56. brother Richard's publishing of the Koran,

Written Anno 1300, Germanized by Luther, with his preface and attached warning. *)

About the end of April 1542.

Martin Luth, D.

(1) This book of Brother Richard of the Order of Preachers, called Confutatio Alcoran, I used to read more, but I could not believe that there were sensible people on earth whom the devil should persuade to believe such a shameful thing, and I always thought that it was invented by the French writers, as they have made all their histories suspect with their eternal lies in honor of the pope. However, I would have liked to see the Alcoran myself, and wondered how it happened that the Alcoran had not long since been brought into the Latin language, since Mahmet has now reigned longer than nine hundred years and has done so much harm, but no one has bothered to find out what Mahmet's faith was; they have only been satisfied that Mahmet was an enemy of Christian faith, but where and how, from piece to piece, has not been said; which is necessary to know.

But now, this Shrovetide, I have seen the Alcoran in Latin, but very badly interpreted, that I still wished to see a clarifier. So much, however, noticed from it, that this brother Richard does not invent his book, but tunes it at the same time. And that no false delusion can be here, so brother Richard has been probably two hundred years ago, almost under Emperor Alberto the First, since Dominici and Francisci Order have not been old. For he speaks and knows nothing about Turks, which

1) In the old editions: Watschen.

first began to reign 200 years ago, and this next hundred years 2) (sint King Matthias' times) have grown so much that they have eaten up the Saracens, who reigned for nine hundred years, by Zelim, this Turk's father, Anno 1517, and are now called the Turkish Empire. I say this because I have to believe this brother Richard, who so long before has moved the Alkoran, so the same neither before nor until now with us no one has seen, and still see indistinctly.

Therefore, I consider it useful and necessary to translate this booklet (because there is no better one), so that we Germans may also recognize how shameful the faith of Mahomet is, so that we may be strengthened in our Christian faith. For since Mahmet receives victory, happiness, power and honor in the world through God's wrath or doom, but we Christians bear the cross of our Lord, and are to be blessed not here on earth, but there in that life, the common man of flesh and blood is easily moved to that place, where there seems to be no cross, but only good and honor in this life, to which Mahmet also directs his Alkoran.

4. suMma, where we cannot convert the Saracens and now the Turks, but that we in turn also remain firm and strong in our faith, and do not allow ourselves to be moved that the Saracens and Turks so much

2) "hundred" is missing in the Wittenberger.

3) Walch and the Erlangers: easy.

*On March 26, 1542, Luther wrote to Jakob Probst (De Wette, Vol. V, p. 452) that he was busy with the "translation of the refutation of the Alkoran Mahomet", and Besold wrote on April 11, 1542- about this writing, "that it will be printed soon" (Köstlin, Martin Luther, Vol. II, p. 686 sä p. 603); according to this is our approximate time determination. The writing appeared first in Wittenberg with Hans Luft 1542, and still in the same year in another edition without indication of place and printer. In the collections: in the Wittenberg (1551), vol. II, p. 494d; in the Jena (1562), vol. VIII, p. 11 d; in the Altenburg, vol. VIII, p. 12 and in the Leipzig, vol. XXI, p. 657. Only the preface and the epilogue in the Erlangen, vol. 65, p. 190. We give the text of the writing according to the Jenaer under comparison of the Wittenberger, the preface and epilogue under comparison of the Erlanger, which brings the text according to the original printing.

a hundred years of victory and happiness against the Christians, but we had many misfortunes against them, until they became masters of the world, always prevail with great honor and good, but we are defeated with great shame and harm. This is not because Mahomet's faith is right and ours is wrong, as the blind Turks claim, but because this is God's way of governing His people.

First of all, that he punishes and oppresses them because of their sin, as the 79. 1) Psalm, v. 8. 9. says, and the histories of the children of Israel teach abundantly with many examples; and St. Peter 1 Petr. 4, 17-19. (Proverbs 11, 31.]: "It is now such a time that God's punishment or judgment must begin on the house of God. But first of all, what will be the end of those who do not believe in the Gospel of God? And if the righteous is barely (or with difficulty) preserved, where will the wicked and the sinner appear? Therefore, those who suffer according to God's will, let them commit their souls to Him, as to the faithful Creator, in good works." Thus Jerem. 25, 29: "Behold, in the city which is called by my name I began to afflict; and ye shall go unpunished? Ye shall not go unpunished."

(6) Secondly, Christ's blood must be shed from the beginning of the world to the end, so that many martyrs may go to heaven, because not only the blood of his saints (all of which is called his blood), but also his own personal blood must be shed. Woe to those who shed it! He has driven these two pieces through Mahmet and is still driving them. For Mahmet has tormented the Christians more cruelly than any tyrant, and the Christians well deserved such punishment, since they separated themselves with heresy and mobs, many new doctrines, and in addition lived angrily in ingratitude and contempt of the precious blood of Christ, that they might be redeemed and not atone. Thus the Mahmet also makes many martyrs than are ever made, that he strangles so many innocent children and otherwise pious Christians horribly.

