance is to be put aside, which is much more important and apparent, that is, that the mass is now and then held for a sacrifice, which is offered to God. To this also belong the words of the Canon, when it says there: these gifts, these presents, these holy sacrifices, and further below: this sacrifice etc. Similarly, it is expressly required that the sacrifice be a pleasing sacrifice, like the sacrifice of Abel etc. Therefore Christ is called the sacrifice of the altar. To this are added the sayings of the holy fathers, so many examples, and the custom constantly observed in Christendom.

Here you see, reader, what kind of bars Luther himself perceives to be pushed in front of him. But now listen further to the strong force with which he tries to remove them. To all this, he says, one must constantly oppose the word and example of Christ. And what are the words of Christ, which remained unknown to so many holy fathers and the entire Christian church for so many centuries, and which Luther first invented as a new Ezra? He indicates this himself when he says: "If we do not receive that the Mass is a promise or a testament, as the words clearly read, then we lose the whole Gospel and all comfort. We have heard the words, now let us see the example. For he adds this example: Christ, he says, in the last supper, when he instituted this sacrament, also made a testament: he did not himself offer it to his Father or complete it as a good work for others, but, sitting at the table, presented this testament to all and gave it as a sign. These are the words of Christ, this is the example from which Luther now clearly recognizes that the mass is not a sacrifice. One must therefore be surprised that out of so many holy fathers, out of so many eyes that have read the same gospel in the church for so many hundreds of years, none has ever been so perceptive as to perceive such an obvious thing, yes, that all eyes are still so blind that they cannot even see what Luther alone boasts of seeing, even though he already points to it with his fingers.

Is not Luther rather mistaken and thinks that he sees something which he does not see, and presumes to point to it with his fingers which is nowhere to be found? For, my dear, what kind of proof is this, if he therefore, because the mass is a promise, wants to show that it is not a sacrifice, as if promise and sacrifice were in conflict with each other,

like cold and warmth. Which proof of Luther is so weak that it seems to be worthy of no answer. For although so many of the sacrifices of the Mosaic Law were only images of things to come, they were also promises themselves. For they promised that for which they were made; and that not only what they pictured should in time come to pass, but also, in the people then present, for whom sacrifices were solemnly made every year, deliverances, atonements, purges, and cleansings should take place. Which, since it is so clear that no one can be completely unaware of it, Luther's idea is very ridiculous, since he now gives proof that it cannot happen, of which not only he but also the people certainly know that it has happened many times. Now let us come to the example of Christ, which, in Luther's opinion, presses us hard, because Christ did not use the sacrament in the Lord's Supper instead of a sacrifice, and did not offer a sacrifice to His Father. From this he wants to prove that the Mass, which must be completely consistent with the example of Christ by which it is instituted, cannot be a sacrifice.

When Luther so sharply points out the example of the Lord's Supper that he does not permit the priests to do anything else that is not read as having been done by Christ in it, they must never take the sacrament themselves when they consecrate it. For in the Gospel, in which the Lord's Supper is described, it is not read that Christ himself took his own body. For the fact that some teachers pretend that he took it, and that the church also says the same thing, does not help Luther, since neither all the teachers nor the teaching of the whole church gives him the slightest applause, nor does he think that one must believe something (for so he writes in the sacrament of priestly ordination) that is not clearly founded in Scripture. Now, however, he will not find anything like this in Scripture, as we hold that Christ took His body in the Lord's Supper, from which it follows, as we have said, that even the priests who consecrate the Lord's Supper may not take it, if Luther binds us so strictly to the example of the Lord's Supper. If he therefore admits that the clergy must take the sacrament because the apostles took it, and claims that they are commanded to do what the apostles did at that time, not what Christ did, then the priests will never be allowed to consecrate in this way. For it was the Lord Christ who blessed, and not the apostles. From this we see,

that in the sacrament the ministers are to do not only what Christ did in the Lord's Supper, but also what he did afterwards on the cross. The apostles also taught one thing and another which Christ either never did, or at least of which we read nothing that he ever did; to this belong, for example, the gestures and signs which they use in consecrating, some of which, we believe, came from the apostles. Moreover, in the Canon of the Mass, some words are recounted as if Christ had spoken them, of which nothing is found anywhere in Scripture, and yet there is no doubt that he spoke them. For Christ spoke and did many things, which no evangelist can distinguish; but some of them, who were present and to whom it was still fresh in their memory, have been reproduced as well as in writing, and have come down to us from the time of the apostles. Luther himself does not doubt that Christ said in the Lord's Supper: Do this, as often as you do it, in remembrance of me. And that these were Christ's words, he assumes to be so well known that he therefore takes as proof that no one may be forced to take the sacrament, but that it is a matter left to each one's freedom. Only to this end are we bound that, as often as we do such things, we do them in remembrance of Christ. He does not read these words anywhere in the Evangelists in the Lord's Supper. For there it says nothing else than: Do this in remembrance of me. Where then does he read the words, "As often as you do it"? Isn't it true, in the mass? I mean yes, nowhere else. For in the apostle they are written differently. Therefore, whoever believes and uses the words because he finds them in the Canon, why should he not also accept with the same faith the words of this very Canon, in which the Mass is called a sacrifice? Accordingly, if he admits that the clergy rightly received in the mass what they consecrate, although no clear letter of Scripture (which Luther alone accepts) testifies that Christ did such a thing, neither in the Lord's Supper nor at any other time, Luther must not be surprised if the priest offers Christ to his Father, which Christ himself did on the cross, as clear Scripture testifies not only in one place. For that the cross also belongs to the testament made in the Lord's Supper, Luther also admits when he says that a testament understands the death of the founder under itself, as by which such a testament is completed only and alone. Moreover, the fact that water is mixed with wine in the sacrament does not seem to have any meaning.

The reason for this is not to be found in the Lord's Supper, but in the cross.

Luther must therefore stop opposing us with this lying argument, that because Christ did not sacrifice himself in the Lord's Supper, one should therefore believe that the priest does not sacrifice in the mass either, in which he not only presents what Christ did in the Lord's Supper, but also what he did on the cross, in which he completed what he began in the Lord's Supper. Luther's last argument, however, by which the ship is preserved as from a secure anchor, is the most lying of all. How, he says, can it be that the priest offers to God what he himself takes? It is contradictory, he says, that the mass is a sacrifice because we receive it. The same thing cannot be taken and offered at the same time, nor given and received by one at the same time. Luther warns us everywhere against philosophical reasons, and he helps himself in such an important matter with nothing but sophistries. For what kind of sacrifice was there in the Mosaic Law that those who offered it did not take? Did God himself eat what was offered to him? Do you think that I would eat the flesh of an ox or drink the blood of a goat? says the Lord Ps. 50. Moreover, if Christ was both the priest and the sacrifice, why did he not decree that the priest, who was to present the same sacrifice, would offer and take the sacrifice both ways? But so that it may not seem as if we were imitating Luther, who has nothing but what he himself invented, let us cite what St. Ambrose says about the Mass. O Lord God, he says, with what great contrition of heart, with what outpouring of tears, with what great reverence and trembling, with what chastity of body and purity of soul must one not keep this divine and heavenly secret, Where your flesh is truly taken and your blood truly drunk, where the lowest is united with the highest, the divine with the human, where the holy angels are also present, where you are the priest and the sacrifice, in a wonderful and inexpressible way: who can worthily keep this mystery, unless thou, Almighty God, dignify him who sacrifices? Here you see how the Most Holy Father calls the Mass a sacrifice and says that in it Christ is both the priest and the sacrifice, just as he was on the cross.

28 How much Luther thinks of his reputation, he may see for himself, but how much it is with the hei-

Gregory, when he wrote: "Who among the faithful can doubt that at the hour of the sacrifice, when the priest raises his voice, heaven is opened in this mystery of Christ, the English choirs are present, the lowest is united with the highest, the earthly with the heavenly, visible and invisible things become one? And elsewhere: This strange sacrifice redeems the souls from eternal death, and renews for us the death of the native. The words are just as clear when he says: "We may well consider what kind of sacrifice this is for us, which constantly imitates the suffering of the only begotten Son. There we see that not only St. Ambrose, but also St. Gregory calls the Mass a sacrifice, and admits that in it not only the last supper of Christ, as Luther wants, but also his suffering is represented. However, these are not the only ones who believe this to be the case. For Augustine confesses this not only in one place. He says of the mass: "This sacrifice is repeated daily, although Christ suffered only once. Because we fall daily, Christ is also sacrificed for us daily. Item: The Lord's Supper is a blessed sacrifice, by which we are blessed; it is an inscribed sacrifice, by which we are inscribed in heaven; it is a valid sacrifice, by which we are considered to enter into the heart and bowels of the Lord Christ. Since such learned, such holy men call the Mass a sacrifice, since they recognize that through it not only the Lord's Supper but also the passion of Christ is presented; since they confess that such great and immeasurable goods come from it; since the whole Church, which agrees with them, proclaims and praises these same goods in the Mass: So we are very surprised how Luther can so boldly cry out the opposite and say that the mass is no sacrifice, no sacrifice, is of no use to the people, and that he mocks the reputation of so many holy fathers, even of the whole church, with his empty poem, as if everything that is said and said about the sacrifice in the mass were to be regarded as a remnant of the Jewish customs, according to which the priest, as he says, had to lift up what was offered by the people. Luther's poem seemed so inconsistent to us, and so strange to Luther himself, that he doubted whether he wanted to defend the sayings of the holy fathers and the custom of the entire church in such a careless way, or rather deliberately make them contemptible. For

What shall we say, he says, to the Canon of the Mass and the sayings of the Fathers? I answer, he says, that if one does not know what to say, it is better to deny everything outright than to allow the mass to be a work or a sacrifice, so that we do not deny the word of Christ and destroy the faith at the same time as the mass. However, in order that we also save the fathers, we say that it is all still a remnant of Jewish usage. 1) Therefore, in order that the polite man, who would like to spare the honor of the holy fathers and the whole church, may say something, he has, as it were out of guilt, so that it may not have the appearance that they are speaking orally, deemed them worthy to hang his excellent poem about the remnant of Jewish usage in front of their shame, instead of a blanket, which, if someone were to take it away, he might do it to their detriment. For Luther is not afraid to say freely that if someone comes down hard on him, he would rather throw to the winds all that the holy fathers have taught and the church has ever had in use than admit that the mass is a good work or a sacrifice, that is, he would rather have that than admit that what is really true is true. For that he says that those deny the word of Christ and at the same time destroy faith with the mass, who maintain that the mass is a sacrifice, no one will believe him, I hope, before and before he proves that he has either read another gospel than that which the holy fathers have read, or that he has read the very same gospel more diligently or understood it better, or that he cares more for the faith than anyone among men has ever done. But now, I believe, he will not preach another gospel, and if he should preach another, it would not be heard, even if an angel came down from heaven with it. But that which he presents he has neither so carefully examined nor so shrewdly discerned as it was previously examined and discerned by those, none of whom, however, said that he had found in it that which he boasts of having found, that the Mass is not a good work, not a sacrifice, not a sacrifice. In the end, however, how much both of them have cared for the faith cannot be hidden from anyone who will only diligently consider what has been written about it on both sides.

1) The last words mentioned here are again a complete reversal of what Luther said in the "Babylonian Captivity" Col. 49 f.. The reader should receive the impression as if Luther denies the whole holy supper and declares it for a Jewish use.

(29) The holy men of old have well seen that, just as this is the highest of all the sacraments, which contains the Lord himself and the founder of the sacraments, so also of all the sacrifices this is the only one that has remained in the place where so many sacrifices were formerly made; and therefore, of all the works that can be done for the good of the people, this is far and away the most wholesome. For since the other sacraments benefit only individual persons, the Mass, on the other hand, benefits all and everyone, and since all intercessions that one sends to God on behalf of another can not only be prevented, but can also be done in vain and fruitlessly through the fault of men, God's merciful grace has established the Mass for the good of the faithful, in which Christ's own body should be offered as such a salvific sacrifice that no priest, no matter how godless he may be, can either rob or diminish its fruit for the people. Having perceived this, the holy fathers took great care to use all diligence that this sacrament of reconciliation might be both most faithfully kept and most highly reverenced, and among many other things they carefully taught that the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper should not remain, but be truly changed into the body and blood of Christ. They said that the Mass was a sacrifice in which Christ himself was offered for the sins of the Christian people. Furthermore, they kept, as much as humanly possible, this excellent mystery with great reverence and secret customs. During the Mass, the people had to be reverently present for their own salvation. Finally, so that the laity would not be weaned and gradually cease to take the sacrament, they decreed that everyone should receive the Lord's Supper at least once a year. With these and many other such efforts, the holy fathers have from time to time demonstrated their care for the faith and respect for this venerable sacrament. Therefore Luther must not boast (of which he does boast) that those who say that the Mass is a sacrifice, or that it benefits someone else besides the one who says it, destroy the word of Christ, the faith, and the Mass itself. But how can Luther have Christ's word, faith and the mass itself on his neck, so that they are not destroyed and fall! That would have been good, too, if he had thought about it. Initially he changes the name of the sacrament itself, and since it has been so many hundreds of years the Lord's Supper or the Sacrament of the Body of Christ

he wants it to be called bread, so that the name does not remind those who hear it called of the greatness of the thing. Luther also teaches that the bread and the wine, which the ancients knew would be changed into the body and blood of the Lord, remain whole, so that he may gradually take the glory from Christ and attach it to the bread.

30. And although he does not condemn the church, which honors and increases the mass with all kinds of customs and ceremonies, he nevertheless believes that the mass would be much more Christian if the chasubles, chants, gestures and all other splendid customs were abolished, so that it would come closer and be more similar to the very first mass, which Christ held in the Lord's Supper with the apostles; Yes, also for this reason, so that nothing remains of that which can capture the simple minds of the poor rabble and transform the worship of the visible God into the worship of the invisible God. In addition, he teaches and inculcates in all ways that the mass is not a good work, not a sacrifice, not a sacrifice, and that it does not benefit any of the people in the least. What is the purpose of this so holy and evangelical lection? Namely, so that all the people may leave the mass to the priest, who alone should benefit from it, as they see fit, but may themselves hold it in low esteem, and even deprive themselves of their duty to a cause from which they would have no advantage; finally, that the laity, when they communicate, should only bring with them the belief that they will be made partakers of the testament, their conscience may be as it wishes, indeed, the more erroneous and restless about the biting or tickling sins their conscience would be, the more they could be assured that they would be made partakers of the divine promise. Especially since this sacrament would be a remedy for sin, both past, present and future, which would not take place, namely, in the case of the one who has previously too anxiously purified himself from the disease of sin, so that he may examine himself according to Paul's rule and, as much as possible, go to the table of the Lord with a clear conscience, so that, if he cannot say: I am justified, he may at least say: I am not aware of anything. Accordingly, as soon as Luther had given instructions for this brief preparation for the use of the Lord's Supper, namely, that it consisted solely in faith in the promise, required no good works and an easy examination of conscience, he finally, in order that the perfect holiness that would be necessary for the use of the sacrament [be done enough,] opens his wish that the people be allowed to take the Lord's Supper as often and as much as possible.

at whatever time of the year it wishes, and do not bind it to a certain time. Is there anyone so blind as not to see the purpose of these useless things? Certainly they have no other purpose than that people should gradually be completely deprived of the enjoyment of the sacrament, who at first fell from daily communion to weekly, then postponed it still further, and finally would have stopped it altogether, had not the fathers, out of concern that such a thing might happen, decreed that everyone should attend communion three times a year, with the threat that he who did not comply would not be considered a Christian. However, even this could not be maintained for long. Therefore, in the end, one went so far that one could not have fallen further down, one would have almost fallen into hell, namely, that we should only communicate at least once a year. What a habit, if Luther (as is his wish) could abolish it, then the world, with the zeal of faith decreasing from day to day, would sooner or later get to where it had long since come (if it had not still been held back by this introduced habit of communicating annually), that with time almost no trace of using the Lord's Supper would remain with the laity, yes, perhaps not even with the clergy, if Luther could push it so far that the mass would lose not only its customs and ceremonies, but also the crowd, their trust in it and respect for it. So these are the beautiful assurances of Luther. This is the apparent freedom he promises to those who want to convert from the Catholic Church to him, namely, that they shall be made free from the use and belief of the sacrament. We can therefore dispense with the trouble of speaking more of this matter, because the thing itself is far too clear for it to be necessary to argue with anyone about it. However, it will not hurt to have recently pointed out the cunning plots of the devious serpent, and after we have finished with them (but hopefully everyone who is not completely blind will see them), it will not be necessary to warn everyone to beware of the foreseen misfortune. No one, we think, will be so foolish as to fall from the Church of God into the school of Satan and, leaving the service of Christ, to whom serving is just as much as ruling and reigning, enter into the freedom praised by Luther, where, under the mere appearance of freedom, he falls with knowledge and will into the aforementioned snares of the devil. Therefore, all

Christian believers intoning this verse with David: "I will not depart from your right hand, for you teach me."

