January 14, 1520.
Yours, Georg Spalatin.
JEsus!
Hail! I am very happy and thank God, my dear Spalatin, that my cause
has come to the point that my enemies now accuse me both because of the doctrine of the two forms and because of my origin, and let everything else go. Through the great mercy of Christ towards me, I am un-.
*) This letter is found in Aurifaber, vol. II, lol. 328 d and in De Wette, vol. Ill, p. 158. In the latter muh the original; darnach we have translated.
and in Erlanger Briefwechsel, Vol. II, p. 293. We have translated according to De Wette.
I live in hope that I will not perish for the sake of some right doctrine concerning an important point, such as free will, grace, and the keys of the church. For in these matters my enemies seem to despair of me, because they bring up such ridiculous things. For just as Christ was crucified for the sake of the one word: a king of the Jews, so it also happens to me for the sake of the doctrine of both forms, which I have neither commanded nor forbidden to take, as even the scholastics have taught.
No one will be able to give more certain information about my origin than the Counts of Mansfeld. And I think that these heroes still have so much honor and reputation in the empire that their testimony in this matter deserves belief. I assume that this tale was spouted by Ochsenfart, the Leipzig theologian, who had also invented that Eck was killed in order to spy on us: a man who cannot keep peace and cannot leave others in peace, ready to do harm everywhere, a completely wretched man, but still powerless.
By the way, I was born in Eisleben and baptized there in St. Peter's Church. I cannot remember this, but I believe my parents and other people in my fatherland. My parents migrated there from a place near Eisenach. Almost all my relatives live in Eisenach, and I was known to my friends there and still am, because I studied there for four years. No city knows me better than this one. I hope, however, that they would not have been so simple-minded that one would have taken Luther's son for his grandson, another for his mother's brother, still another for his sibling (of whom I have many relatives there), if they had been aware that my father and my mother were Bohemians and completely different from those who were born there. The following time I lived at the university and in the monastery in Erfurt, until I came to Wittenberg. I also spent a year in Magdeburg as a boy of fourteen.
(4) There you have my life and my origin; but I would rather, like Christ before Herod and Annas, keep silent about this matter, so that the furious people would believe such things, which are worthy of them, until they once become ashamed. It is a generation that cannot be moved either by whistling or by complaining, for which one strives in vain for any man to help it.
At this very hour, I received your letter about Carl von Miltitz, of whom you write that he highly praised that he had never seen me. Why then did he confess against the barber Andreas, who had become his traveling companion as far as Pretisch (as the latter publicly boasts), that he had seen me, and I do not know what terrible things were done against me? But let them lie, write poetry, and make up as they go along. Everything goes over me, and oh! that I would only soon get rid of my office to read and to teach. But if I must continue to teach, my dear Spalatin, then I cannot see your advice and that of yours, which you remember, that the holy teachings of God can be taught without offending the popes. The scripture deals primarily with the abuses in the church service, which the popes will not be able to suffer.
I have given myself and offered myself as a sacrifice in the name of the Lord. His will be done. Who asked him to make me a teacher? If he has made me one, let him have his will; or if he repents of having made me one, let him make it void. This affliction does not make me at all despondent, but rather makes the sails of my heart swell incredibly, so that I now learn from myself why the devils are compared to the winds in the Scriptures. For by exhausting themselves through raging (efflant), they strengthen (inflant) others through suffering. The only thing I am primarily concerned about is that the Lord gives me his grace in my cause, which I am leading for him, and in this you also want to be helpful to me according to your ability.
7. but the cause of the people let us in
Pray faithfully to God, and be without worry. For what can men do to us? Will they kill us? Can they bring us back to life so that they will kill us again? Will they revile us as heretics? Christ was condemned with the wicked, the seducers and the accursed. When I look at his suffering, it grieves me greatly that my temptation is regarded by so many and great people not only as something, but even as a very great one, since it is in fact nothing; only that we are completely weaned from suffering and evil, that is, from the Christian life.
8 So let it be, the more my enemies oppress me, the more surely I will mock them. I have resolved with myself to fear nothing in this matter, but to regard everything as nothing. And where I was not concerned to weave the prince into it, I wanted to issue a confident protection writing, these infernal plague spirits (Erynnidas) still
more irritate and laugh at their quite foolish rage against me.
9 I will speak to you orally about the widow 1). I have told and read to Philip what you have written. You are not right to accuse the provost at Kemberg 2); Magister Spalatin is to blame. For I asked you the day before whether the prince would stay the Sunday or not? You answered: you do not know. After that, no one told me a word about the sermon, but I had promised the provost beforehand that I would come to him on that day and preach to his people; it seemed to me that I had to stay there, because I was not hindered by any other order; but I think there is no danger, because of the great distance of our place. Farewell and pray for me. The 14th of January, in the year 1520.
Martin Luther, August.
1) Walpurgis Landmann.
2) Bartholomew Bernhardt.