7 But the great wrath is upon himself,

1) Erlanger: the 89th Psalm.

that he is so terribly rejected by God, not only to inflict such punishment and bloodshed (which is not yet too high for a Christian heart to suffer and overcome), but also to lead so many people into eternal damnation with him in body and soul through his lies, as the pope also did and still does. These are the right last, terrible, horrible, most annoying plagues, hard for a Christian to bear in his heart, as the 89th Psalm v. 47. 48. almost grumbles against God and says: "Lord, how long will you hide yourself like this, and let your anger burn like fire? Remember how short is my life; wilt thou then have created all men in vain?" So let us leave the Turks and Saracens with their Mahmet, "as the wrath of God has come upon them to the end" (as Saint Paul says of the Jews [1 Thess. 2, 16.]) and think how we may be preserved and remain in God's grace, so that we may not be condemned with the Mahmet, nor let its great power, honor, victory, happiness and good entice and entice us, nor its terrible sword deter us. For this Richard also testifies that the Mahometans are not to be converted, for the reason that they are so hardened that they mock almost all articles of our faith and mockingly laugh at them as if they were fools washing impossible things.

(8) And where shall they be converted, if they reject the whole holy scripture, both New Testament and Old Testament, as now dead and unfit, and confess no discourse nor disputation of the holy scripture to any man, stopping up their ears, eyes, and hearts firmly against the blessed book of the holy scripture, abiding in their alcoran. This means wrath against all wrath, for which our dear Father in heaven protects us through his dear Son Jesus Christ and his Holy Spirit. We would rather, and it is better, suffer His wrath of temporal punishment and bloodshed, than to deny the Holy Scriptures with the devil and his apostle Mahmet and his saints, the Turks, and fall eternally into the eternal wrath of God with their victory, happiness, power, honor and good. "The Lord is my helper (says the beautiful Confitemini),

and I will see my pleasure in my enemies. The Lord is with me, therefore I will not fear; what can men do to me?" Amen. [Psalm 118:7, 6.]

Preface Brother Richards.

1) In the time of Emperor Heraclius 1) a man arose, yes, a devil and a firstborn child of Satan, against the truth and against the Christian church, who drowned in carnal immorality and dealt in black arts, named Mahmet. He has 2) from the inspiration and help of him, who is a liar and a father of all lies [Joh. 8, 44.], let a law go out full of lies and injustice, but with the appearance that it was spoken from the mouth of God: the same he has called Alkoran, that is, a summa or assembly, namely of the divine commandments. This Mahmet has persecuted the Christian church, neither harder those who have gone before, nor those who will come after. For he has not attacked the church in one way, but with all three, namely, with tyranny like the tyrants, with false doctrine like the heretics, and with deceit of glittering holiness like the hypocrites or false brethren, so that he has brought the greatest part of the world under himself with his deceit by God's decree, 3) who is wondrous in his doings among the children of men.

(2) Therefore I, Richard, the least of the Order of Preachers, have taken heed, and have directed my walk according to God's commandment. For after I had traveled over many seas and through many deserts, I also came to Babylon, the glorious city of the Saracens, where they have their high schools, which are very large; there I learned the Arabic script and language, and debated without ceasing and most diligently with their doctors and scholars, but found more and more how utterly shameful the said Alkoran law is. I also began to interpret it into Latin, but there were so many tales, lies, blasphemies, and always one useless babble after another that I was overwhelmed with great sadness.

1) Marginal gloss of the Jena edition: "In this year 1540 Heraclius has been dead for 900 years. - Heraclius reigned from 611-641. - In the Wittenberg edition (whose second volume first appeared in 1548), the marginal gloss reads: "In this 1548 Heraclius is just 906 year todt gewest." Instead of "1540" in the Jena edition, "1542" was probably intended.

2) Thus taken over by us from the old edition of Walch. Wittenberg and Jena: hats.

3) Wittenberger: verhengnis.

3) But this time I want to point out and indicate 4) the noble main points and lies of this shameful law with the help of the Most High, who is truth itself, so that other brethren may have cause, so that they may all the more easily convert such heretics, seduced by this law, back to God.

Chapter I.

From the main pieces of this alcoran.

4 Thus it is to be noted that all the filth, which the devil spreads from time to time through other heretics, he has fed out in one heap through Mahmet. With Sabellio he holds that God is not three persons, but he sets a branch in the Godhead (which rhymes with nothing in the Godhead); the one he calls God himself or God's being; the other he calls God's soul, and this is to be Christ, of a different and lesser being than God's subject. Therefore he introduces God in the Alkoran, that he speaks in two persons' names, and is divided 5) and says: We have done this, we have commanded this etc. And this he got from the Arians, who taught that Christ was God's Son, who was a creature or God's creature, but far above all creatures, as through whom God had created everything else. So also Mahmet says that Christ is the most holy man above all others, and is a power far above all. Therefore, he calls him God's Word, God's Spirit, God's Soul; but that he should be a true, natural, essential God is very ridiculous to him, and considers the Christians to be ridiculous gross fools who believe such things.

And here he needs two causes: The first, that Christ never called himself God. The other, that he taught the contradiction. 6) Therefore Mahmet says (mockingly): The Christians say that Christ is God, while he himself says to the Jews: You shall worship my God and your God, my Lord and your Lord. And so Mahomet's foremost opinion is that Christ is neither God nor the Son of God, but a wise holy man and great prophet, born of a virgin without a father. For he says, 7) it is impossible for God to have a son, because he has no wife. And where he should have a son, there would be Him-

4) "will" is missing in the Wittenberger.

5) sich ihrzet" - speaks of itself in the majority.

6) Marginal gloss of the Jenaers and Wittenbergers: He got that from the Arians. O cleverness!