It is therefore unnecessary for us to dwell at length on the other sacraments, the vast majority of which he rejects, because of the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, which he seemed to leave almost alone, he nevertheless acted, as we have shown, in such a way that no one may doubt that he intended to bring about its gradual decline, and because he praises no sacrament at all, without to the detriment of another sacrament. For he exalts baptism, but in such a way that he puts down penance, although he also speaks of baptism in such a way that it would have been better if he had touched nothing of it at all. For at first, in order that it might appear as if he were speaking sacredly of such a holy thing, he expansively shows that one must believe the divine promise, according to which the Lord promises blessedness to the faithful and baptized. He is unwilling and reproaches the church for not teaching Christians this faith, as if someone were so inexperienced in Christian doctrine that he had to be taught about it, and yet Luther presents this as something new and completely unheard of, to no small degree insulting all teachers. All this is nothing new with him, to babble about known things as if they were new. After describing this faith at length, he exalts the riches of this faith in such a way that it makes us poor in good works, without which, as St. James says, faith is completely dead. But now Luther emphasizes faith in such a way that it not only exempts us from good works, but also makes us bold to do all evil deeds. For thus he says: 1) You see how rich a Christian or a baptized person is, who, even if he wants to, cannot lose his salvation through sins, however great they may be, except through unbelief. For no sin can condemn him but unbelief. O the ungodly speech, which is also a teacher of all wickedness and is so hateful to godly ears that it is not necessary to rebuke it. Is not then adultery, capital murder, perjury, patricide condemnable? if only each one believes that he will be saved by the power of the promise in baptism? For this is evidently his opinion, and

1) Cf. "Of the Babylonian Captivity," Col. 57 f. Introduced in a twisted way to bring upon Luther the accusation that he makes people bold to do evil deeds and gives them the freedom to let good works stand in line.

This opinion of his does not improve the words that follow so much that they really make things worse. For he says: If faith comes and keeps the divine promise made to the baptized, everything else is destroyed in a moment by this faith, yes, by the truth of God, because he cannot deny himself if you only confess him and faithfully cling to him who promised it. What does he want to indicate with these words other than what he said before? Namely, if only there is no unbelief, all other vices would be swallowed up in a moment by faith alone, if only you confess Christ and faithfully adhere to his promise, that is, if you only firmly believe that you must be saved by faith, you may also have done what you want. And so that you do not doubt where he is aiming, he says: "Repentance and confession of sins, then also satisfaction and all other human inventions will suddenly leave you and make you quite miserable if you rely on them and throw divine truth to the wind. What truth does he mean? Namely, that no sins can condemn you but unbelief. Can Christian ears bear such noxious serpentine hissing, since he raises baptism for no other reason than to put down repentance and make baptismal grace a permissible liberty to sin? To which opinion is added this, that he does not like St. Jerome's saying that repentance is the other plank after shipwreck, and that he denies that the sin of faith is shipwreck, also speaking as if this word completely takes away all the power of faith. But who does not know, apart from Luther, that a sinner is not only not saved by faith alone in baptism, but also that baptism itself can bring him even greater condemnation? and rightly so, because he has offended God, from whom he received all baptismal grace; but to whom much is given by God, much is also demanded. Therefore, if he has lost faith through evil works, why can he not be said to have suffered shipwreck, having fallen from the grace of God into the power of Satan, from which, without repentance, he cannot be restored to such a state that baptism can be useful to him again? Has Jerome written wrongly? Is the opinion of the whole church so evil, which does not want to believe Luther, that the Christians without repentance alone

are safe and out of danger in the midst of their wickedness through faith? Moreover, he speaks of faith in the sacrament in such a way that he is not concerned about the form of the words, since the word by which the water is signified matters as much as the water itself, and if he thinks that one must be careful to see that this is pure and natural, one should not also be concerned about the examination and use of the true proper form of the words, which, as is known, is still observed by the church and was formerly in use among the ancients.

(32) Then he makes faith so great that it almost seems as if he wants to imply that faith alone is enough without the sacrament. For in this way he deprives the sacrament of grace and says that the sacrament itself is of no use, and denies that the sacraments communicate grace, or that they are powerful signs and means of grace, or that the sacraments of the evangelical law are distinguished by the power of their meaning. We do not wish to enter into a wide-ranging controversy about this; only it seems to us that, because everything was exemplary among the Jews, of which the fulfillment is in the Christian law, there is nothing inconsistent if someone believes that the sacraments of which the church makes use have such a great advantage over the Jewish sacraments as the new law has over the old, that is, as far as the body surpasses the shadow. In the meantime, we are neither the first nor the only one to have these thoughts, Hugo a Sancto Victore, whom everyone considers a learned and pious man, says: "We say that all sacraments are signs of the spiritual grace that is communicated through them. But it was necessary that after the passing of time the signs of spiritual grace should also become clearer and clearer, so that with the blessedness that has been wrought the knowledge of the truth might also increase. And soon after: Because circumcision can only take away the outward gross filth, but cannot cleanse from the inward defilements: so after circumcision came the water bath, which makes completely pure, so that perfect righteousness would be signified thereby. Hopefully, no one will deny that at least this teacher holds that the sacrament of baptism also cleanses inwardly and signifies perfect righteousness much more powerfully than circumcision did. In this, Luther points out two ways and refutes both, one, since most have held that there is a hidden spiritual power in the Word and water, which is in the soul of the one who receives the sacrament of baptism.

The other, because some have attributed no power to the sacraments at all, but have thought that grace is communicated by God alone, who, by virtue of the covenant, is present in the sacraments instituted by Him. But since both agree that the sacraments celebrate powerful signs of grace," Luther rejects both ways. We, who do not know which way of the two is more probable, do not dare to reject them both outright. For that way, to which the fewest now agree, does not seem to be just as inconsistent, that water itself has a secret power to purify the soul through the word. For if one believes that fire 1) works in the soul either to punish or to curb sins, what prevents that through the power of God, by which that happens, water can also enter to wash away the filth of souls? With which opinion also Augustini's words seem to agree when he says: "The water of baptism touches the body and washes away the heart. Likewise Beda, who says that Christ, by touching his pure flesh, put a regenerating power into the water. In addition, the words of the prophet Ezekiel seem to belong here: "I bathed you with water and washed you with your blood," Ezek. 16. These words, though spoken a long time before the institution of baptism, are nevertheless to be taken, according to the prophetic way of speaking, from the time to come, and therefore the prophet does not speak only of the washing of the body, which did not deserve to be prophesied about. So also no bath washes away the sins of the souls, except the sacrament of the baptism. Thus Ezekiel seems to speak of this in the person of God, and to proclaim beforehand that in the sacrament of baptism a cleansing would take place through the water bath. Which this prophet soon after indicates even more clearly by a word used in the future time and says: "I will sprinkle clean water over you,' that you may be cleansed from all your uncleanness", Ezek. 36.; does he not here promise cleansing by water? Though Zechariah seems to make the matter still clearer when he speaks, "In that day shall fresh waters flow out of Jerusalem, half toward the sea toward the east, and the other half toward the uttermost sea." Do not these words obviously represent to us the baptism? namely, the water that quilts from the church and flows from the inheritance?

1) Here seems to be talked about purgatory.

and real sin, which the prophet does not call dead water, but living water, so that, as we believe, it may indicate the infused power of spiritual life through the hidden sanctification of God under an earthly element. Although, as we have said, we do not presume to judge or to inquire in what way God the Lord infuses grace through the sacraments, since His ways are inscrutable, we believe at least this, that God has in a certain way made the water there not idle, where He says that through it so many and great things should take place, especially since both the water and the salt and other bodily things, without the pledge of faith, receive a spiritual power through the word of God, insofar as everything is not in vain and in vain when wax candles, fire, water, salt, bread, altar, garments, rings are either invoked or consecrated with the invocation of divine grace. If this has some power and God is also present apart from the sacrament, how much more credible is it that the water flowing from Christ's side infuses a spiritual life force into the bath of rebirth? Christ himself makes this statement: "Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God," John 3. To this, as the apostle says, we are called in baptism. Since Luther attributes much power to faith in such baptism, we are not opposed to him, if only he does not attribute so much power to faith that faith gives the word to an evil life and conduct, or even eliminates the sacraments, which it is supposed to give form to.

(33) But we think that the certain and undoubted faith which he requires of every one who wishes to receive the sacrament can only be desired rather than required. For there is no doubt that St. Peter also, addressing the people thus: "Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit," was ready to accept all the people for baptism, and yet he would not have demanded of all the perfect, certain, and undoubted faith of Luther, which no one could be sure of having demanded, but he promised from the sacrament itself the remission of sins, together with grace, to all who offered themselves and demanded it. For a certain and undoubted faith is a great thing, and one rarely attains it, nor does everyone attain it, not even once.

by those who imagine that they have attained it. At least we stand in the unfailing hope that God's goodness is present in the sacraments and pours out invisible grace through visible signs, and that through the zeal of the sacrament the lukewarmness of the faithful comes to rest, so that many attain beatitude by means of the sacraments who cannot promise themselves more from their faith than he could promise himself who said there: "I believe, dear Lord, help my unbelief. Wherein, if to any, except our adversary, we seem to attach too much to the sacrament, let him know that we accept and set nothing inimical to faith, as to which we take nothing away, but as we hold that faith alone without the sacrament is not enough for him who can be capable of the sacrament, so also the sacrament without faith is sufficient, but both must stand together, and both must cooperate in their combined power. But we consider it safer to concede something to the sacrament than to ascribe to faith as much as Luther ascribes to it, who leaves neither grace nor the power of the sign to the sacrament. Moreover, he makes faith nothing other than a protection and defense of a vicious life, as we have shown more extensively above. This, that he may confirm it still more, he also deprives the church, after he has withdrawn grace from the sacraments, of all vows and laws. Indeed, what God has said, "Vow and keep," does not hold him back from it. But as for the vows, we do not doubt, there will appear some of those called vovistas and votarios, who answer to this point according to their religious rules. But these have been almost entirely expelled from the Church. On the other hand, as far as the laws are concerned, we have to wonder how the man could have invented such strange things without shyness and shame, as if Christians could not sin, but the whole bunch of believers were so perfect that nothing could be decreed, neither for the service of God, nor to avoid disgrace and vice. But now such efforts and prudence abolish all authority and prestige of princes and prelates. For what shall a king or prelate do, if he cannot make laws and keep them above the given laws, but the mob without law, like a ship without rudder, sways to and fro? Where then is the apostle's saying: "Let every man be subject to the authorities"? Where does this come: "But if you do evil, fear the king; for he does not bear the sword.

for nothing"? Rom. 13.; where the: "Obey your superiors", or the king who has dominion? etc. Why, according to Paul, is the law good, 1 Tim. 1, and elsewhere, "The law is the bond of perfection"? Moreover, why does Augustine say: "The royal power, the judicial office, the executioner's hand, the weapons of a soldier, the discipline of a lord, the severity of a righteous father are not ordained in vain. All these things have their measures, their causes, their reasons, their benefits; but by being afraid of them, both the wicked are kept in check and the good live in peace among the wicked"? But we are not inclined to say more about kings, lest it seem as if we were speaking for ourselves. This we only ask: if neither men nor angels can prescribe laws for Christians, why does the apostle give so many laws about the election of bishops, widows, and that women should cover their heads? Why does he want that no believing woman should divorce her unbelieving husband, unless she is abandoned by him?

34 Why does he take it upon himself to say, "To others I say, not to the Lord"? 1 Cor. 7. Why did he exercise such great authority that he gave the incestuous man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh? Why did Peter inflict the same punishment on Ananias and Sapphira for keeping back some of their own money for themselves? If the apostles commanded many things to the Christian people without a special command from their Lord, why should those who are the successors of the apostles not be allowed to do the same for the good of the people? Ambrose, the bishop of Milan, a holy man who took no liberties, had no hesitation in issuing the order that in his monastery married couples should abstain from conjugal visits at the time of the forty-day fast, and Luther is not well disposed to speak of this, Luther does not like it when the Roman pope, as the successor of Peter and governor of Christ, to whom Christ, as the prince among the apostles, is believed to have entrusted the keys of the church, so that the others could either enter it or be expelled from it through him, issues a fast or prayer. For he gives the advice that according to the body one must obey, but according to the mind one must keep one's freedom; who is so blind that should not see these excuses? Why does this simple-minded and unholy man speak so contradictorily? Why does he command, as in the words of the apostle, one should not become the servant of men, one should not obey human laws?

and yet commands you to be subject to the unjust authority of the pope? Does the apostle then say: The kings have no right over you; you shall also bear an unjust rule? The lords have no right over you; you shall bear an unjust servitude? If Luther thinks one must not obey, why does he nevertheless say one must obey? But if he thinks one must obey, why does he himself not obey? Why does the deceitful man play with such deceptions? Why does he scold the pope, whom, as he says, must be obeyed? Why does he stir up trouble? Why does he stir up the mob against the one whose tyranny (as he calls it), according to his confession, must be endured? Truly for no other reason, as we think, than that he might ingratiate himself with the wicked, who wanted their wickedness to go unpunished, and that they might make him, who contends for their liberty, head over them, and destroy the church of Christ, so long founded on a strong rock, and establish a new church of the wicked and vicious, against which the prophet cries out: "I hate the assembly of the wicked, and sit not with the ungodly," with which our Church also agrees: "Rule me in thy truth, for thou art God my Savior, and to thee do I cleave all the day long."

Of repentance.

(35) What useless, vain, strange, ungodly, and contradictory things he prattles on about repentance, we are sorry to hear. First, according to his custom, he brings up as something new, which is known to all, that one must believe the promise of God, according to which he assured the penitent of the forgiveness of sins, and now he scolds the church for not teaching this faith. Dear one, who is it that exhorts one to repent of Judaism, that he should repent of what he has done, and yet doubts forgiveness? Who should teach that one must ask forgiveness, unless he also shows that remission of sins is promised to the penitent? What is more often extolled than the immeasurable grace of God, that He does not extend mercy to anyone who stains himself with wicked sins, but now repents? Has no one but Luther read this: "If the sinner repents, he shall live"? Ezek. 18 Has no one read that the adulteress was absolved, the prophet forgiven for the twofold sin of adultery and death, the thief granted paradise, and the prophet forgiven for the twofold sin of adultery and death?

at the time when he could not free himself from the sins he had previously committed by any means of satisfaction? Not to mention that one should not teach anything about this trust to obtain forgiveness (which Luther pretends to have ignored), but rather that those go too far in this piece who make people fall for this trust all too readily for themselves in such a way that they must be drawn more to the other side, since they have to regard the justice of God as a strict and immovable justice. For one will find ten times more who sin by trusting too much in this promise than by despairing of obtaining forgiveness. Luther may therefore always stop presenting this thing as new and admirable to us, which is only known to men. He should only stop complaining that it is no longer in use, since it is in use everywhere.

Of repentance.