7) Marginal gloss there: He got this from the Jews, who are still talking like this today.

mel and earth and all creatures in great danger, for there would ultimately have to be discord among them.

He further says: 1) The Jews did not crucify or kill Christ, but another who resembled him. In this he almost agrees with the Manichaeans.

7 He further says: God has taken Christ to Himself, and He will be revealed again at the end of the world and will kill the end Christ. After that, God will let Christ die.

8) Further he says that also the devils can be saved by the Alkoran; and of the same many, since they heard this, 2) have become Saracenes.

9 He further says: He himself, Mahmet, went up to God, when the angel Gabriel was sent after him by God, God laid his hand on him, and when he was thus touched by God, he was so frozen that [it] also went through the marrow of his back.

10 He further says that the Holy Spirit is a creature, as the Macedonians said.

11 But that he says that the angels became devils, because they would not worship Adam as God had commanded them; in this he has no one to follow.

(12) But because he deludes and deceives about the eternal blessedness to come, that it should be in carnal pleasures, good living, delicious garments, and merry gardens, he has this from Cerintho and some other unbelievers.

13 And he holds that circumcision must be kept; as the Ebionites taught.

(14) He shall permit them to have many wives in wedlock, as well as concubines and maids, and to catch and feed as much as one of them may in war, and to rob and take the wives of others in war.

15 And he commanded that they all be put to death, if they obey not this law, or be liable to interest.

16) And in the chapter Vacca (that is, cow) he looks as if he allows both men and women to commit silent sins, although the descendants adorn them with beautiful glosses.

17 And this is the sum of it: Everything that is hard to believe and hard to do in the Scriptures, he cuts off, and allows what one is inclined to in this temporal life, as, carnal lusts, robbery and murder, to which especially the wild, raw people, the Arabs, have desire; because he is an Arab.

18. but of the right virtues, as, De

1) Marginal gloss: He got that from himself, as the third master.

2) Marginal gloss: That is true, devils, Saracens, Turks are. One thing.

He speaks of courage, patience, chastity, peace, and of eternal life nothing worth reading.

19) But so that such of his 3) traits would not be mislaid by the Old and New Testaments, or by the old 4) philosophers' books written about virtues, he commanded that nothing in them should be considered truth that was contrary to his law, and called for all those to be severely punished who spoke against it. 5)

20 But he praises the Psalter and other prophets highly.

21. also says, 6) Christ prophesied much of him in the gospel to the children of Israel, saying, I proclaim to you an apostle of God, who will come after me, whose name is Mahmet. And boast that this name is written from eternity on the throne of God above, at the right hand.

22 But to prove this, that it should be believed, he did no miracle at all, but drew out a sword, and said, He was sent of God, not with powers of miracles, but with powers of the sword, or weapons.

These are the most important parts of the Alkoran, that is, the Saracen Law; otherwise there are countless lies in it, some of which we will deal with in the 9th chapter.

Chapter II.

How to deal with them.

. (24) Secondly, it is to be known that they are very nigern und kützeln 7) to hear of our faith, especially of three persons in the Godhead and of the humanity of Christ; not that they desire to know or believe it, but that they mock our faith and make their laughter of it. For what is beyond reason and human understanding they cannot understand. Therefore they do not want to believe it, even though Isaiah says: "If you do not believe, you will not understand", Is. 7, 9. And because it is also contrary to their Alkoran (which they firmly believe to be God's word), they do not let them say anything about it and do not pay attention to it. Therefore, it is not necessary to first discuss with them the high articles of our faith and to cast pearls before swine [Matth. 7, 6.], but to take this way and manner, namely, from their

3) Thus set by us. Jenaer: "such his"; Wittenberger: "such his".

4) "old" is missing in the Jena.

5) talk tbursten - dared to talk.

6) Marginal gloss: O devil! Ivan. 5: Alius betrayed in homilie suo.

7) i.e. curious and ticklish.

Alcoran, and do diligence to prove such their law false and void. For since faith teaches us such things as are incomprehensible, let us be content that it is confirmed by the gospel (which the Alcoran himself also praises) and by miracles, since they have neither gospel nor miracles to prove 1) their law, but hold what reason can comprehend, like the Gentiles.

35 And though the Alcoran says, Ye shall not call three gods, cause it is One God; this is not against us, and proves nothing. For we ourselves say, as do the pagans, that there is only one God, and that he is united and indivisible, so that nothing could be more united. Nor do we give him a companion, as they do, who is called God's soul, God's spirit, God's word, as if he were his servant; so that one would be justified in asking them why the Alkoran makes God speak more than many, or we, if they insist that he is one, and not many or we. But because the Saracens deny both miracles and the Apostles' Scriptures, where they are against the Alcoran, there is no other way to deal with them, except that the Alcoran is not God's law. Which one can also do through the Alcoran, and thus strike Goliath with his own sword.

Chapter III.

That the Alkoran is not God's law, because neither Old nor New Testament testify nor prophesy of it.

26 There is no testimony of Mahomet, neither in the Old nor in the New Testament, but he himself and only he testifies of himself, without miraculous signs and without writing; therefore he cannot be of God, and denies, since he boasts that he is a prophet to the whole world. But to this he answers thus: it is well prophesied of him, both in the Old and New Testament, but the Jews have falsified the Old Testament, the Christians the New Testament; but he has taken out the best, and nothing true remains in the Old and New Testament, without what he has collected and selected in the Alkoran. Otherwise, 2) Christ would have proclaimed in the Gospel to the children of Israel: "I proclaim to you an apostle who will come after me, whose name is Mahmet.

27. that this is not true, I prove therefore; for he himself [Mahmet] in the chapter of Jonah says thus: Where you doubt that which we have now 1) "to" here inserted by us and "to" before "have" to you.

erased from us.

2) In the old editions: had.

ask those who have read the book (the Bible) before you etc. But this is what the Jews and Christians find. If then the books of the Bible are falsified, why does he assign his Saracen brothers to false ones? Is he a prophet of truth, and skins himself here in the cheeks?

28 Thus he also speaks in the chapter Elagar, which means stone: We (God) have sent down monitiones, admonitions, which we also want to receive. But admonitions are called the gospel and the law of Moses. So God must preserve the Gospel and the Laws of Moses both before and after Mahomet; how then does he reproach them for falsifying God's preservation, the holy prophet? Item, in the chapter Elmaida, that is table, is thus written: When the judge of Empacene said to Mahmet: How shall I tell the Jews, if they seek justice from me? said Mahmet: How do they seek justice from you? they have the Old Testament, where God's justice is written. Now tell me, how do you deny that the Jews have forged the Old Testament? Or do you direct them to the false book, you holy truthful prophet?

(29) It is also foolish to say that the Bible should be forged, since all the heretics in the world have used it against the Christians, and it would be ridiculous for the heretics to use a different Bible than that of the Christians. For then they would have known that their new Biblia would have been worthless against the old Biblia of the Christians, and again, the Christians against their Biblia, because there were two different Biblia. But now it is a matter of one Bible, who has it or not.

30 Further: towards the morning there were many sects before Mahmet was born, especially the Nestorians and Jacobites. The Nestorians, however, agree more with the Saracens than the Jacobites; that is why they gave honor to Mahmet above all others. But how is it credible to reason that the Nestorians and Jacobites became one with each other, who were so hostile to each other that they even strangled each other?

Item, why should the Christians have removed the name Mahmet from the gospel before, which praises Christ and his mother, also the gospel? For thus he says in the Alkoran: In the gospel of Christ is truth and perfection. Much more would they have erased the names Pilati, Herodis, Jude, Caiphä etc.

32) How can it rhyme that the Christians should have put in the gospel how Christ was crucified and died, so that it would have been much better for the Christians and easier for the world to believe that they have Christ?

not crucified nor died would have preached (as

(the Mahmet does), especially because it is foolish and impossible for all reason to believe that he who is a true God should die?

33. nor has the whole world accepted this, emperors, kings, scholars, and poor unlearned laymen, as the apostles and their disciples were. So also a Saracen Caliphas or Soltan died as a Christian in Babylon, and a cross was found on his neck, that he might bear witness that, though he had been the Saracen Soltan, yet he wished to die as a Christian; wherefore he was also specially buried, not in the place where others are wont to be buried, and I have seen the grave myself.

34 Item, in the chapter Elmaida (Table) it says: There is nothing with the company of the book, where they do not keep the gospel and the law. "Society of the Book" is the name of the Saracens who have accepted the Alkoran. So they must keep the Gospel and the Law of Moses, besides the Alkoran, which is their own law (as they say), or there is nothing with them; how then shall they keep corrupted books according to God's and their Mahomet's commandments? Or do God and their prophet honor truth and lies at the same time?

35 Lastly, they are guilty of showing us where they have found an unadulterated Bible, because they are all said to be false; they must convince the false with a true one, or be liars, and be guilty of keeping with us the Biblia, which is the same in all the world, or condemn its Alkoran by its own judgment as a book of lies.

Chapter IV.

That Alkoran could not be God's law, because he has another way of speaking.

The Alkoran does not have the way of speaking that other holy scriptures have, for it is definitely set in rhyme or poetry, as songs are sung. But to speak in such a way is not only against the holy scriptures, but also against all philosophers, laws and other textbooks, without where the songs are. For it is not fitting, if one should preach, teach or speak in court, that he should come along with rhymes, as if he wanted to sing a song or play a mischievous game. Although the Saracens and Arabs praise this highly, as if it were a sign that their law is revealed by God to the Mahomet and is all the more glorious, if the contradiction is true. For no prophet, lawyer or philosopher has ever spoken poetically or in rhyme where he should have taught and preached to the common people.

Therefore also some reproached Mahomet, as it is written in the chapter Elempii, and said: How is it with thee? Dost thou dream? or wilt thou dance? or art thou foolish? For no reasonable man can suffer anything to be told or reported to him, especially if it is new that someone wants to do it with rhymes. He would have to think that one wanted to mock him or make a joke in serious matters; singing and rhyming otherwise have their time and space, here it is not suitable.

37 Furthermore, the Alcoran is full of his own useless praise. For he may well teach nothing everywhere for a whole chapter, but only speak in God's person that God is great, high, wise, good, just, and that he is all that there is in heaven, on earth, and in the means, and he is to be praised. And he should do this more than a hundred times, and then follow it: there is no God but God, and he believes God and his apostle (means himself by this); and in this he forgets, like a madman, that he himself speaks such things about God. For it is not God's way to speak thus in His own person: Know that God is great etc., but the prophets and others speak of God thus; but God speaks of Himself thus: I am your GOtt, I have made all things, mine is all things, I am gracious etc. Not so in Alkoran: God is your God, as if he spoke of another, which he was not.