36.1) After the promise and faith have been obscured and overthrown, he says, let us see what they have put in their place. Three parts, he says, they have given to repentance, repentance, confession, and satisfaction. Luther treats all three of these parts in such a way that he indicates clearly enough that he does not like any of them. For first of all, he is displeased with repentance and calls the wrath of God unbearable [namely, that] one allows a half-repentance (attritioni) and believes that God replaces with the sacrament, where the pain in and of itself is not severe enough, what man still lacks. But let us see how beautifully he defends what he says and what his mutual opinion is. He teaches that it is a great thing about a broken heart and that it is not so easy to overcome. He wants all to know for certain and believe without doubt, for the sake of the word of promise, that all their sins are forgiven them and that they are also absolved by God in heaven, having been absolved by the mouth of the priest on earth. In which piece his proof either reverts to what he himself rebukes, or it will come out much stranger. For either God promised to forgive only those sins through repentance who, as much as the burden of sins requires, are contrite beforehand, or He promised it also to those who are less contrite, or finally He forgives them even to those who are not contrite at all. If he has promised forgiveness to none other than (as much as) those who are not at all contrite.

1) Cf. "Of the Babyl. Captivity," Col. 82 f.

Luther (which he demands of everyone) cannot be certain and undoubted that he has been absolved. For how can he know that he will be made partaker of the promise who cannot know that his heart is sufficiently broken? For no one among all men knows what great repentance a mortal sin requires. Now if God promised forgiveness to those who (according to the nature of their sins) have a small repentance, He also promised it to those whom they call half repentant (attritos), and thus Luther himself agrees with those whom he rebukes. But if God has made the promise to those who have no repentance at all, He has made it so much more to the half-repentant, that is, those who repent of their sin to some extent. Therefore, if he only accepts repentance, that is, a sufficient pain, no one can be sure that he is absolved, and so Luther's certain and undoubted confidence of forgiveness is lost, or it is false and erroneous. If he says to someone whose otherwise lukewarm and casual repentance would not remit his sins that through the sacrament of penance all will be forgiven to him who only confesses that he is a sinner, who only asks for forgiveness and obtains it from the priest's mouth, what else does he say than what those whom he chides think? namely, those who say that half repentance becomes true repentance when the sacrament is added, because this replaces what man lacks. So either Luther's statement is wrong that man can be sure of forgiveness, or he must accept, whether he wants to or not, if not the name of attritionis, at least the thing that they designate with this word, which, if he admits it (but he will have to admit it if he does not want to depart from his opinion), it is untimely gossip that this man starts a dispute about the word after he has already admitted the thing. Again, with proud words, he goes on about the whole church, as if it teaches wrongly about repentance, teaching us that we should make a repentance out of the gathering and contemplation of sins, when we should first be taught (as he says) about the reason and causes of repentance, namely, of the immovable truth of the divine threat and promise, just as if one did not speak of such things to the congregation, citing many passages from sacred Scripture, some of which threaten, some of which counsel; moreover, also adding the causes that are just as powerful for obtaining repentance as those that Luther demands, and much more.

are holier. For these causes present almost nothing but the fear of punishment and the hope of reward, the like of which conversion to God is not so pleasant as when someone is converted through love. This happens when one imagines not only what Luther teaches, namely, the threat of God and the promise of forgiveness, but also what those teach whom Luther ridicules as those who teach nothing, namely, the goodness of God toward Himself and the benefits so abundantly shown to us, who deserve so little good but so much evil. For by such ideas the sinner will be brought to have greater remorse for having offended so dear a father than for having offended so mighty a Lord, and to be more afraid of punishment than of God's wrath, not desiring heaven but only God's mercy. This contemplation of the Divine goodness makes repentance. "Knowest thou not," saith the apostle, "that God's goodness leadeth thee to repentance?" Rom. 2, and it makes such, as we have said, even holier than that which Luther forms from fear of punishment and hope of promise, who boasts that no one teaches this but he alone, since all teach just this and much better things.

From confession.

(37) With regard to confession, he acts in such a way that in the case of public sins, which are known to everyone without confession, he demands confession, since it is not necessary. But of secret confession he speaks so inconsistently that, although he does not reject it entirely, he remains in doubt whether he should consider it a commanded thing. For he says that it cannot be proved from Scripture, and yet he says that it is wonderfully pleasing to him, and that it is also useful and necessary, though not to all, but only to satisfy troubled consciences, by which he implies, as we think, that if a man has a conscience like his own, and is sure either of his holiness or of the word of the divine promise, he has no need to confess secret sins; on the other hand, if one is fearful, he must confess to satisfy his conscience. Therefore, because he puts his words so ambiguously, it seems to us that he puts forward one and the other, so that the necessity of confession is clearer. And since he says that secret confession cannot be proved from Scripture, I will first refer to a passage from the Ecclesiastico, which seems to us, but not only to us, to be the following

to take all three pieces of the penance in itself. My child, it is said, if you are sick, do not despise this, but ask the Lord and he will make you well. Let go of sin and make your hands blameless and cleanse your heart from all iniquity, Sir. 38. For God the Lord makes well by redeeming in heaven what the priest redeems on earth, we make our hands blameless in repentance, we let go of sin through repentance, we cleanse our heart from iniquity in confession, according to the saying of the prophet: Pour out your heart before him, Ps. 52. Chrysostom also summarizes these three pieces of repentance when he speaks: perfect repentance impels the sinner to endure everything gladly. And further on: In the heart repentance, in the mouth confession, in fact righteous humility, these parts make a fruitful repentance. This also serves for confession: Know the condition of your heart. But how can he know it if it is not shown to him? What is clearer than what we read in Numbers 5? The Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Tell the children of Israel, and say unto them: If a man or woman commit any sin against a man, and sin against the Lord thereby, the soul hath iniquity upon it, and they shall confess their sin which they have committed? In the old Jewish law, where everything was presented in the image, the lepers were commanded to show themselves to the priests. For if God the Lord wrote a law for this reason: Thou shalt not bind up the mouth of the ox that treadeth, that he may remind us that it is right for him that ministereth at the altar to live also of the altar (as the apostle explains, saying that this is written, not of oxen, but of men: Does God, saith he, care also for oxen? 1 Cor. 9.), no one may doubt that through the bodily leprosy in the carnal law, sin in the spiritual law was foreshadowed. And in order that Christ may gradually convince us of this opinion, he says to the lepers (whom he cleansed in going, not only from the leprosy of the body, but also from the leprosy of the soul): Go, show yourselves to the priests. Now the words of St. James, "Confess your sins one to another," seem to us to confirm just that, although we know that some interpret them in a different way, to imply a command of sacramental confession. Why should not also the confession be clearly about what the Lord says through Isaiah: Confess your iniquity, that you may be justified? If the reputation of the fathers is something

If we want to be justified from sin, we must first of all accept what St. Ambrose says: "No man can be justified from sin unless he himself has confessed sin. What can be said more clearly? Moreover, St. John Chrysostom says: "No one can receive the grace of God unless he has been cleansed of all sins through confession. Finally, St. Augustine also says: "Do penance as one should do it in the Church. No one says to himself: I do it secretly, because I do it before God. If, then, it is said without cause, "What you will do on earth," the keys are entrusted to the church in vain. But even if we do not read a word about confession, either expressly or in vague terms, nor even if the holy fathers should write anything about it; yet since we see that all the people have been revealing their sins to the priests for so many hundreds of years; since we see that so much good has arisen from it and, on the other hand, no evil has resulted from it, we can neither believe nor think anything else than that this thing has been ordered and maintained up to now, not by human counsel, but by divine command. For people would never have allowed themselves to be led by mere human prestige to talk about the most hidden sins, the secret awareness of which was already terrible enough for them, in which they were so concerned that they should not come to light, in front of another's ears (who could betray them if he wanted to) to their great shame, with their great danger and without any decency. Nor could it have happened that since so many good and bad priests hear confession without distinction, even those who can otherwise conceal nothing kept what they heard to themselves, unless God Himself, who instituted this sacrament, watched over this so wholesome matter with a special grace. Accordingly, Luther may say what he will, but it seems to us that confession was not introduced out of a custom of the people, not by a decree of the fathers, but by God Himself and has been preserved until now.

38. That Luther also condemns the reservation of sins, "forbidden by the fact" that not every priest forgave all sins, but some were under the authority of the bishop, some even under the authority of the pope, comes from the fact that the simple man respects everything so equally that out of hatred for the Roman pope he puts all popes in the same class with the least priests and is so blinded by hatred that he does not distinguish jurisdiction from order; indeed, he is even more blind that he does not even pay attention to the slightest order.

Since God depicts this contending church according to the pattern of the triumphant ones, why does he read there of so many levels and orders and here wants to know nothing of any level, of any order, of any difference? Why then did the apostle write so many things about the bishops, if no bishop had more power over his host than other clergymen, indeed, nothing more than a layman? We will deal with the laity later, but in the meantime we will speak of the priests. Although every priest has his rank, he does not have a judicial standing (which belongs only to the confessor) before he is entrusted with a certain host; however, he is considered capable beforehand, so that a congregation can be entrusted to him without danger. If a bishop, who has the supervision of a whole diocese, has entrusted a certain part of his care to a priest, does not reason itself teach that the latter cannot bind or loose, unless he permits it, without whose command he would not have been able to retain or remit the sins of any of his congregation? as even this bishop would not have the power to do in a foreign diocese. What wonder, then, if the bishop reserves some sins for himself, the care of which he considers more important than that it could be entrusted to anyone (even inexperienced)? Which, since it has been observed for so many hundred years, lest the people, when forgiveness is made too easy to them, should become even more inclined to wicked sins: Luther now commands, so that no one should be deterred from sinning by a heavy penance, that everyone should be allowed to do everything, be he priest or layman, even going so far in his foolishness that, since women in general have the fault that they do not conceal anything that belongs to them secretly, he even wants to make the women confessors of their husbands. But because the apostle does not allow a woman to teach, Luther will hopefully not choose her as a priest, who says that no one is a priest except the one who preaches. The teaching of the holy fathers proves, however, that one does not have to confess to anyone other than the priest (it is then a case of necessity). St. Augustine says that each one comes only to the overseers, through whom the office of the keys of the Church is performed. He does not say that he comes to the laity or to women. Elsewhere he speaks even more clearly: Whoever has remorse for his sins, let him have a right repentance and let his

He should present his life and conduct to God through the priest, and he should anticipate the divine judgment through confession. For the Lord has commanded those who want to become clean that they should present themselves to the priests, indicating that one must bodily confess sins presently. Likewise, Pope Leo says: Christ has given this authority to the superiors of the Church, that they should impose a penance on the confessors. Finally, the venerable Beda also says: "That which happens every day and does not involve much, we want to reveal to our equals, but more important things to the priests and, as often as it is necessary, let ourselves be cleansed, because sins cannot be remitted without confession. Moreover, what good is confession if it is not followed by absolution through the keys of the Church? But this right, says Ambrose, is granted only to the priests, which he shows elsewhere how he wants it understood, when he says: The word of God absolves from sins, the priest is judge. Augustine also writes quite clearly in another place: "He who repents without the priest's judgment robs the church of its authority. Now let everyone judge how well-founded Luther's opinion is, who, contrary to the opinion of all the saints, draws the keys of the church to the laity and women and says that Christ's words: What you will bind etc. are said not only to the clergy, but to all believers. When M. Aemilius Scaurus, a famous and righteous man, was accused at Rome by Vario Sucronensi, a not particularly sincere man, and the plaintiff made a long speech, he answered briefly, and because he could rely on his and the people's conscience, he did not dignify him with a lengthy speech, but only said: "You Romans, Varius Sucronensis has said it, Aemilius Scaurus denies it, which of the two will you believe more? With what words, under the acclamation of the people, this honored man ridiculed the unworthy accusation of that man. This question, as we think, is nowhere better suited than to the present question. For that the words of Christ are spoken by the keys to the laity, Luther claims, Augustine denies it. Which of the two do you want to believe more? Luther claims it, Beda denies it, which one do you want to believe more? Luther claims, Ambrose denies, which one do you want to believe more? Finally, Luther claims it, the whole church denies it. Whom will you believe more? But if someone is so foolish that he thinks with Luther that one must confess to the women, it will be

It may not be unhelpful to accept Luther's other teaching, since he advises that it should not take much effort to remember one's sins. It is certainly not good to be too careful in putting many things on the track, that you let everything fall into his ear, which has a passable and open way from the ear to the tongue. Otherwise, if the matter can be done without such danger, we have no hesitation in preferring to Luther's counsel the example of the prophet who says: "I remember all my years spent in bitterness and tribulation. All my years, he says, I remember, which I spent in bitterness and sorrow. For such a confession not only takes away past sins, but also brings abundantly new grace, according to the saying of Ambrose: "Peter became much stronger in the faith after he wept bitterly for the loss of his faith, and he found therefore a far greater grace than that which he lost." With which Gregorius agrees when he speaks, "The life that burns with love after sin becomes commonly much more pleasing to God than innocence that lies safe and sleeps. For since Luther calls those idle people who think that one must confess all circumstances of sins, Augustine judges quite differently and says: "One must consider the nature of the sin according to the place, according to the time, according to the duration, according to the diversity of the person, and how one has been tempted to it, even if one has committed it several times. For a fornicator must repent according to the excellence of his position or office, or according to the nature of the fornicator and his deed, in what way he commits the deed of shame, whether he commits it in a holy place or at a time devoted to prayer, such as feast days and Lent. He must consider how far he persists in it, how much it offends him, how persistently he has sinned, and how much he has allowed himself to be overcome by sin. For there are people who not only cannot overcome themselves, but also give themselves willingly to sin and do not expect the temptation to sin, but anticipate the irritation. He must ask himself how often he performed the sinful act, with what pleasure he performed it. He must confess and lament all these manifold circumstances, so that when he realizes what he has done sinfully, he will immediately find a merciful God and, having come to know the growth of sin, he will examine himself to see what age, mind and state he has been. With all these things, he must stop and examine the

The first thing we must do is to feel the guilt of sin and purify ourselves from all transgressions with tears. Up to this point Augustine. After this, we almost do not know whether Luther will find one (of those he calls idle) who has more carefully recounted the circumstances of sins; lest he imagine that no circumstances belong to confession. If a sin has various circumstances, it must be remembered as much as possible; but even more, grave and various sins must be collected and the conscience carefully examined, so that, where it can be, not a single one remains. For what Luther throws at us as a sharp arrow, that no one can confess all sins, because no one can remember them all, is only a blunt arrow. For who does not know that no one who has said that all and every sin must be confessed is so foolish as to think that even those sins which do not please the confessor must be told in the priest's ear?

About the satisfaction.

39 We do not know whether Luther is sufficient for others with regard to atonement; at least it seems to us that he would have preferred to remain silent than to say nothing with many words. For the fact that he says at the beginning that the church teaches about atonement in such a way that the common people never understand true atonement, which consists in the new life, is, as everyone can see, mere blasphemy. Who made Luther believe that the church does not teach that one must start a new life? He has not walked through the entire church, has not been present in all the confessionals, so that he would have overheard the ignorance of the clergy. He must therefore necessarily have either the Holy Spirit in his bosom or an evil spirit in his heart that inspired him with such things. But whatever the spirit may be, it cannot be a good spirit that teaches lies, but the spirit we spoke of is the lying devil and his father. For everyone knows that what Luther claims to be truth is false. For who has ever been such a fool that he should speak of the works that make up for past sins in such a way that he sees future sins through his fingers? Who does not, as often as he absolves, agree with the words of Christ: "Go, sin no more"? John 8, likewise the words of Paul: "As ye have committed your members to the service of uncleanness, and from one unrighteousness to another: so now also commit your members to the service of righteousness.

Who has not read Gregory's saying: We cannot repent worthily unless we also recognize the nature of such repentance, for to repent is to weep for the sins we have committed and not to commit again the sins we have wept for? For he who so mourns one sin that he commits another either does not yet know what repentance is, or he only pretends to have repented. For what is the use if someone weeps for the sin of indulgence and still burns with love for avarice? Even though nothing was said about this, since the priest imposes penance for the sins committed, he is in fact indicating that they are not to be committed again, as they must be regarded with a new punishment. From this it is obvious that Luther himself does not think about what he says, but must only have something to talk about, to leave the church. Such he always lets himself be heard as a master, wherever he wants in such an important matter, with great clamor, as he also does in these words: 1) What monstrosities, O Roman See, we have you and your murderous laws and customs to thank for, with which you have corrupted the whole world to such an extent that they think they can do enough for their sins with their works of God, which only happens enough through the faith of a contrite heart. Not only do you make faith silent by such noise, but you also suppress it, only so that your insatiable blood hedgehog may have such people to whom he says: bring here, bring here, and sell sin. Who should not think, by reading these cruel and terrible words, that Luther had encountered great and abominable abominations at the Roman see? But whoever examines everything carefully will see that there is much clamor and little behind it. For the first thing that is ridiculous is this, that he exclaims against the Roman See, as if only in the Roman and not everywhere in the whole church the works of atonement were insisted upon and repentance inculcated; or as if the laws, which he calls murderous laws, had not been drawn up mostly before by the holy fathers, with the common consent of the Christians, in public meetings and general assemblies. Subsequently, when he says that one does not satisfy God by works, but only by faith, and believes that this does not happen by works alone without faith, he rages nonsensically against the Roman See, in which he says, "I am a Christian.

1) Cf. "Of the Babyl. Captivity," Col. 89.

No one has ever been so foolish as to say that works are enough without faith, since everyone knows Paul's saying: "What does not come from faith is sin," Romans 14. If he considers works superfluous and faith alone sufficient, let the works be what they will, then he says something and in fact departs from the Roman See, which applauds St. James that faith without works is dead, Jac. 2. Thus you see how inconsistent Luther is, who so sets out on the Roman See that he in the meantime entangles himself in the net of foolishness or godlessness. However, we believe that Luther's true opinion is that faith is always sufficient for salvation without good works. For that he believes this is clear from many other passages as well as from the fact that he says: God does not care about works and does not need them. He only needs them so that we may believe him to be true in his promises. What Luther wants to indicate with these words, he may see for himself; at least we believe that God cares for our faith as well as for our works, and needs neither our works nor faith. For just as he, as God, has no need of our good, so he cares about everything that men do, as the one who forbids them to do one thing and commands them to do another, without whose providence not even a sparrow, the two of which are sold for a penny, can fall to the earth, Luc. But since Luther's intention seems to be that a penitent should only enter into a new life and not have the priest impose penance on him as satisfaction for the sins he has committed, let us hear what St. Augustine also writes in this passage. He says: "It is not enough that one's conduct be improved and that one refrain from past sins, unless one also repays the Lord for what he has done by a painful penance, by humble sighs, by the sacrifice of a broken heart, by almsgiving and fasting. And elsewhere he says: "A penitent, however, must surrender himself to the judgment and power of the priest, and not be left to himself to be ready to do anything he wants to do to regain spiritual life, which he would do to avoid bodily death. He speaks in the same way in another place: "The priests also bind the confessors by imposing a penitential satisfaction on them, and release them by remitting some of it. For they perform a work of justice on sinners by punishing them with a just punishment.

a work of mercy, in that they let some of it go.

40 Thus we have hopefully shown clearly enough how boldly Luther blasphemes the church, and how inconsistent, how ungodly, how tasteless things he assumes through all parts of penance, against the holy fathers, against the holy scriptures, against the consensus of so many times and peoples, yes, almost against general opinion. But he does not leave it at that, but since he has long known that repentance is a sacrament, he now, at the end of the whole book, begins to withdraw that which would still be the only true thing in his book, and (as he is wont to do) aggravates his opinion, so that he now denies that repentance is a sacrament. Before, he confesses that he does not doubt that whoever confesses before 'any brother especially, or voluntarily, and when punishment has been inflicted upon him, has asked for remission and has reformed, is absolved from all secret sins. If this is his opinion (though it is wrong that he says before every brother especially, and again that he thinks it does not matter whether he confesses voluntarily or, if he has been punished, asks for mercy), and yet he considers such penance so useful, why does he exclude penance from the number of sacraments? For no other reason than that its value would decrease noticeably, and if it once lost the name of a sacrament (which is held in high esteem by Christians), it would be considered something small. He finds no other excuse for this than that penance has no outward sign, just as if either outward penance or the bodily act and gesture with which the priest absolves the penitent could not be a sign of spiritual grace by which the penitent obtains forgiveness. But in order to put an end to this talk of repentance, we wish that he may at some point repent of the penance he has so mishandled, and that he may salutarily fulfill all its parts that he intends to rob from it, so that his wicked heart may be contrite, that he publicly confesses his errors, that he submits to the judgment of the church, which he offends with so many blasphemies, and that he atones for all that he has previously committed by means of a possible atonement (for he is not capable of making a worthy one).

From the confirmation.

He does not accept Confirmation as a sacrament at all, but rather says that he is surprised at what the Church has come up with,

that they made Confirmation a Sacrament; and with such a sacred thing the chatterer plays, and makes many useless words, and asks, 1) why they did not also make Confirmation out of the Sacrament of Bread, that Confirmation should comprehend three Sacraments, since they have some instruction for it in Scripture? Therefore the church does not make it a sacrament, because she does not take occasion from any words of Scripture to make other sacraments than those which Christ instituted and sanctified with his blood, just as, on the other hand, she does not omit any of those which were taught orally by Christ and afterwards also by the apostles, even if nothing else is found of them. For the fact that he says that confirmation does not effect salvation is not based on any promise of Christ, he only says this, but does not prove it, although he certainly denies everything. But since Luther himself cites a few oters in which (although he only mocks with them) the sacrament of confirmation cannot have its origin without rhyme, why then does he judge the whole church so maliciously, as if it were making a sacrament imprudently, because in these oters no word of promise is to be found, as if Christ had promised, said, and done nothing that the evangelists do not tell. In this way, if we had only the Gospel of John, he could also deny the institution of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, because John does not write anything about it, who, with the very counsel of God, omitted this, with which all many other things were omitted, which Jesus did, and, as the evangelist testifies, are not written in the book, as the whole world could not comprehend. Of these things, one and another was revealed orally to the faithful through the apostles, and then preserved by the constant faith of the Catholic Church. Why should you not believe them in some things (even if nothing is read about them in the Gospels), since, as Augustine says, without the tradition of the Church you could not know which are the Evangelia? If there were nothing written about them anywhere, the Gospel would remain written in the hearts of the faithful, which is older than all the books of the evangelists; the sacraments would remain, which are undoubtedly also much older than the writings of the evangelists, so that Luther would not think that his argument, as if a sacrament had been made in vain, was valid, because no institution of it is found in the evangelists. Otherwise, if he assumes nothing at all that he does not find so clearly in the

1) Cf. "Of the Babyl. Captivity," Col. 90

If he reads the Gospel in such a way that there is no evasion, how does he believe (if he believes otherwise, since he doubts almost everything) the constant virginity of Mary? He finds so little of it in Scripture that Helvidius has nowhere taken the opportunity to assert the opposite except from the words of Scripture. And nothing else can be opposed to him than the faith of the whole church, which is nowhere greater or stronger than in the sacraments. At least we believe that there is no one who still has a shred of faith in him to be persuaded that Christ, who prayed for Peter that his faith would not cease, who founded his church on a strong rock, should bind the church, which has been the universal church for so many hundreds of years, to empty signs of bodily things, as to divine sacraments, by a mistaken faith. If we read nothing of this anywhere, yet those have been able to relate the mind of the Lord who have personally dealt with him, of whom he himself says: "Ye are my witnesses, for ye have been with me from the beginning." The Comforter could teach us what we should do, of whom Christ says: "But when the Comforter comes, whom I will send to you from my Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will testify of me," John 15, and again: "When he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth. For he shall not speak of himself: but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak; and whatsoever is to come, that shall he declare unto you." Therefore, since the Church has had so many great teachers, so many living evangelists, should we believe that the Spirit who instills truth has instituted the Sacrament in vain, and taught us to base our hope on a sign that is not worthy? Should one not rather believe that it learned it from the apostles and from the Holy Spirit himself? Certainly, if anyone considers the name of this sacrament, the minister, the power it promises, he will see that the matter is not such that one can believe that the Church has audaciously made it a sacrament. For from chrism, as Hugh a Sancto Victore says, Christ has his name; from Christ we are called Christians, all of whom, since they all bear his name, had to receive the anointing, because in Christ we are all the chosen race and the royal priesthood. But we are anointed by none other than bishops, except in cases of emergency, so that they may make Christians of us, and anoint the Comforter the Holy One.

This teacher also clearly shows the fruit of the sacrament when he says: "As in baptism one receives the forgiveness of sins, so through the laying on of hands the Holy Spirit is given to us. This same teacher also clearly indicates the fruit of the sacrament when he says: "As one receives the forgiveness of sins in baptism, so the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, is given through the laying on of hands. There grace is given for the forgiveness of sins, here for strengthening and confirmation. But what is the use of straightening yourself up after falling, if you do not get strength to stand? Up to here Hugo, with whom also common sense agrees. For just as in the bodily life, apart from procreation, by which we receive life, another effect is required, by which we both grow and attain to perfection of virtue, so also to the spiritual life, which is attained by the rebirth of baptism, the sacrament of confirmation is necessary, by which the spiritual life is brought to perfect power and the Holy Spirit is imparted to perfect strength. And apart from the sacrament of baptism, which helps to believe, confirmation serves to support steadfastness and to confess sins all the more boldly. For to this end man receives confirmation, that he may confess the faith the more boldly before his judge. And this is what Melchiades says: In baptism we are born again to life, after baptism we are confirmed to the controversy. For confirmation proves us and equips us for conflict in this world.

Finally, in order that Luther may recognize that this sacrament is neither new nor an empty poem, but is not at all lacking in grace, but rather communicates the spirit of grace and truth, let us quote here what St. Jerome wrote about the sacrament of confirmation. For he says: "When the bishop lays out his hand, he lays it on those who have been baptized in the true faith, who believe that in the Father and Son and Holy Spirit there are three Persons and yet only One Being. But Arius, since he has believed in nothing else (only cover your ears, who will hear it, so that you will not defile yourselves by such ungodly speeches) but in the Father, the only true God, in Jesus Christ the Savior, as a mere creature, and in the Holy Spirit, who is a servant of both: how will he receive the Holy Spirit from the church, who has not yet obtained forgiveness of sin? For the Holy Ghost dwelleth nowhere but where there is a pure faith, and

does not make his temple one in whom true faith does not prevail. If you ask here why one who is baptized in the church cannot receive the Holy Spirit otherwise than by the hand of the bishop, learn that this use receives its prestige because after the ascension of the Lord the Holy Spirit came upon the apostles, and we find in many places that this often happened. Until here Jerome. With which statement many other passages of Scripture agree, as well as especially and most clearly the one which teaches us in the Acts of the Apostles that the people who had previously been baptized in Samaria, after Peter and John came to them and laid their hands on them, received the Holy Spirit. We wonder, then, how Luther came to think that Confirmation should be regarded only as a use and ceremony, and not as a sacrament, which, according to the testimony of holy teachers and the faith of the whole Church, but also according to the clearest passages of Scripture, by means of the visible sign of the papal hand, communicates not only grace, but also the Spirit of grace itself. Luther may therefore only stop to despise the sacrament of Confirmation, which has for itself the dignity of the church servant, the prestige of the church, and the benefit of the sacrament itself.

Of the Sacrament of Marriage.

(43) Marriage, which was the very first sacrament kept among the first men and honored by Christ through the very first miraculous work, and which was also held in such high esteem for so long a time for the sake of the name of the sacrament itself, Luther also now denies that it is a sacrament (so that people will no longer think so highly of marital fidelity in the future). And since he rejected other sacraments in such a way that he said that in the one no sign was instituted and in the other no grace was promised, he denies both in the case of marriage. For he says that there was no promise of grace anywhere; it was not instituted as a sign anywhere. How does he know this? Because it is not read anywhere, he says. O a brave speech and that is a mother of many heresies. From this source Helvidius has sucked his poison. Do you not accept a sacrament whose institution you do not read in the book? what book did he ever write who instituted everything? In some pieces, he says, I adhere to the evangelists of Christ. 1)

1) Luther did not make such a statement.

Why don't you keep some things with the church of Christ, which Christ himself preferred to all evangelists, who were nothing else than members of the church? Therefore, if you believe one, why do you put distrust in all? If you attach so much to one member, why do you attach nothing to the whole body? The Church believes that marriage is a sacrament; the Church believes that it was instituted by God, taught by Christ, the apostles and holy fathers, then brought to us by an oral tradition as a sacrament, and that it is also to be propagated as a sacrament by us to our descendants until the end of the world and to be venerated as a sacrament. This is what the Church believes, this is what she speaks. This, we say, this same Church also speaks to you, which tells you that the evangelists wrote a Gospel. For if the church did not say that the gospel of John was John's gospel, you could not know whether John wrote it. For you were not present when he wrote it. Why then do you not believe the church when it says that Christ did these things, instituted these sacraments, and that the apostles taught them, just as you believe it when it says that the evangelist wrote them?

44.2) Marriage, says Luther, was with the ancient fathers and also with the pagans, and yet with both of them marriage was not a sacrament, since with both of them it was a true marriage just as it is with us. As for the fathers, who lived under and before the law, we do not agree with Luther; indeed, we believe that marriage was a sacrament with them, just as circumcision was. Of the Gentiles it is a different question, whose marriage status depended entirely on the customs and laws of each people, and thus with some marriage was lawful, which with others was considered highly irregular. However, there is no lack of those who, contrary to Luther, hold that marriage is a sacrament even for unbelievers. For St. Augustine also says: "The sacrament of marriage is common to all peoples, but the holiness of the sacrament is nowhere to be found but in the city of our God and on His holy mountain. About which opinion one can read, where it is convenient, the Hugo a Sancto Victore. And even if the marriage of unbelievers were not a sacrament, it would not follow what Luther concludes, that therefore the marriage of believers is not a sacrament either. For the people of God have found in marriage something sacred and at all times something sacred in it, so-.

2) Cf. "Of the Babyl. Captivity," Col. 82.

Both when she was first appointed and when she was honored with divine laws. Furthermore, among the pagans, because it was considered a human thing, they used to take wives and cast them out, according to the treaties and human laws. Among the people of God, it was not permitted for husbands and wives to divorce each other. For what God permitted the Hebrews to do through Moses, namely, to give a bill of divorcement, Christ says that they were permitted to do so because of the hardness of their hearts, otherwise they would have killed the wives who were not suitable for their minds. For from the beginning, says Christ, it was not so. But Christ called Christians back to their former holiness and sanctified the marriage state with the indissoluble bond of fellowship, excepting fornication among those whom God, not human error, but God lawfully joined together. It does not follow, therefore, that if the marriage state was not a sacrament among the pagans, it is therefore not a sacrament among Christians now, nor was such a thing formerly among the ancient fathers. For as far as the Christians are concerned, the faith of the church is already sufficient, even if nowhere is anything found about it. And yet the single passage from the Apostle, which Luther takes the liberty of mockingly distorting, teaches quite clearly that marriage was instituted as a sacrament not only now, but also before time, from the beginning of the world. No one will doubt this, as we believe, who will only read and carefully consider the passage from the Epistle to the Ephesians, which we therefore want to include here in its entirety, because no interpretation can make the matter clearer than the words of the apostle, who sets forth his opinion so clearly that he leaves no room for the unruly blasphemies of Luther. For thus he says: "Let women be subject to their husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, just as Christ is the head of the church. And he is the Savior of his body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives are subject to their husbands in all things. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify it, and cleanse it with the bath of water in the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and blameless. So also husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man hateth his own flesh, but cherisheth it, and cherisheth it.