38 Thirdly, the Alkoran uses impudent, coarse, lewd words when speaking of the work of the flesh, as do the harlots and knaves in the whorehouse, or other coarse impudent people. But the Holy Spirit speaks of it in the Scriptures in a very chaste way; as: Adam knew his wife Eve; item: David went in to Bethsaba; item: Elisabeth became pregnant etc. Because also the right and philosophi, as public speakers, chastely and shamefully speak of it. But Mahmet was so deeply immersed in fornication that he liked to speak shamefully in public about such wretched need or evil sinful lust, and teaches how to speak, as those do who are like him in the insatiable lust of the flesh.

39 Fourth, it is obvious and certain to all who read it that the Alcoran is full of fables and useless fairy tales, so I will put a little here. In the chapter Emele, which means fly, it is written that Solomon gathered a great army of angels, men and unreasonable animals. As they went along, they found flies like a great stream of water. Then Solomon said to the flies: Arise, ye flies, into your dwelling, that Solomon and his host destroy you not. But the flies smiled. Soon after, all the birds in the army were there without the flies.

were not there. And Solomon said, How is it that I see no fly? I will punish it and cut off its head, or else causes shall tell me why it is not there. Then said the fly: I have learned more than you; I come to you now from Sabea with true new paper. Then I found a woman ruling over them, whom I forced, together with her people, to worship the sun in God's stead. etc.

. Item, in the chapter Caramar, that is, moon, Luna, thus it is written: The hour came, and the moon was broken. Their scholars interpret this as follows: Mahmet once stood with his company and watched the moon as it almost wanted to become new. Then they said to him: "Dear, let us see a sign. So he beckoned to the moon with two fingers, his thumb and middle finger. When he did so, the moon split into two pieces, and one piece fell on Mount Eleventh, which is near the city of Mecca 1) on one side, and the other piece fell on Mount Rubus, which is on the other side of the city. When the moon was thus divided, it crept into Mahmet's skirt, and he made it whole again.

Item, in the chapter Seni he says, how a worm announced Solomon's death to the devils. They glossed over it thus: Solomon leaned on his staff, then suddenly such a great pain came upon him that his soul went out in a flash. But he did not fall down, by the miracle of God. The devils, however, who had to be subjected to him, seeing that he was standing, thought that he was asleep. Then a worm grew out of the earth and gnawed the staff in two, so Solomon fell down. And the devils ran to 2) and saw that he was dead. So they began to harm the people with all their might.

42) Item, in the chapter of Erzelen 3) he himself, Mahmet, sets the reasons why wine is forbidden, and says: God sent two angels on earth, that they should rule well and judge right, one was called Aroth, the other Maroth. Then a pious woman came and invited them as her guests, and gave them wine to drink, when God had forbidden that they should not drink wine. When they were drunk, they asked to sleep with her; 4) she agreed, but with the condition that the one taught her to go to heaven and the other taught her to go back down. So she went to heaven. But when God saw her and heard her

1) In the Wittenberg and the Jena: Mecha.

2) Marginal gloss: These are silly and young devils gewest.

3) Perhaps: "telling", as Walch resolved it.

4) Marginal gloss: Here stands the chaste Mahmet's word.

He made her a morning star, so that she would be as beautiful among the stars in heaven as she had been the most beautiful among women on earth. 5) But to the angels he gave the choice whether they wanted to be punished here or there. And because they chose rather to suffer the punishment here, he let them hang by the feet with an iron chain in the well of Babylon until the last day.

43 These and many other things are written in the Alkoran, from which all reasonable people may conclude that such a law cannot be divine. For even nature teaches, if there were no Bible, that the true God would not speak to men through such fables.

Chapter V.

That the Alkoran does not agree with the Holy Scriptures or other reasonable teachings.

44 It is obvious that the Alkoran of virtues or good works, and of man's blessedness, does not agree with the philosophers either, let alone with the holy Scriptures; for the philosophers speak much of all kinds of virtues, and that man's blessedness is found in contemplation, not in carnal pleasures. But Christ clearly says John 17:3: "This is life eternal, that they may know thee, the one true God, and him whom thou hast sent, Jesus Christ. And Moses, 2 Mos. 33, 13. 18., having seen many wonders of God, and being full of gifts, nevertheless heartily desired to behold God's face.

45) But Mahmet is not about virtues at all, 6) but about wars and robberies, the long way to hell. And will they help nothing to blessedness (as they think) when they speak these words: 7) There is no God but God, and Mahmet is God's apostle. So he also puts man's blessedness in carnal pleasures, in eating, drinking, beautiful clothes, funny gardens, pretty clean women, of which afterwards in the 6th chapter. And no one can say that he speaks these things as parables, which should mean something else, spiritual, as there are also parables in the Gospel, as Christ says that his own shall eat and drink with him at his table, in his Father's kingdom [Luc. 22, 30]. But the Evan-

5) Marginal gloss: Ei, nun strafe dich GOtt, leidiger, blasphemous devil.

6) Marginal gloss: Ut in Rosario.

7) Marginal gloss: Murderer, say a Hail Mary and you will be blessed.

The Gospel itself interprets such parables, that eating does not mean filling the belly, or that beautiful women should be there, as everyone knows well. But the Alcoran speaks such things without all parables, and interprets it nowhere else, except that it is a blessedness, as a lewd carnal man desires.