just as the Lord is the church. For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife, and two shall be one flesh. The sacrament is great, but I say of Christ and the church." Eph. 5. Here it is written, as the holy apostle teaches everywhere, that the marriage of a man and a woman is a sacrament, which is a picture of the union of Christ and the church. For he says that marriage was sanctified in the sight of God, that it was a secret image of Christ united with the Church, and thus he compares the man with Christ, the woman with the Church. He says that the man is the head of the body, which is one body with the woman. Likewise, he also says that Christ is the head of that body and makes it one body with the church. He makes no other reason for a man to love his wife than that he is not an unequal sign of Christ, whom he represents, and this reason is even more important to him than the common nature of a male and female, which can also incite to love. By this very example he also demands of the woman that she fear and honor her husband, because the woman represents the community that must be obedient to Christ. After he has seriously and with many words emphasized this, so that no one will think that this comparison of a man with Christ and a woman with the church is only appropriate as an admonition, he shows that the matter has its reason, that it is a true sacrament, which was proclaimed beforehand by the very first prophet, in his very first prophecy, right at the beginning of the world. For when he said, "He that loveth his wife loveth himself: for no man hateth his own flesh at any time, but feedeth it, and cherisheth it, as Christ did the church; because we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones"; the apostle speaks these words, that he may bring to our minds those words which agree with them, when Adam, when Eve was first brought unto him, said, "This is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh." And in order that the apostle might indicate still more clearly that to the union of Christ with the Church belongs also the sacrament of Adam's union with Eve, he adds the words of Adam himself: "For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and two shall be one flesh." This sacrament of Christ and the church is great according to the apostle's saying. How would he have

could refute Luther more clearly than with these words, with which Luther dares to play his game? than he who would assert that because the apostle said that the sacrament in Christ and his church was great, he had thereby abolished the sacrament of the marriage of a man and a woman; just as if someone said, "The sacrament of baptism is great in the washing away or cleansing of the soul"; or as if someone said, "The sacrament of the Lord's Supper is great in the body of Christ itself," would he thereby deny that the form of the bread and the wine is a sacrament? or if he says that this sacrament is great in the spiritual body of Christ, is he depriving the sacrament of the body which he received from the Virgin Mary? Who has ever seen anyone who would make such a wide use of such a 'useless interpretation'? For if this were the apostle's meaning, and if he wanted his words to be understood in such a way that he only called this sacrament great in Christ and the church, and that such a thing did not concern the marriage of a man and a woman, then this would greatly reduce the power and the emphasis of the same, by which he praises the marriage state with a comparison of two unions beforehand. He would also have harmed in another way, according to his opinion, which he adopted, if he had taken the words of the first man, which in themselves seem to bind the husband and wife to love one another, and applied them to Christ and the church in such a way as to teach that they do not concern the husband and wife. Now the apostle shows that the words of Adam contained a prophecy of Christ and the church, and this is also affirmed by all holy teachers, as the matter itself shows. For at the first sight of Eve he spoke these words, in which he preferred the woman to the father and the mother, since he himself had neither father nor mother, nor even a command to beget children, so that he might know by the comparison of parents and children what father and mother were. But if the words of the old father were a prophecy of Christ and his community, then they either do not concern the marriage state, of which they seem to deal, or the marriage state was made a sacrament as a sign of that union by God himself, by whose spirit the mouth of the speaking Adam was governed, to a sacrament, so that the very same words can be applied both to what was spoken of and to what was proclaimed before, that is, to the marriage state of men, and at the same time to the union of Christ with the Church, and thus a sacrament from a sacred cause and from a holy

and signs corresponding to the same thing.

45 Moreover, in order that it may be evident that what Luther says is without foundation, the apostle's purpose in this passage to the Ephesians is not to show from these words that the union of Christ with the church is a great sacrament, but to remind the spouses that they should conduct themselves in this way toward one another, so that they might make their marriage a sacrament, which would be in accordance with such a holy thing, of which it is the sacrament, and would have a complete resemblance to it. According to this, Luther is either negligent himself in this place and has only looked at it above and without consideration, or he maliciously conceals what he notices under the reading when he answers: this understanding, which we have presented and which the church accepts, is an indication of a sleepy, industrious and negligent reader. Did Augustine, then, read the apostle drowsily? Did Jerome and all the others, with the exception of Luther, read him drowsily? who alone, through his vigilance, came to the conclusion that Paul had not written about a sacrament, but about a mystery. O of the sharp-footed man, who alone saw that the whole Latin church in vain calls a sacrament what the apostle, writing in Greek, did not call a sacrament but a mystery, as if the Latins were mistaken in giving the words in Latin, because Paul did not use a Latin word in the Greek language. If the translator had not given the word sacramentum, but mystery, and had kept the Greek word entirely, he would not have overturned the argument, since from this place of the apostle one concludes that the marriage state is a sacrament, since the circumstances of the whole matter teach us that this is so. For he may twist the word mystery as he pleases, but he will never go so far as to say that, if he does not accept the sacrament, he therefore abolishes and denies the sacrament; nor can he be said to have a wrong opinion or to speak wrongly who thus speaks: The Lord's Supper is a great mystery. Therefore, since there is not one of all the sacraments that is not also a mystery, as containing in itself the secret and invisible grace under a visible sign, the translator, seeing that the whole context of this passage clearly shows that the apostle describes in the words to the Ephesians such a mystery, which is truly a sacrament, has also perceived that the whole church is a mystery.

the marriage for a sacrament hall, he has translated there the word mystery by sacramentum. If "he had translated this word wrongly, neither Jerome nor Augustine would have been such sleepy readers that they would not have noticed the translator's error, nor such inclined patrons of the marriage state that they would have preferred to retain the noticed error rather than improve it, Especially since Augustine did not yield to Luther in the knowledge of the Greek language, and Jerome, who was the most skilled in this language, was so fond of the virginal state that he was regarded by many as not being well disposed towards the married state.

46 So that everyone may easily recognize that not only those whom Luther contemptuously calls Sententlurios, but also the old pious and learned church fathers are called sleepy readers, let us hear what St. Augustine writes. He says: "Not only fertility, the fruit of which is childbearing, not only chastity, the bond of which is faith, but also the sacrament of marriage must be commanded to faithful spouses, hence the apostle says: "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved his community. Thus Augustine calls marriage a sacrament, and lest Luther should say that he has read the place drowsily and carelessly, he acts upon it more than once in other of his writings in just this way. For elsewhere he speaks thus: In paradise it was said: a man will leave his father and mother and cling to his wife, which the apostle calls a great sacrament to Christ and his church. Why does Augustine not interpret Luther's opinion that it is wrong that the Latin translates mysterium by sacramentum, because Paul uses the word mystery and not sacramentum in Greek? Augustine calls marriage more than a thousand times the sacrament of marriage, the sacrament of matrimony; just as he does when he says: "All the good of marriage has been fulfilled in the parents of Christ, including children, fidelity and the sacrament. Why did he not remind us that it is not a sacrament but a mystery? Moreover, if Luther is right that marriage is not a sacrament except in Christ and his church, Augustine has spoken untruthfully. For neither is this sacrament a property of marriage, as Luther takes it, who only says it is a mystery; nor was it fulfilled in the marriage of Mary. About these words of the apostle writes

Augustine again: What is called great in Christ and his church is the least in all and every men and women, and yet it is an inseparable sacrament of union. When Luther says that no sacrament is called great except in Christ and his church, even a word researcher can refer to him from these words of the apostle, if they are considered with diligence. For since the apostle says: "The sacrament is great, but I am speaking of Christ and his church; what kind of sacrament is this, which is great in Christ and his church? Christ and the church cannot be a sacrament in Christ and the church. For no one speaks thus. Therefore this sacrament, of which he says that it is great in Christ and his church, must be the union of the male with the female, of which he spoke before. Therefore the apostle does not want to say anything else than this: The union of man and woman is a great sacrament in Christ and the church, as a holy sign in the most holy thing.

Finally, if Luther stubbornly denies that in these apostolic words marriage is called a sacrament, but only the union of Christ with the Church, he will at least admit that the union of man and woman is a sign of the sacred union by which Christ is joined to the Church, and which has its reason in the institution of God, according to which the first parents, whom God Himself joined together, were joined; but not invented by men afterwards. If Luther denies that what we have now said is evident from the words of the apostle, he denies it impudently. For this is so often and so clearly indicated in this place that whoever does not see this must be blind. If, then, it is established that grace is communicated through marriage, which signifies such a holy thing, Luther must, willingly or unwillingly, either accept marriage as a sacrament or reject all sacraments altogether, because, according to his confession, the sign of a holy thing with the promise of grace makes it a sacrament. Let us see, then, if we can make it reasonably clear that grace is obtained through marriage. For Luther evidently denies this and says: "Nowhere is it found that he who takes a wife obtains any grace from God. Marriage, says the apostle, is to be kept honest among all, and the marriage bed undefiled. The marriage bed could not be without defilement if marriage had no grace. And marriage has this ability, that the marriage bed may remain undefiled, nowhere.

From where else but because God the Lord, who according to his goodness saw to it that even those things that have their natural order, even if they have neither reason nor feeling, lack nothing that is necessary according to each one's ability, provided with equal kindness that he associated grace with the marriage state, according to which each person who does not want to reject it will not only be faithful to his or her spouse, but will also be able not only not to be defiled by carnal intercourse, by whose shameful lust he or she would otherwise be defiled, but also to promote his or her salvation. For the marriage state would not have an undefiled marriage bed, if the grace that is imparted to marriage did not turn to the best what would otherwise become sin. Which Paul also clearly indicates elsewhere, when he deals with the duties of wives: she, he says, becomes blessed through childbearing. If you abolish the married state, what would be the consequence of childbearing, by which, as the apostle says, one becomes blessed in marriage, but death and eternal damnation? For if, says St. Bernard, in the Church you do away with the honored state of marriage and the immaculate marriage bed, do you not fill it with cohabitants, with incestuous persons, with those who commit fornication against themselves, with sissies, with adulterers of boys, and with all kinds of impure persons? If, then, apart from marriage, all childbearing is condemnable, the grace of matrimony seems to be great, according to which God not only cleanses that act by which you could stain yourself to your punishment (if you look at its nature), so that it leaves no stain after it, but also sanctifies it in such a way that, according to the testimony of the apostle, it bears a reward. And the marriage state has this license of grace not otherwise than by virtue of the sacrament, for which it was made by God Himself, so that it should serve the man who enters into it both for the duty of procreation of his sex, after he is once created, and as a means for evil desire, after he is restored. However, what would this conjugal act be but a lust, if God did not make it a means against the same, which He also really decrees, through the holy grace of the Sacrament, to be a means for lust, in such a way that He makes those who have the essentially paternal grace, that God has bestowed on the married state, as the Prodigal Son did, that they not only do not drink stolen water from other people's wells, but also that they fill themselves up from their own and that their moderate consumption becomes so beneficial to them that it may lead them to eternal happiness.

Life? For the apostle also confesses in the place where he exhorts to abstinence and virginity. For the apostle, in the place where he exhorts to abstinence and virginity, as a virtue opposed to procreation, also confesses that the married state is a gift of God; that is, of those gifts of which he says that every good gift and every perfect gift comes down from above, from the Father of lights. Does he not thereby teach that the gift of God, which is given to one for the reason that he who receives it is in the circumstances of life in which he is to be preserved, so that he does not fall into such a state in which he is lost as soon as he falls into it, has a preserving grace with him? Moreover, when the apostle thus saith, If a brother have an unbelieving wife, and she suffer her to dwell with him, let him not put her away. And if a wife have an unbelieving husband, and he suffer him to dwell with her, let her not put her away from him. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband; otherwise your children would be unclean; but now find them holy. 1 Cor. 7. Does not the apostle indicate in these words that since marriage remains inviolable after one part has become a believer, the holiness of the sacrament sanctifies the whole marriage state, since it was previously quite impure? But why should the marriage, if it is a marriage, be holier than before, if the sacramental grace, which before baptism, which is the entrance to all sacraments, could not be shared in the marriage of unbelievers, was not connected with the marriage because of the faith of one part?

(48) Let us pass by the apostle and turn our attention to God, who sanctifies this sacrament. Did He not, when He joined our first parents together, sanctify the marriage state by a blessing? For the Scripture says: God blessed them and said: Be fruitful and multiply. And since this blessing had its effect on the other animals, for the strength of the body, according to each one's ability, who should doubt that in the rational man it imparted the power of spiritual grace to his spirit? Would anyone believe that God the Lord, having been so kind to the smallest and least animals that he bestowed his blessings on each one according to his nature, would extend his hand of blessing so sparingly to man, whom he created in his own image, that he would only take care of his body, but would completely pass over the soul with his great blessing, as the breath of life that he himself breathed and which bears his own image. Again, since Christ as God-Man

When he walked among men, and not only graced the wedding with his presence, but also made it respectable by a miraculous work, did he not thereby teach us that the married state is to be held in high esteem? But now we do not see what honorable thing would be found in it without grace. And I think that he would not have come to the wedding either, if either some grace had not already been bestowed on the marriage state at that time, which made it pleasing to Christ, or if he himself had not wanted to bestow grace on the marriage. Rather, we recognize that the miraculous work he performed here reminds us that the tasteless water of carnal lust was transformed by a secret grace of God into the tastiest wine. But what is the need to search for so many reasons of proof in such a clear matter, since only one place is sufficient, since Christ says: What God has joined together, let not man put asunder? O a word worthy of wonder, which no one could have uttered but the Word that became flesh! Who would not think that it was already enough that God joined together the first human beings, with whom the human race took its beginning? So highly honored were they with God, so wonderful a kindness did He show in them. But now we have heard from the mouth of truth that those who are joined to each other by a lawful marriage union are not joined carelessly, nor by human customs alone, but by God Himself through His invisible assistance and impassible cooperation. Therefore, it is forbidden for a man to separate what God has joined together. O a word that is not less full of wonder than of joy and fear! Who should not rejoice that God takes such great care of the marriage state that He not only considers it worthy to assist it, but also to preside over it? Who should not be frightened when he is doubtful about how to deal with his wife, whom he is bound not only to love but also to dwell with in such a way that he can return her pure and without stain to God, who gave her to him, when He demands her from him? Accordingly, if God, as He Himself says, joins all together Himself, who should not believe that grace is imparted by such a marriage? Should this be considered only a care for the carnal bond, that the Holy Spirit, whom one must worship in spirit and in truth, so carefully takes upon Himself the office of joining the spouses? Certainly, as far as this is concerned, it would have been enough for God to deprive the human race, like the rest of the animals, of its inherent

and by man's own fault corrupted nature. Therefore, beyond the care for the reproduction of the flesh, there must be something more sacred that the majestic God does in the marriage state, namely, without a doubt, that He, as the presider of all sacraments, communicates grace to the spouses to keep their marriage state holy. Since we have shown in so many ways that grace is imparted in marriage, and since it is clear from the apostle's words that the marriage state is a sign of a holy thing, which sign, since it is connected with grace, as we have shown, cannot be a mere image, it follows that, contrary to Luther's will, the marriage state is a sacrament, even if the apostle did not give it the name of a sacrament (which he does). Who, either of the ancients or of the moderns, has ever had any misgivings about calling marriage a sacrament, except those whom the Church has expelled from herself? In which only, as Hugo a Sancto Victore reports, a double sign is to be found. For, both matrimony itself is a sacrament of that union which takes place in the spirit, between God and the soul; and conjugal duty is a sacrament of that union which takes place in the flesh, between Christ and the Church. For if, he says, it is something great that happens in the flesh, how much greater must not be that which happens in the spirit! And if in the Holy Scriptures God is rightly called a bridegroom and the rational soul a bride, then there must be something between God and the soul of which that which is found in marriage between man and woman is a sacrament and image. Perhaps, however, to make it clearer, the union itself, which is outwardly preserved in marriage by virtue of the marriage covenant, is a sacrament, and the matter of this sacrament is the mutual heartfelt love, which is preserved by the bond of union and the marriage covenant. Again, the love itself, by which man and woman are united in holy matrimony, is a sacrament and a sign of that love by which God is inwardly united with the rational soul through the communication of His grace and His Spirit. Up to here Hugo. Accordingly, since not only the general faith of the Church so many hundreds of years before, and the ancient fathers, who are very famous for their knowledge of the Scriptures and for the merits of their way of life, but also even the holy apostle and teacher of the Gentiles, Paul, considered the marriage state to be a sacrament that makes marriage respectable, and the marriage bed by the

If we believe that grace not only keeps us unstained from adultery, but also washes away impure lust, turns water into wine, and provides a holy will to abstain from lawful attendance at certain times, we do not see what Luther can argue against this, except that (as St. Bernard says) the heretics, according to their liking, strive to tear the sacraments of the church, as the entrails of such a mother, with poisoned teeth.

Of the Sacrament of Consecration.