46) Even though Mahmet did not think or speak about the right eternal bliss, he nevertheless told his Saracens a special thing beforehand (without doubt because of God's decree), because Mahmet says to the Saracens: 1) After me you will be divided into three and seventy parts, among which only one part will be saved, the others will all be destroyed with fire. This saying is so valid among them that 2) neither the wise nor the unwise hold it in low esteem. There is also another saying in the Alkoran, in the chapter Martil, that is, Maria, which says that all Saracens must go to hell. I consider this saying to be true, even though it is spoken from the mouth of the supreme liar.

47 Secondly, the Alkoran does not agree with Moses in the commandments. For God's commandment forbids murder, robbery and all carnal pleasure, but the Alkoran says all this, or even forbids it: as in the chapter Elmir, that is, Light, he forbids that one should not force wives to leave chastity; but if they consent to it, one may safely sleep with them. And in the chapter Elminim he allows both to sleep with their own wives, and how much one can catch them in war etc.

Chapter VI.

How the Alkoran is against himself.

Mahmet himself speaks in the chapter Elnasa, that is, women: If the Alkoran were not from God, there would be much repugnant in it. And in many places he says: God does not lead anyone astray. Again, in many places he asks that God lead him from darkness to light. Item, he says: he is a lost orphan. Again he says: God has made such a prophet out of him. For when God called him to Himself, he went up to God in the seventh heaven and obtained forgiveness for an angel a thousand times greater than the world, whom he found weeping over his sin.

49. He says: he is the common prophet of all the world. And again he speaks: that God gave the Alkoran only in Arabic language,

1) Marginal gloss: Here the devil raises mice.

2) In the editions: them (jnen).

and he could not speak any other language than Arabic. He says in the chapter Inpakara, that is, a young cow, that both Jews, Christians and Sabaeans will be saved; but afterwards, in the chapter Abraham, he says that no one will be saved except those who live according to the law of the Saracens.

50] Item, he commands them, 3) They are not to act harshly and harshly, but gently with people of another sect, for it is not man's, but God's alone, to bring them to justice. And each one must give account for himself, not for another. Again, in many places he commands to kill and rob those who do not believe, until they believe or pay tribute. But again, in the chapter Comem, he says: 4) Those who accept a god other than God, you shall not take care of them, nor provide for them, for God Himself has reserved this for Him. Is this not a deliberate act against each other, so often commanding to kill the unbelievers; again, so often commanding not to punish sin, but to let God alone punish?

51 Thus in the chapter Elteminim he boasts that he is not one who compels to faith. How is this true? Or where is a greater compulsion than to compel by robbery and death? In the chapter Bovis, that is, Ox, he admits that 5) it is not against nature to mix with boys and women. For he says to the Saracens that they should not defile themselves with the unbelievers before they become believers. And to the 6) women he says: Your wives are your fields, plow them as you wish. Again, in the same chapter, he says that the Sodomites in the time of Lot committed an abominable sin, which the former Gentiles were not accustomed to.

(52) He says of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their descendants that they were Saracens. Again, he says that it was revealed to him by God that he was the first Saracen in this faith. If he is the first Saracen, how were those Saracens? if the Alkoran was given long after Moses and the Gospel. For Mahomet began at five hundred and eight and ninety years after the birth of Christ, and continued until the seventh hundred year. But if he wants to say that they were Saracens because they knew as prophets what the Alkoran would be, then they were also all kinds of heretics and everything that they knew in the future. If they want to say that they liked the Alkoran, it is impossible,

3) Marginal gloss: Hoc servant hodie.

4) "he" is missing in the Jena.*

5) Marginal gloss: O Sow Abbot and Rangen Prior.

6) In the old editions: the.

For they have taught and done much that is in the Alkoran differently and against it.

53, Item, he says: "Prophesying by the flight of birds or by their crying is forbidden. But after that, in the chapter of Elaphar, he says: You shall prophesy; if you cannot do otherwise, do it with your fingers; and whoever does not do it, let him be banished. Item, he says, he was sent to the Arabs because they had no apostle of their own from God. Item, that the Alkoran is given only in the Arabic tongue, and that he cannot speak any other language than Arabic. For when Mapira the Jacobite, Silon the Persian, and Solam the Jew joined the Mahomet, some said: These will teach you everything; then he fell to the ground, and his hands clenched. And his fellows covered him with their garments.

54 And when he was come again to himself, he said, God hath sent me to rebuke you for the word, because ye say, These teach me. And read unto them a saying, which is at the end of the chapter of Elnael, that is, Palms, which saith thus, We 1) know that it shall be said, These teach him, when they speak Persian with him etc. Therefore he says: How is it possible that these should teach me, if one is a Persa, the other a Hebrew? To this they answer: It is possible that they speak to you in their own language and then interpret it to you, but you put everything into your own language. To this he knew no answer.

(55) But if he could not learn from a Persian and a Hebrew, which are the nearest to his language, how can he teach those who are so far from his language? And yet he wants to be a prophet to all the Gentiles. For in the chapter "Prophets" he says that God said to him: We have sent you to all the Gentiles. But how will he come to all the Gentiles, who are divided into 72 languages, if he cannot reveal his word in any other language than Arabic?

Chapter VII.

That the Alkoran is not confirmed with any miraculous work.