In the sacrament of consecration he does not proceed in an orderly manner, but by making this conclusion and that conclusion, he pours out all the treasures of his wickedness at once and reveals a mind that is very inclined to do harm wherever its powers allow it: he recites many things, claims and assumes the very worst, but does not confirm anything in any way and leaves it at that. From this one can see the strange impudence of this man, who, since he does not consider the whole church worthy to believe it, if it does not give an account of its faith, demands without cause that one should believe him alone, and that of such things, of which he cannot know what he should believe, if the church does not tell him. And yet he demands that one should believe him in such a way that whoever believes it does nothing but confuse and oppress the whole church. For what else has he in mind who presumes to overthrow the sacred sacrament of consecration than that, after the ministers of the mysteries have become lowly, the sacraments also should begin to be lowly, as if they too were distributed by lowly ones? This is the only cliff he goes to in the whole work. Accordingly, we want to read together Luther's teachings on consecration, which are scattered to and fro, because he keeps no order, so that the reader will have the heap of evil before his eyes at once, which, if he sees it, it will not take much effort (as we think) to refute it, since its ungodly teachings, as all will perceive, only aim at overthrowing the whole Christian faith through unbelief. For what else does he intend who says that there is no difference of priestly office between laymen and priests, that all priests are equal to one another, that they all have the same authority, that in every sacrament the office of administering the sacraments is entrusted to the priests by none other than the laity? The sacrament of consecration can be nothing other than a use of a preacher in

He who does not preach is not a priest, except ambiguously, just as a painted man is also called a man; he who is a priest can again become a layman, for the indelible sign means nothing; finally, ordination itself (which as a sacrament ordains those to the clergy who cannot preach) is true, mere, and merely a poem invented by men who understand nothing of church matters, of the priesthood, of the ministry of the word, of the sacrament. Finally, this holy priest (in order to give a pretense of how chaste he is) states as the most noble error, as the utmost blindness and as the greatest prison, that the clergy have imposed chastity on themselves. And since Christ highly praises those who have circumcised themselves for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, Matth. 19, this abominable Antichrist compares them to the circumcised idol priests of the goddess Cybele. We know for certain that the ears of a godly reader are shocked by the ungodly register of the most pernicious doctrines, each of which carries more heresies than that Trojan horse is said to have carried armed soldiers. The source of all this is none other than because he denies that consecration is a sacrament, and if this is obstructed, then the other little books must necessarily dry up. He says: 1) The church knows nothing about this sacrament and it was only invented by the papal church. These few words contain a great heap of lies and inconsistencies. For he distinguishes the papal church from the church of Christ, since the pope is the head of the same church, of which Christ is also the head. He says that the Church invented what it did not invent, but received as instituted. He claims that the Church of Christ knows nothing of this sacrament, since it is well known that almost no part of the world can be found that professes the true teachings of Christ and does not consider consecration a sacrament. For even if he could find an unknown corner (which, as we believe, he can find nowhere) in which one knew nothing of the sacrament of consecration, this corner could not be compared with the rest of the church, which stands not only under Christ, but also for Christ's sake under Christ's one governor, the Roman pope, and believes that consecration is a sacrament. Otherwise, when Luther insists on distinguishing the Papal Church from the Church of Christ, and says that in the one they consider consecration a sacrament, in the other they do not consider it a sacrament, he is not making a comparison.

1) Cf. "Of the Babyl. Captivity," Col. 108.

Sacrament, he shows the Church of Christ, which, contrary to the faith of the Papal Church (as he calls it), does not know about the Sacrament of Consecration. In the meantime it is quite clear that because he says that the Church of Christ knows nothing of this sacrament, and claims that those who have the pope as their head do not belong to the Church of Christ, he separates from the Church of Christ in both ways not only Rome, but all Italy, Germany, Spain, France, England, and all the other nations that are subject to the Roman pope or accept consecration for a sacrament. If he takes away all these nations from the Church of Christ, he must either confess that the Church of Christ is nowhere, or, after the manner of the Donatists, seek the Catholic Church of Christ from two or three heretics who murmur of Christ in the corner. But he brings out as an unavoidable arrow that this sacrament has no promise of grace, of which there is nothing anywhere, as he says, and denies that the whole New Testament makes mention of this sacrament even in a single word, also saying that it is something ridiculous to consider something a divine sacrament, which, being instituted by God, can nowhere be proved; one must not claim anything to be a divine ordinance that has not been ordained by God, and one must take care that everything is proven and confirmed to us by clear Scripture.

50 Whether there is no report of this sacrament in the New Testament, we will examine later; in the meantime, however, we will deal with him as if there were nothing at all in the New Testament. For with this arrow he dares to make almost all sacraments void. Against which arrow I want to throw the same iron, which Luther himself admits to be impenetrable, on my shield. For these are his own words 1): The church has this, that it can distinguish the word of God from the words of men, as Augustine confesses, he believed the gospel, and was moved to do so by the reputation of the church, which told him that this was the gospel. Since, then, according to Luther's confession, the church has this, that it can distinguish the word of God from the words of men, it is certain that it has this nowhere else but from God; and this for no other reason than that the church should not err in such matters in which it should not err. From this reason, which Luther himself gives us, it follows that the church has from God not only what Luther admits, i.e. that it has from God.

1) Cf. "Of the Babyl. Captivity," Col. 108 f.

It is not only the distinction of the words of God from the words of men, but also the ability to distinguish, by which it distinguishes in holy Scripture the divine understanding from the human one. Otherwise, what good will it do if the Church (under God's instruction) distinguishes the true Scriptures from the false ones and cannot distinguish the false mind from the true mind in the true Scriptures? In the same way, it follows that God teaches His Church in unwritten traditions, so that she may not erroneously accept false things as true, because no less danger can arise from this than if she either takes human writings for the Word of God, or draws a false understanding from the true Word of God, especially if it accepts false sacraments for true, human traditions, not even human traditions, but devilish inventions for divine traditions, if furthermore also the church of Christ builds its trust on fictitious and vain signs of physical things (as magicians tend to do), as if they were Christ's sacraments. It is therefore clear from what Luther himself admits that the church can distinguish God's word from the words of men, as no less the divine traditions from the human ones, because otherwise an error could arise on both sides that could be reasonably avoided, and Christ does not see to it that his church may not err in this or that way, but that it may not err in any way. But it could not err to any greater dishonor of Christ than if it built its trust, which is to be placed in him alone, on signs that are supported by no grace at all, but are empty of all good of faith. Accordingly, the Church cannot err when she accepts the sacraments of faith; she cannot, let us say, err any more than she can err when she accepts the Scriptures (but that the Church cannot err in this, Luther himself admits). If the matter were otherwise, all sorts of inconsistent things would follow, especially this, which could not be more inconsistent, that mostly all doctrines of the Christian faith, which had been established for so many hundreds of years, would be called into doubt anew at the whim and pleasure of prevalent heretics. For if nothing may be considered true but what is founded in the clear Scriptures (as Luther speaks), then we will not only not assert the constant virginity of St. Mary, but also others will be given an inexhaustible number of opportunities to assail the faith, if anyone has a whim either to bring up new sects or to reheat long-buried ones. Look at it under

There have been very few heretics who have not accepted the Scriptures; on the contrary, almost all of them have substantiated their teachings by either claiming that they have their basis in the Scriptures, or, if they seemed to be in accordance with reason, by saying that the opposite could not be proved from the Scriptures, because they disputed that what was brought forward against their sect was understood differently than the orthodox church understood it. And lest it should be said that it was clear, they, either with a different understanding imputed to them, or with other passages which they brought on the way from the same Scripture, and which seemed to be contrary to it, made everything so confused that it really seemed doubtful. According to this, we almost do not know whether there would ever have been a lack of matter to dispute against Arius about the Scriptures, if the general faith of the church had not been established.

(51) Since we have now proved ourselves from Luther's reason that the sacraments which the church believes can be instituted by none other than God, even if nothing of this is found in Scripture, let us see if Scripture does not think of this sacrament at all. All agree that the apostles were ordained priests in the Lord's Supper. Only Luther denies this, since it is clear that they were given the power to make the body of Christ, which only the priest can make. But, he says, it is not a sacrament, because no promise of grace has been made to them. How does Luther know this? Because it is not read anywhere, he says. This is Luther's usual conclusion: there is nothing written about it in the Gospel, therefore it did not happen from Christ, which way of concluding is invalidated by the evangelist when he says: many things happened that are not written in this book, John 21. But we want to get a little closer to Luther. He admits that the Lord's Supper is a sacrament, which, if he were to deny it, he would have lost all sense. But where does he find in Scripture that a promise of grace is made in this sacrament? For he accepts nothing but the Scriptures, and indeed the bright clear Scriptures. If you read the place of the Lord's Supper, you will not find in any of the evangelists that grace was promised in the endowment of this sacrament. It is written that Christ said, "This is my blood of the new testament, which is poured out for many for the remission of sins," Matt. 26, by which words he indicated that he would redeem the human race on the cross through his suffering. But since he

When the apostle said before, "Do these things in remembrance of me," he does not promise grace or forgiveness of sins to anyone who does them, that is, to the priest who consecrates or to the one who takes the Lord's Supper. Also, the apostle, in threatening judgment to unworthy guests, does not think anything of the grace of those who enjoy it worthily. If someone seeks a promise of grace from the sixth chapter of John for the one who receives the sacrament of the body and blood of the Lord, this cannot help Luther either, as he himself says that this whole chapter does not deal with the Lord's Supper. So you see how he cannot present this promise of grace, which he promised to show us as the foundation of the whole sacrament with such lofty words in the whole work, in this sacrament, which he leaves almost alone, if he does not (which must happen), apart from the words of Scripture, take recourse to the faith of the church. Therefore, just as it is enough for us to read in the Gospel that the power to administer the Sacrament was given to those in whose place the priests came, so it can also be enough for us to read that the apostle advised Timothy not to lay hands on anyone soon, 1 Tim. 5. 5 Such an one clearly demonstrates the priestly ordination, not from the congregation's consent, by which alone one can become a priest, as Luther says; but only from the bishop's ordination and from the certain laying on of hands, in which God communicates the inward grace by an outward sign. And what is to prevent us from believing the church of the living God, which according to the apostle's statement is a pillar and foundation of truth, 1 Tim. 3, as far as this grace is concerned, if Luther himself must believe the same church as far as it speaks of the grace promised in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper? For by such faith one recognizes either the promise of such grace, or least of all the bestowal of it without a promise.

(52) We must truly wonder how anyone could be so careless as to doubt whether grace is imparted to the evangelical priests in the consecration, since one reads many things from time to time that seem to indicate that grace was also imparted to the priests of the old covenant. For thus says God: You shall anoint Aaron and his sons and consecrate them to be my priests, Exodus 28. For otherwise what would the outward consecration to the service of God have helped, if God had not at the same time imparted grace, by which they were consecrated inwardly, and that also through Christ, since the

Could faith in him, the then still future One, have already put a power into the preceding sacraments, just as he made the Jewish people able to attain eternal blessedness in time immemorial? But even if someone does not accept this, that the priesthood of the old law was given a grace, he has no reason to refuse to accept that the priests of the evangelical law are given a grace, because now through Christ's suffering the fullness of grace has come.

(53) According to the Acts of the Apostles, when Barnabas and Paul were set apart for the work to which the Holy Spirit had called them, they were not sent out until they were ordained for it by the laying on of hands. Why, my dear, did the apostles lay their hands on them? Did it happen that they only touched the body in vain and could not help the soul with any spiritual grace? How can Luther say that this sacrament is unknown to the Church of Christ, which is in use among all Christian nations? How can he call new that which Christ instituted, which the apostles also used? 1) Yes, he says, but nowhere among the ancient teachers, with the exception of Dionysius, was a sacrament named. For we read, he continues, nothing in the other Fathers about these sacraments, nor did they mention it by the name of a sacrament as often as they spoke of these things. A beautiful argument of Luther's, which is both obviously false and, even if it were true, nevertheless has no force. For if the ancients had not written anything at all about a matter that was not disputed in the past, or if they had written something, they would have given the matter the proper and not common name of sacraments, it would not necessarily be possible to conclude from this that ordination is either not a sacrament or has never been a sacrament. For if someone calls baptism a baptism and does not attach to it the name of a sacrament, will it be said that he did not consider baptism a sacrament? Moreover, if Dionysius had written solely from the ancient Fathers that ordination was a sacrament, it would be enough to overturn Luther's reproach, according to which he would have considered the sacraments a new invention. For he contradicts himself that it is new, because he admits that it is found in the writings of Dionysius, whom he himself counts among the ancients. And this would be correct,

1) Cf. "Of the Babyl. Captivity," Col. 110 ff.

Although St. Dionysius would be as the church-robbing Luther describes him, who says: there would be no thorough scholarship to be found in him; he would prove nothing of what he wrote, neither with sayings, nor with reasonable causes; but it would be all his own thoughts and almost like dreams, what he wrote in the "heavenly hierarchy". In the book of his "mystical theology," he says, which some of the most unlearned theologians exalt so highly, he is also quite harmful, and in it he follows Plato more than Christ; in it you learn to recognize Christ so little that, if you already know him, you lose him again completely. I speak from experience, he says, that is, as we think, he has experienced it, that only from it he has come to know Christ. So also, he continues in the "ecclesiastical hierarchy," what does Dionysius do other than describe some customs of the church and joke with his allegories? Finally, in order to show what a vain work St. Dionysius has done, he says: "Do you think it would be too difficult for me to speak with allegories in every created thing? It would not be too difficult for me to write a better hierarchy than the one written by Dionysius. Who can bear with patience the chatterer, who thus goes about the godly writings of a holy man, such invective is better suited for a heretic of his ilk? For he calls him an unlearned man, a buffoon, who not only writes dreams, but also harbors harmful and Christ-rejecting teachings. But what blasphemy brings glory to the holy man, whose entire writings prove that they are good, because they do not want to please an evil man. For what communion has light with darkness? How does Christ agree with Belial? That he did not absorb anything godly from the godly books of this holy man is the fault of his godless head; for Horatius writes quite rightly:

Sincerum est, nisi vas, quodcunque infundis, acescit.

That is, what you pour is pure and unadulterated, if the vessel does not make it sour. For that he speaks, it would not be difficult for him to write a better hierarchy than the one that Dionysius has written, of which he boasts only now, after this one has already been written. In the meantime, he attacks a much more important thing, and wants to destroy the other hierarchy, which is founded on a strong rock.

(54) The displeasure with which we resent the very insulting blasphemies hurled against the holy man by the godless Luther has led us quite far from our purpose. But, as we said at the beginning, even if Dionysius alone had taught that consecration is a sacrament, this would already be enough to convict Luther, who wants to claim that the sacraments are a new invention, because he not only admits that Dionysius belongs among the ancients, but also that all of Christendom holds him up as a holy man. That he is angry about this, however, comes only from his malice, according to which he cannot stand anything that is contrary to his godless heretical teachings. But now, so that it may be clearly seen how Luther's pretensions are everywhere null and void, let us show that not only Dionysius, but also Gregory and Augustine, the latter of whom he falsely cites for his opinion, believed that consecration is a sacrament. Moreover, we want to show that the indelible sign (with which Luther mocks), although not given this name, is clearly described by Jerome in the sacrament of baptism, but Augustine also remembers it in both sacraments, baptism and consecration. We want to begin with Jerome concerning the sign of baptism, so that the sign of consecration will fall all the more brightly in the eyes, which both Augustine and Gregory compare with baptism for the sake of the indelible mark. Thus Jerome writes about the words of Paul to the Ephesians: "Do not grieve the Holy Spirit, so that you may be sealed for the day of redemption, i.e.: we are sealed with the Holy Spirit of God, so that a divine sign may be imprinted on our spirit and soul and we may receive again the image after which we were created in the beginning. According to the Savior, this seal of the Holy Spirit is imprinted by God Himself. For with this, says he, God the Father has sealed us. And soon after: He sealed us for this reason, so that he would receive the sign and present it pure and unadulterated and unmutilated until the day of redemption, and for this very reason he would be able to give the reward to those who are redeemed. All those who have written about the sign of the sacraments have not described so clearly the sign that God the Lord impresses on the soul through the sacraments, as Jerome has described it in these words, not from his own brain (as Luther, the mendacious scoffer, invented), but from strong testimonies of the Holy Scriptures. For the

Character is such a quality of the soul, which God, known only to Him, but incomprehensible to us, impresses upon us as a sign by which He distinguishes His host from foreign hosts. Which sign, even though people may besmirch it with sins and turn white into black, the whole into something mutilated, the most pure into something impure, they cannot scratch it out in such a way that the whole world should not recognize those who have the sign of character imprinted on them, on the day of judgment, as to which herd they belong. For this very reason, the Church is so rigid and firm about repeating other sacraments so often (which is done in the case of the Lord's Supper, penance, marriage and the last rites), that she does not allow baptism, confirmation and ordination to ever be repeated. For the Church herself has been instructed by the Holy Spirit that in these sacraments a certain character or sign is imparted, which sign, since it cannot be erased, must therefore also not be repeated in the sacrament itself.