When Moses was sent to Pharaoh, he performed great miracles [2 Mos. 7, 9. ff], and all the prophets, Elijah [1 Kings 17], Elisha [2 Kings 1. ff], and especially those who were to bring forth a new thing. Christ came with great signs [Apost. 2, 22. 10, 38.], as Mahmet himself confesses in the Alkoran; but he 2) has never done any sign; therefore his law cannot be of

1) Marginal gloss: "We" that is, God and His soul.

2) "but" is missing m the Wittenberger.

God, and he would not be an apostle of God. And if the Saracens wanted to say that Mahmet had done many and great signs, as when he replenished the moon that had been cut in two and made a spring of water flow from his finger; these are fables, and also contrary to the Alkoran itself. For Mahmet declares that no such thing of his is to be believed without what is written in the Alkoran. Of all the prophets he says, "Many have told many lies; lest anyone think the same of me, let that alone be believed to be true of me, which is proved by the Alkoran.

57 For when he had done no miracles, and wished to prove it, he brought in God, who spoke to him, saying, "The Lord said to me, 'Therefore I will not let you perform miraculous signs, lest you suffer for miraculous signs, as other prophets have done. So it is proved by his own testimony that he did no miraculous sign. And he, Mahmet, often speaks in the Alkoran, as the people said to him: Show a miracle, as Moses came with the signs, and as Christ and other prophets have done. To which he answers: Moses and the prophets were sent by God, especially Christ, who came with great signs; but the world did not believe them, but called them magicians and black artists. Therefore God did not send me a sign, because they would not have believed; but I came by force of arms.

(58) But this is publicly false. Why would they not have believed him if he had performed miraculous signs, if they had believed him without miraculous signs, since he only pretended to kill, rob and rape women, to cut out tooth for tooth, eye for eye? For people are inclined to worldliness, so that they can hardly be kept from it by many judges, executioners and punishers. But that he introduces the sword for miracles, or weapons force, is also a lie, because he is not always superior, as Moses, Joshua, Elijah, whom God's angels always protected, 3) and helped to win. But Mahmet sometimes won, sometimes lost, like other tyrants; for his teeth were knocked out in war, and his face was bruised.

(59) Therefore this is not a miracle, which they take for a miracle, that a great part of the world has fallen to him. For he has given such a law and such commandments, 4) to which people are inclined even without laws; as said above. God has commanded me," he says, "to fight the heathen with the sword, until they have

3) In the editions: protects.

4) Marginal gloss: Yes, against God's law.

that there is no God without God, and that I am God's apostle. Those who have confessed this have received their money and blood with it. Therefore, the Saraceni are called servati, the preserved ones. For those who accepted Mahomet's commandment were preserved, both by him and by those who were under him, and did not kill them or take anything from them. And the Saraceni therefore will not be called Saraceni, but Maselamin, that is, the preserved ones, and mock the Christians for calling themselves the preserved ones.

(60) Since many took such preservation from Mahomet for the sake of the same causes, he was told to preach that whoever said these words, "There is no God but God," 1) would go to Paradise, being an adulterer or a highwayman. But there came to him one, whose name was Evordi, and asked him whether this was true? He answered, "Yes," and said, "If he drinks wine or kills, even if he bends the nose of Abdala," 2) but to confirm this he did not give a sign, but drew his sword.

61 It is even clearer in the chapter of the Prophets, for there it reads: "It was said to Mahomet, 'You dream, you invent lies, or perhaps you want to sing; dear one, come to us with some miraculous signs, like those who were sent before. Then he answered, "God says, 'We have turned back cities before the eyes of the unbelievers, and after them those who were before you; yet they will not believe, neither will you believe, except by the sword. But he boasts that Gabriel was sent to him by God, who led him to a beast larger than an ass and smaller than a mule, whose name was Elmaparak. And the same beast could talk and walk in an hour a way that would otherwise take five thousand years to walk, and it did so at night; and other more fables, of which hereafter in the tenth chapter.

(62) But our Christian faith, which demands hard things to believe and to do, is founded on public and useful miraculous signs, which not only Christ, but also the apostles and later the fathers performed, and which still continue to this day, so that devils are cast out, the sick are healed, and the dead are raised. Such miracles are performed by Christians, who believe and confess that Jesus Christ Crucified is the true and only God.

63 And although the Saraceni say they did not believe that les) had happened, I show this great miracle. It is evident that the

1) Marginal gloss: ld est, diabolus est etiam deus.

2) Marginal gloss: Infra [§ 160] Audula [In the Aus

gave erroneously: Andula.]

The whole world before the birth of Christ worshipped idols, especially the Romans, who were masters of the world at that time. They still accepted the Christian faith, and not only believed that the crucified Christ was the true God, but also rejected all other gods, who answered them so long ago through the idols, and also did not impose anything more difficult; but the Christian faith imposes such unusually difficult things, as despising the world, despising oneself, loving enemies, praying for persecutors, doing good to those who harm us, not stealing other people's goods, giving our own goods etc. The world has accepted all these things and rejected its former nature.

(64) Whether the world be converted by miracles or without miracles, it is a great wonder that without miracles, through simple-minded unlearned men, such things may have happened. And this is what the Christians did, who did not kill other people, but patiently suffered the death of others. Thus it is evident that the Christian faith is founded on exceedingly great miracles, but the faith of Mahomet is not founded on a single miracle. There is also such a faith that needs no miracles, especially among the Saracens, who are quite carnal and inclined to temporal pleasure, even to rob and murder.