(55) In order that it may be clearly seen that consecration in this matter has the same meaning as baptism, let us hear what Gregory says: "That you say," he writes, "that one who has been consecrated must be consecrated more than once, is something ridiculous. For just as one who has been baptized once may not be baptized more than once, so it is not proper that one who has been consecrated once should be consecrated more than once in his consecration. There you see how the church does not allow the sacrament of ordination to be repeated any more than the sacrament of baptism, which, as we have said, depends on the indelible mark. But in order that we may shut up Luthern in this matter, and that he may not again cry out to us that the mark is a poem, and that of the ancients only Dionysius called consecration a sacrament; we will, as promised, also add Augustine's opinion of this matter. When he speaks of baptism and ordination, he writes: "Both are sacraments, and both are communicated to man by ordination: the one when he is baptized, and the other when he is ordained a priest. Therefore, neither of the two may be repeated in the Catholic Church. For even if heretics, 1) for the sake of peace, after having abandoned the error of schism, have been raised up and accepted again, and it is considered necessary that they should enter upon the very office which they previously administered, they may not be consecrated anew; but it remains with

1) Here in the meaning: arch-heretic.

them, as baptism, so also consecration, inviolate; because the fault lies in the division, but not in the sacraments, which retain their essence, be it where it is. And soon after: It is not necessary to do violence to any sacrament. Of the sacrament of consecration he adds: "Just as he who separates himself from unity does not use the sacraments rightly, and yet has them; so also he who separates himself from unity does not distribute them rightly, and yet distributes them. And again, coming again to both sacraments, he adds the words: Therefore they do not cease to be sacraments of Christ and of the church because not only heretics but also all the ungodly do not use them properly; but these must be corrected and punished, while those must be recognized and venerated. From this you see how well founded is that which Luther so boldly asserts, that the church of Christ knows nothing of the sacrament of consecration, that character is an empty poem, that the sacraments are a new invention, that the ancients did not consider consecration to be a sacrament. Of all this he has said nothing that you do not see proved by the testimony of such men as he can neither exclude from the church of Christ (as in which they shone brightly both by the doctrine of faith and by their example of virtue), nor count among the more recent, unless with him a thousand years are as one day. But he defends himself against all grounds of proof, against the reputation and credibility of all and sundry with a single argument. We all, he says, are priests according to the saying of Peter: you are the royal priesthood and the priestly kingdom. But no one can be a priest for another, just as no one can be a man for another. Therefore, those who are called priests are nothing else than certain laymen who alone have been chosen for the ministry of preaching either by the will of the people or by the call of a bishop with the help of the people; and ordination is nothing else than a mere service without sacrament. We have not only faithfully narrated his argument, but have also honestly and sincerely added what it is based on; and yet, to whom should not the blunt sophistry of the theologian make a laughing-stock? For if the ordination to the priesthood is nothing with God, because all Christians are priests; it will follow in the same way that Christ had no preference over Saul. For David also said of Saul, "I have sinned in that I have offended the Lord's anointed. Christ would have had no preference over those of whom

To whom it is said: Do not touch my anointed ones. Finally, God would have no preference over any of those of whom he spoke through the prophet himself: I have said well, you are gods and all the children of the Most High. Finally, just as Christians are all priests, so are they all kings. For it is not only said: you are the royal priesthood; but also: the priestly kingdom. One must be careful what this serpent has in mind, which we consider far too cunning to consider such a worthless argument important; but it only licks so that it stings, elevates laymen to the priesthood, so that it brings the priests into the class of the laymen. For he denies that ordination is a sacrament; and says it is nothing but a use to choose a preacher. For those who do not preach, of them he says that they are nothing less than priests, even that they are priests, as painted men are men, contrary to the apostle Paul, who writes to Timothy: The elders who preside well are counted worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in the word and in doctrine, 1 Tim. 5. Here the apostle clearly teaches that although those who, being elders, labor in the word and in doctrine are worthy of double honor, yet those who do not do this are not only elders, but can also preside well and be worthy of double honor. Otherwise, he would not have said: especially those who work on the word and on the doctrine, but rather: those who work on the word and on the doctrine. Moreover, lest Luther should say, which he does say, that the priest's office among the people is nothing else than to preach; for to offer the mass, he says, is nothing but to receive the sacrament: that, let us say, it may be evident how false this is, let us hear the apostle again. Every high priest, he says, who is taken from among men, is set apart for men against God, that he may offer gifts and sacrifices for sins, Heb. 5. Does not the apostle thus clearly indicate that the office of a high priest also requires this, that he offer sacrifices to God for men? which, though he wrote it to the Hebrews, who were nevertheless converted Christians, if he did not want them to be Jews, it is clear that he is speaking of the high priest of both laws, and thus twice drove Luthern into a corner with his testimony. For he teaches both that the mass is a sacrifice and is offered for the people, because the church has no other sacrifice, and also that offering the office constitutes the most noble part of the priestly office.

And surely, if what Luther says were not false, you would easily see the consequence, that if no one can consecrate the body of the Lord, and out of so many thousands of priests who cannot preach, none is a real priest, but is only called so in an ambiguous sense, just as a painted man is called a man: all Christendom, among priests and laity, has nothing but idols, who worship bread as Christ, and bow their knees to Baal.

(56) In the use of appointing one to the service of the church, he attributes the noblest right to the people. For though in one place he seems to attribute a common right to the bishop or to the people, saying that though it is certain that all Christians are equal priests, and have equal power in the word and sacraments, yet no one may use them without the consent of the congregation, or without the appointment of a superior; yet in another place he attributes the prerogative to the people, when he speaks of the priests: How? 1) If they were compelled to suppose that we were all priests likewise, as much as we are baptized, as indeed we are; and that the ministry was left to them alone, but with our consent; they would know at the same time that they had no right to rule over us, except so much as we freely conceded to them.

If one compares these two words, they indicate that Luther's opinion is that the congregation can ordain a priest without a bishop, but that the bishop cannot do so without the congregation's consent, because he says that the priests alone are entrusted with the office, but not without the congregation's consent. For if this is true, no priest can be made without the consent of the congregation, with whose consent alone, as he says, bishops were formerly placed over the churches. It cannot be denied, he says, that the churches of old were governed by the elders, chosen for their age and experience, without the order of ordination. Where Luther found such things, he may show, it does not seem to us to be founded at all. For if every layman has equal authority with the priest in every sacrament, and the ordination of priests is nothing, why does the apostle write to Timothy thus: "Do not forsake the gift given you through prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the elders? And elsewhere to the same: I exhort you to raise up the

1) Cf. "Of the Babyl. Captivity," Col. 113.

Grace of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands. And again he says: "Do not lay hands on anyone soon, and do not make yourself a partaker of other people's sins. In the same way the apostle writes to Titus: "For this reason I have left you in Crete, so that you may do as I have left you and fill the cities with elders, as I have commanded you. Here, O reader, a few words and a few words of the apostle are suddenly before your eyes, which, if you compare them, you will easily recognize that everything is false and fictitious, with which Luther so disorderly attacks the order of consecration. For of those of whom Luther says that they become priests with the consent of the congregation, they are made so, according to Paul's report, by the bishop, whom he left in Crete just at the end, that he filled the cities with elders; however, not carelessly, but as he himself had commanded for the time being. There you see that by the laying on of hands one is made a priest. And lest there should be any doubt that grace is imparted at the same time, you see at the same time that this also is imparted by the laying on of hands. Awaken, he says, the grace that is given to you through the laying on of my hands. Item: Do not neglect the gift that is in you, which is given to you through prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the elders, in it practice. We are surprised, then, that Luther is not ashamed to say that ordination is not a sacrament, knowing full well that Paul's words are in favor of those who teach that no one other than a priest makes one a priest, and not without ordination, in which ordination both a bodily sign is used and so much spiritual grace is imparted that the one who is ordained not only receives the Holy Spirit himself, but also receives the power to impart it to others. But how can this be something new, which the apostle speaks of, although Luther claims it? How can this be unknown to the church, which is read in all Christian churches, and read at all times? From which it is clear to all that not a single syllable of so much of what Luther babbled with such great audacity as certainly contrary to the order of consecration is true, but out of malice everything is false and fictitious.

From the Sacrament of the Last Unction.

In the Sacrament of the Last Rites, Luther, who himself deserved to be laughed at twice, laughs at the Church twice. Once, that the

Theologians call this ointment a sacrament, as if only those he calls theologians called it that. After that, that they call it the last. As for the other, he makes an objection in jest, which he will not be able to resolve in earnest. For this blessedness can also be called the last, because it is the last of four sacraments. After he wants to show that it is not a sacrament, he again makes an objection that everyone would reproach him with, namely, the words of the apostle James: "If anyone among you is sick, let him call to him the elders of the congregation, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord; and the prayer of faith will help the sick person, and the Lord will raise him up; and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him. Jac. 5. These words, which, according to his own description, clearly indicate that this blessedness is a sacrament, lacking neither a visible sign nor the promise of grace, he immediately begins to mock with a very bold audacity, as if they were of no force or emphasis. 1) But I say, saith he, if anywhere it hath been spoken thorougly, it hath been spoken chiefly here. But we are not afraid to say: if Luther has spoken audibly somewhere, who speaks audibly almost everywhere, then he speaks here of the Sacrament of the Last Rites in the highest degree audibly. I do not want to think now, he says, that this epistle is not from the apostle James, nor worthy of an apostolic spirit, as many very credibly claim, although it has gained a reputation out of habit, it now stems from whom it wants. But even if it were from the apostle James, I would still say that it is not proper for the apostles to institute a sacrament by their own authority, that is, to give God's promises with a sign attached; for this belongs to Christ alone. Thus Paul says that he received the sacrament of the Lord's Supper from the Lord and was sent not to baptize but to preach the gospel. But nowhere in the Gospel is the sacrament of this last Eucharist mentioned. From these words you see how he tries to invalidate Jacob's words in a twofold way: first, by saying that this epistle did not have the apostle as its author; then also by saying that if the apostle had already written it, no apostle would have the authority to institute sacraments. Although he now presents these two pieces with little, and immediately on something

1) Cf. "Of the Babyl. Captivity," Col. 119 f.

The most noble arrows, by which he intends to knock this sacrament over a pile.

59 For everything else he says is useless talk that gives opportunity to mock, as if the church did not observe the sacrament properly. But these two pieces concern one main point. For if the epistle were not worthy of the apostle and of an apostolic spirit; or if, since the apostle says that blessedness is a sacrament, it is not proved that it is a sacrament, it would follow that these words were of no avail. If he had said that in the past there had been doubt as to whose epistle this was, he would have been telling the truth. For the church has not accepted anything carelessly, but has examined everything carefully; and it does this for this reason, so that everything that it has accepted may be considered all the more certain, even if it were governed only by human prudence. But because he says that many claim that this epistle is not only not worthy of the apostle, but also unworthy of the apostolic spirit, and that they not only claim this, but also probably claim it, it is probable that he cannot prove this. He only brings forward some of many from the church, of whom, as we believe, there will not be so many and so important men that they should deserve to outweigh all the others. So far he has not named any. But we want to mention one who can be enough against many, namely St. Jerome, who was the most skilled in the holy scriptures, and who noticed the difference between the true and the genuine and among the doubtful scriptures in the most exact way. Thus, since he doubted for some time an epistle of Paul, but only at that time, when the matter had not yet been confirmed by the general acclaim of the church, he nevertheless says of that epistle, which is attributed to the apostle Jacob, that it is without any doubt his own. For he writes thus: Jacobus, Peter, Judas and John have written seven epistles, in which there is a spiritual understanding and which are both short and long, short as far as the words are concerned, long as far as the sayings are concerned, so that there is seldom anyone who would not realize his stupidity in reading them. In the preface to the seven canonical epistles, he says: "Among them is one, the first of Jacob, then two of Peter, three of John, and one of Jude. Here you see how St. Jerome makes the same judgment of Jacob's epistle that he makes of Peter's epistles, and

does not think that it is unworthy of the apostolic spirit. And certainly, if Luther had given reasons why the epistle was not Jacob's, but another's, through whom the same Spirit spoke, one could still let it pass. But now he says that it is probable that it is not worthy of the apostolic spirit, therefore it is really unworthy of it. In this we want to oppose Luther to Luther. For it is not easy for someone to contradict himself so often and so strongly as Luther contradicts himself. In the sacrament of consecration he says: "The church has the power to distinguish the word of God from the words of men. How then can he say that the epistle is not worthy of the apostolic spirit, of which the church, whose judgment is unimpeachable according to his statement in this piece, has judged that it is full of the apostolic spirit? Thus, by his wisdom, he has caught himself on all sides in such a way that he must either prove that the epistle is the apostle's (of which he has said the opposite is only probable) or say that the church lacks in judging the divinity of a scripture, which he has denied according to the above. If he says that she has accepted and approved as worthy of the apostolic spirit something that is not worthy of the apostolic spirit, he blasphemes the church; if he confesses that the apostle has written something that does not belong to an apostle, he blasphemes the apostle.

60 In this way we have now sufficiently refuted (indeed, he has sufficiently refuted himself) that he said that the epistle is neither worthy of the apostle nor of the apostolic spirit. But we will now come to the point, wherewith he, as befits a brave man, apparently charges at the apostle and says: "Even if the epistle is of the apostle James, it is still not proper for an apostle to institute a sacrament by his own authority, that is, to give God's promise with an attached sign. For this belongs to Christ alone. O the great blessedness of our time, to which a new Gentile teacher, Luther, has risen, who takes the liberty of contradicting the apostles to their faces, as it were after Paul's example, because he does not keep straight to the gospel of Christ, but (which is still far more than if he made the Gentiles Jews) arrogates to himself the authority to promise grace and to institute sacraments, that is, that he uses the authority of Christ, after the manner of a proud and apostate angel, who said: I will set my throne by the side of midnight, and be like unto the Most High. Now the High

Priests do not feel bad to be scolded by the one who scolds the apostle for such an atrocious act. For since it is established that the epistle is the apostle's, what else does he do but apparently say that the apostle instituted a sacrament without violence and improperly? Yes, though he denies that it is the apostle's epistle, yet he says, lest he should cease from blasphemy, that he would speak thus if it were the apostle's. Although some have thought that the Holy Spirit, whom God sent down at Pentecost, taught the apostles to use sacraments, of which Spirit Christ said before: The Holy Spirit, whom I will send, the same will teach you all things, so let us not speak of this now, whether the apostle has the power to institute a sacrament, as it is not necessary to speak of this; But because it is clear that the apostle teaches that blessedness is a sacrament, we do not doubt that it is a true sacrament, and that the apostle was not so presumptuous as to give people something that is not a sacrament for a sacrament, but rather that if he himself did not have the power to institute sacraments, he taught in these words only of that which he received from Christ, who, as he wished to make known to the world something else through Matthew, something else through Lucas, something else through John, something else through the apostle Paul, why did he not also teach one thing and another through the apostle James?

61. After Luther, as you have seen, has so bravely held his ground against the apostle, he now directs all his thoughts to how he may ridicule the church, which, in Luther's opinion, does not use the apostle's words correctly, because it only gives blessedness to the terminally ill, in that Jacobus does not say: "If someone wants to die, but: When someone is ill, as if the church sinned in not using such an important thing, which is a sacrament, imprudently in any minor fever, which someone may have contracted through excessive drinking, or that it does not want to do miracles by force through the sacrament in such an illness, which can be relieved by a little sleep or fasting. So that one may not doubt (although Jacobus writes only of a sick person) that he did not understand one who was afflicted with a minor illness, but rather with such an illness, the expulsion of which could be a sign that the patient had to thank the Sacrament for the recovery, the prayers that are said over the sick person (which everyone considers to be ancient) give the impression that the Sacrament is a miracle,

but not for a new invention of those whom Luther calls theologians), namely that one does not have to use this sacrament, except in severe illnesses. And yet, just as such prayers do not promise the recovery of the body with certainty, they also do not give rise to doubts about it and are not, as Luther says, spoken over those who already see death before their eyes. For then they would ask in vain for recovery in so many little prayers if they were sure of death. Thus, the church does not want that which Luther so foolishly mocks, that it be the last cure, even though it is called the last, but rather that it not be the last, but that the sick person may be healed. If God does not want to make him well, this does not take away the power of the sacrament, whose most important healing is not of the body but of the soul. For Luther's argument about the power of the sign has no reason or power. 1) If this blessedness is a sacrament, he says, it is undoubtedly an effective sign that signifies and promises. Now it promises health and restoration of the sick, as the words clearly read: The prayer of faith will help the sick and the Lord will raise him up. But who does not see that the promise of the apostle James is fulfilled in a few? What shall we say then? Either the apostle must be lying in this promise, or the blessedness must not be a sacrament. For the promise of the sacraments is certain; but this fails in most. One can also only assume from this argument that Luther does not care to advance obvious blasphemies, if he can only deceive careless minds with some semblance of truth, as he is not ashamed to cite things against the theologians that they are supposed to have said, but are nowhere to be found. The sacrament, he says, is to be an effective sign of what he promises; but this sacrament does not bring back the health of the body that he promises. The theologians do not say this, but only that it is a powerful sign of grace. For this is how they describe it: the sacrament is a visible sign of invisible grace, not, they say, of bodily health, which can be given to one even without grace.

62 Therefore, when he says that it follows that, if this blessedness should be a sacrament, the apostle would be redeemed by it, Luther himself is lying. For a sacrament, insofar as it is a sacrament, does not promise the following

1) Cf. "Of the Babyl. Captivity," Col. 121.

the welfare of the body, but of the soul, through bodily signs. Otherwise, Luther would not only be lying to the apostle, but also to Christ Himself, even though the blessedness would not be a sacrament. For the words and promises must remain true even apart from the sacraments. So when the apostle says, Let him that is sick be helped by anointing and prayer, and Christ says, The signs which shall follow them that believe shall be, that they should lay hands on the sick, and it shall be better with them; who seeth not that this is sometimes done, but that it ought not always to be done? And yet those who promised it do not lie about it, since no one doubts that they did not promise bodily things, in whatever words they may have promised them, as everlasting goods, because the body, in which such 2) things should be manifested, cannot last continually. Of spiritual things, on the other hand, they promise that they will last forever, because the spirit by its nature will live forever. For Luther's opinion, which demands of the theologians that if blessedness is a sacrament, it should be permanent, so that it is not an invalid sign, is to the effect that it cannot be a sacrament, because it makes the body immortal, which he himself promises can happen by means of prayer, which is done by holy men in an undoubted faith. There is no doubt at all, he says, that even today, through such faith, as many could be healed as we would like. If this is true, such faith as he describes can make a man immortal. For if this can happen through faith, and not only occasionally, but (as Luther says) constantly (if it is only an undoubted faith), then it is believable that Luther, a man who is so inclined to faith that he almost announces war on good works in many places for the sake of faith, a man to whom God has now opened so many and great mysteries and who is establishing a new church, for which miraculous works are also necessary. Therefore, it is likely that Luther did everything by faith that can be done by faith. Only we must be surprised, if this is true, that he does not heal all the dying. 3) Every day we hear a rumor from Germany, as if the buried were already dead.

2) I.e., the promise given to the oel.

3) The following up to the end of this paragraph is incomprehensible to us. This much we recognize from the following paragraph that he wants to accuse Luther of murder.

We never hear that one of them was healed, but that some of his followers killed pious and innocent priests because of him, so that he could show by this example that the order of consecration was nothing, the (indelible) sign was a poem; David was afraid because he was repentant for having touched the anointed one of the Lord.

These are Luther's cures, which his unstable faith works without good works. For he who kills does not bring health. Hence, as Luther says, the prayer must not only be done by faith, but also by a pious man, which is the very thing that prevents Luther, because he is not righteous, from making anyone well. This healing is not a sacrament because it does not always heal the body. Luther is a holy man, through whom also the body, as they say, or at least the soul is killed. The apostle Jacob writes nothing that is worthy of the apostolic spirit; Luther writes everything that is worthy of the apostolic spirit, and what is not worthy of it he distinguishes, and that against the whole church, of which he himself confessed that it could not err in the distinction of such writings. After reading the epistle of James and seeing so much there that is worthy of the apostolic spirit, we wondered very much how it occurred to Luther to think that it was indecent, what the apostle wrote about joy in temptations, patience in tribulations, wisdom to ask God for, unquestioning trust to put in God, and other things (such as are found throughout the epistle). Should he rather write that the common people have no benefit from the mass and that consecration is an empty poem, and other such things that Luther writes? which, although it is most worthy of a derogatory spirit, he must not disparage when lesser apostles write of lesser things. Although we wondered for a while why Luther did not like Jacob's epistle, we finally stopped wondering after reading it several times and paying closer attention to everything. For the apostle writes in such a way that it seems as if he had known something about Luther beforehand in a prophetic spirit, so vividly does he attack the man everywhere; especially when Luther despises the works under the pretext of faith, while Jacobus presents reasons, scriptural passages and examples,

that faith without works is dead. In addition, he attacks Luther's chattering will to courage with sharp words, and not only in one place. "If anyone," he says, "among you lets himself think that he serves God, and does not hold his tongue in check, but deceives his heart, his worship is vain," Jac. 1. In addition, Luther must see that this is very suitable for his tongue, about which he clenches his teeth when he reads it: "The tongue is a restless evil, full of deadly poison," Jac. 3. 3 Finally, he must also recognize that his teachings are just contrary to what the apostle writes widely about the quarrelsome: "Who is wise and prudent among you? let him show by his good conduct his works in meekness and wisdom. But if ye have bitter envy and strife in your hearts, boast not, neither lie against the truth. For this is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but earthly, human and devilish. For where there is envy and strife, there is disorder and vain evil. But wisdom from above is at first chaste, then peaceful, gentle, let it be said, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial, without hypocrisy. But the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace to those who keep the peace."

This, dear reader, is what moves Luther, that he does not like the apostle. This, we say, is how the apostle evidently strikes Luther and the insolence, blasphemy, ungodly and quarrelsome teachings of Luther, no different than if he had seen the man and read his writing. Although Luther does not respect his epistle, we do not doubt that it proves the sacrament of the last rites to all Christians, and Luther will not be so powerful that he can overthrow a single sacrament that the orthodox church has accepted for the salvation of the faithful, which neither the gates of hell will overpower, much less a few monks, than a rusty back door of hell.

In this booklet, we hope that we have clearly shown you, O reader, how inconsistent and ungodly Luther dealt with the sacraments. For although we have not touched on everything that his book contains, it seems to us that we have dealt with the matter in defense of the sacraments themselves (for that was actually our intention), although not as extensively as it could have been; however, almost more extensively than would have been necessary, not to mention that we should have been able to hold out longer. Otherwise, it would not have been difficult to explain the matter more extensively, both with arguments, laws and sayings of the teachers, and from the Scriptures themselves.

if we did not do a futile task with regard to Luther and a superfluous task with regard to others. For if we wanted to bring Luther to better thoughts through our instruction, then a Moor will probably change his skin and a parder his spots. But if we wanted to show others how wrongly and wickedly Luther teaches, so that no one would be deceived into thinking well of him, there is no doubt that here and there are learned men who see this much more clearly without our recollection than we can make it known, and even if there are some who demand another's thoughts on this, we hope to have revealed ourselves sufficiently to them in this writing. For since from what we have presented it is only clear what kind of ecclesiastical robbery he harbors about the sacrament of the body of Christ (on which he defiles everything that the other sacraments have that is holy), who should doubt, even if we had added nothing more, how indecently he has no hesitation in acting on the sacraments?

For, as you see, he has acted in such a way that, apart from the one sacrament of baptism, which he treats badly enough, and which he deprives of all grace and leaves to nothing but a shameful repentance, he overturns all the other sacraments, denying the sign in one and something else in the other, and in such an important matter he neither proves nor adduces anything to support his opinion, but has enough to deny what the church accepts. What everyone believes, he alone scoffs at with unworthy reasons, and says that he accepts nothing but the bright and clear Scriptures, which, if anyone cites them, he either artificially rejects from himself, or else denies that they have the author who is given for them. Among the teachers, however, there is no one so old, no one so holy, no one of such great reputation in the interpretation of the holy Scriptures, whom this new teacher, who wants to be so holy and learned, does not reject with great respect. Therefore, since Luther despises everyone and believes no one, he must not become unwilling if no one believes him. And there is so much lacking that we would want to dispute with him more extensively, that we are rather sorry to have stayed with him so long. For what is the use of continuing to talk with someone who is not at one with all others, or even with himself, and what he denies in one place he asserts in another, and what he asserts he denies again? If you reproach him with faith, he argues with reason; if you strike him with reason, he insists on faith; if you lead him on the path of faith, he will not believe.

If you appeal to a wise man, he appeals to the Scriptures; if you present the Scriptures to him, he makes sophistries. He is not ashamed at all; he is afraid of no one and acts as if there were no law for him. He despises the old church teachers, laughs at the new ones, blasphemes the pope, the habits, teachings, customs, laws, conclusions and faith of the church, yes, he holds the church itself in such contempt that there is not much missing, he says there is no church but the one he makes up with a few heretics, of which he himself is the head. Therefore, since he is of the kind that he does not accept any principle that is certain and fixed, in which he would like to agree with his opponent, but wants to be left free to assert and deny something, what, when and how often he wants, not allowing himself to be bound by reason, nor by Scripture, nor by customs, nor by laws, nor finally by a reputation, be it human or divine: We have therefore decided not to get involved with him any further, and consider that one should not laboriously argue against such heresies, which have no foundation at all, but rather only admonish all Christians to beware of him as an abominable pestilence, who endeavors to introduce such shameful and abominable things, which are even the teachings of the Antichrist, into the church of Christ. For if every care must be taken to root out him who seeks to cause division over a single issue, how much more care must be taken to expel him who not only continues to spread division and agitate the church against the pope, the son against the father, the Christians against the governor of Christ, and at last to divide the whole church of Christ (which, since he was about to die, he united to him by love) by sedition, strife, and contention, but also to overthrow, profane, and defile what is holy in it with his vile heart, with his shameful tongue, and with his lurking hands? Who, if he still gave some hope and some signs of improvement, we would hereby have exhorted everyone to take care of this so very depraved and wretched man, and to make an effort to help him as much as possible and to bring him to a better mind to recant the heretical teachings he has spread. But at present we see no other signs than those that are usually harbingers of death. I am moved to believe this not only by his illness, although fatal, but rather by himself, because he has no medicine and no hand that can heal.

takes. For how can he be healed who cannot be dealt with? Or how can inan deal with the one who talks uselessly when you teach him something, who gets angry when you remind him, who is unruly when you admonish him, who gets hot-tempered when you try to calm him down, who acts like a fool when you contradict him? Otherwise, if he could be helped, the most holy governor of Christ would not have left anything undone, so that, following the example of his shepherd, he would search for this erring sheep, find it, put it on his shoulders and bring it back to the fold. But unfortunately the infernal wolf has stolen this sheep before, devoured it and let it down in the middle of its belly, where it, lying half dead and in the last throes, against the pious shepherd, who calls out to it and sighs at its destruction, emits the most ugly barking from the unclean maw of the infernal wolf, at which the ears of the whole flock are disgusted and frightened.

For at first, when no one had challenged him, he issued the sentences of indulgence, in which, under the pretext of godliness, he impiously carried out papal sanctity. Afterwards, in order to insult him even more under the pretense of honor and guilt, he sent them to Rome, as if he wanted to subject them to the pope's judgment, after he had previously increased them with explanations that were much worse than the articles themselves, so that everyone would see, The pope is not being asked for advice by an honest and pious man, but is being mocked by a scoundrel, as if he were so stupid that he considered the great insult, which has no equal, an honor and, as they say, let the mocker pull out his beard. If the pope deserves nothing bad, what ill-bred son has ever insulted his innocent father? And even if there was something going on in Rome that needed to be changed: Luther, if he had been honest and had made Christianity his business (for which he wanted to be respected), would not have preferred his private honor to the common good; Much less would he have hunted down the fame of making fun of ungodly people and mocked them with the shame of a sleeping father, and after uncovering them, pointed them out with his fingers, but rather covered them up backwards and either orally or in writing secretly made a reverent reminder, according to the command of the apostle, who wills: That we should not mock the aged, nor reproach them, but entreat or exhort them. Which, if Luther had done, we have no doubt that it would have been

the most holy pope (so great is his manly known kindness), after he woke up, blessed his son Japhet and thanked him for his love, but did not curse him in anger, as he had not yet cursed a mocker, but bore him with merciful compassion and rather, considering that he is a son than that he is a mocker, had him dealt with by men of repute, before whose face he would not be worthy to appear, only so that he would desist from his wickedness. But there is so much missing that he obeyed this so godly and salutary advice that he not only scoffed at the man who had been sent away, who was worried about his welfare, but also published a new writing impromptu, in which he intended to throw the papal authority over a heap. After he was summoned to Rome, either to give an account of his writings or to recant his imprudent writing, and he was promised all the security of the well-deserved punishment to be meted out, together with a sufficient travel allowance, he nevertheless, so that he might show an immense modesty of an obedient man, did not want to come to the pope, except provided with a royal armament and accompanied by an armed crew. But the cautious man appealed to a general assembly, and that to one which was to be held soon in the Holy Spirit, so that he wanted to deny that in the assembly in which he would be condemned there was the Holy Spirit, as the holy and spiritual man does not think to be found anywhere but with him.

68. Thus, having been reminded once upon a time to change his ungodly mind, the godly shepherd, because he heaped one ungodliness upon another, was finally compelled to cast this sheep, which was sick with incurable mange (so that it would not infect the healthy sheep by touching it), out of the sheepfold far away, from the sheepfold far away, and to lament the death of his Absalom, whose life he could not preserve, by seeing hanging on the tree the ornament of his main hair, with which he had strutted thorougly. As soon as Luther saw that he had been cast out of the community of believers, he did as the wicked are wont to do when they are lamented, who consider it nothing if they fall into a deep pit. He did not bemoan and lament his misfortune, by which, like Satan, he suddenly fell from on high and was crushed, but by following the devil in despair, he himself is a devil, that is, a blasphemer.

and has begun to cast blasphemies and slander against the pope and, as the old serpent, to lay ropes of seduction for other believers whom he is hostile to, so that, as soon as they would eat of the forbidden tree of harmful knowledge, he would help to drive them out of the church paradise, from which he has been expelled, into a land that bears thorns and thistles. Certainly, we are very distressed about this great foolishness of this man and about his miserable condition and wish that, by the grace of God, he will change his mind, convert and live, and we do not wish this for his sake (although it is also for his sake), as we wish that, if it were possible, all would be saved), but so that when he once converts and, as the prodigal son, takes refuge in the compassion of his kind father and recognizes his error, he may also rebuke those whom he has led astray.

(69) By the way, if he has plunged so deep that a well of wickedness and despair pours over him, he may still gossip, blaspheme, revile and rage,

so that whoever is unclean may always be unclean. But we admonish and ask all other Christians for the sake of the wounds of Christ (whose teachings we profess), that they may turn away their ears from ungodly words and speeches and not cherish division and discord, especially at the present time, when Christians should primarily love harmony against the enemies of Christ; That they also give no ear to the invectives and calumnies which Luther's rage against the pope, the governor of Christ, casts, nor stain their hearts, which are sanctified to Christ, with ungodly heresies. For he who scatters such things is empty of all love, puffed up with the lust for glory, frosty of reason, and burning with hatred and envy.

Finally, with the same courage with which they would oppose the Turks, Saracens and other infidels, they should stand against this single man, who is weak in power but far more harmful in spirit than all Turks, Saracens and infidels.

End.