65. although what wise people [are,] and learned people, the people have reason among them, the Mahmet believe nothing.

Chapter VIII.

That the Alkoran of Mahmets is bestial and sour.

(66) It might well have happened that Mahmet's law would have been accepted by the world, even without miraculous signs, since it would have been according to reason. But now it is not according to reason. First, because of the master; second, because of the law in himself; third, because of the work; fourth, because of the end or opinion.

First of all, it is not according to reason that such an evil man, a murderer, robber, adulterer, and subject to other vices, should make a holy (as they call it) law; as is obvious to all who know his life. Here the Saracens answer: David also fell into adultery and murder [2 Sam. 11.]; Moses slew an Egyptian [2 Mos. 2, 12.]. So it may be said of Mahomet that he can still be God's prophet, whether he has been in sin or not;

3) In the outputs: everything.

for those two were nevertheless true prophets of God. But they were not. David and Moses have punished their sin by repentance; and this is known. For David confessed his sin, and was sorry for it; therefore when he said, "I have sinned," Nathan said out of God's mouth, "The Lord hath forgiven thee thy sin" [2 Sam. 12:13]. But nowhere does it say of Mahmet that he atoned for or confessed his sin, but rather confirmed it by his blasphemously shameful law.

68 For all the Saracens know very well that Mahmet had fallen in love with a woman called Mary, a Jacobite, whom Macobeus, the king of the Jacobites, had given him. But Mahmet's two wives, one of whom was named Aiese, a daughter of Empipecer, the noblest of all, and the other Aasa, a daughter of Omar, began to jealousy against Mary. And they came to him one day, and found him lying with Mary, and said: Yes, shall a prophet do so? Then he was ashamed, and swore an oath that he would never do it again. And they were satisfied for the sake of the oath. Soon afterward he could not refrain himself, and made a law as if it had been ordained by God and revealed to him, and put the sentence in the Alkoran, in the chapter Elmetheharem, that is, prohibition or ban, saying: O Prophet, why doest thou commit that which God hath permitted thee? Do you want to court your wives? God has hereby decreed that you may not keep your oaths. So he perjured himself and slept with her again, pretending that God had revoked his oath, with Michael and Gabriel as witnesses.

(69) Then one of his wives said, O Mahmet, yes, God will be very pleased with your forwardness. Perhaps that is why he spoke it, so that he would follow you and participate with you in this evil work; do you think that is why God commanded you to testify with your mouth? Do you think God wants to help you and assist you in this? Then he read to both his wives what follows in the chapter Vetationes, and said, as if from the mouth of God: "Let it be a sorrow to you before God that your hearts have sinned so (he means that they had punished him for adultery); and there it follows: If he will divorce you, I will give him better Saracen women in your place, who are devout, rich, penitent, prayerful, and strong, as well as virgins. When they heard this, they said, "We are sorry.

Seventy and seventy, when he took his wife from Zeith, his conductor, he said in the chapter of Elazeb that God had said: Thou dost

you harbor in your heart that God wants to be revealed, and you fear men; it is cheaper to fear God. But when she promoted Zeith again and said: O apostle of God, you must not have her 1) as your wife, Mahmet said: Woe to you, God has given her to me.

(71) Indeed, he himself, Mahomet, says: There is no greater sin than to ascribe lies to God. There is no sin more offensive to a prophet than impure lust and fornication of the flesh. For the Holy Spirit does not stir the heart even of the right holy prophets when they are in the work of the flesh, as St. Jerome says. Aristotle also says that it is impossible to deal with wisdom in such work or lust.

Therefore it is contrary to reason that such a holy law (as they call it) should be the master and prophet of such an unclean, coarse, lewd, carnal man, who also boasts that he has as much strength and supply for such a work as forty other men. Although God has not given him a child, only a daughter. 2) Such a law is a beastly, unreasonable law to keep for the sake of its master, who is such a desperate, evil, beastly, sour man. In addition, he himself is uncertain and doubtful, as he testifies about himself in Alcoran that he does not know how he and the Saracens will fare, and that he is also uncertain whether he and they are with him on the path to salvation or not.

73 Secondly, the alcoran is also in himself a beastly and sour law against reason. For he uses the most impudent words in matters where it is necessary and fair to speak honorably and demurely, and to cover the hereditary shame, but he likes to speak such words, which serve the lust of the flesh. For in many places he uses the word coire, 3) that even the poets are not so coarse. Nor does he publicly pretend that there is no man on earth who understands the Alkoran. Why then has God commanded to keep it, if one cannot understand it?

This is also contrary to reason and foolishly spoken, since he says in many places that God commanded the angels to worship Adam. And those who would not do so would have to become devils, but those who would do so would remain angels. How can reason suffer that God should command idolatry and give men the honor that is God's alone?

75 Item, as they say, is the most necessary thing in

1) In the Wittenberg (wrong) instead of "they not": "me".

2) "a" is missing in the Jena.

3) Marginal gloss: Vox diaboli.

their laws that one should speak these words everywhere: There is no God but God, and Mahomet is God's apostle, and that God is great. What kind of a great thing is this, as if there were some doubt or strange new doctrine in it? Who does not know that God is God and that He is great? Who has ever heard that God is not God, or that He is small, be it One God or much? It is just as if one said: There is no donkey but a donkey, there is no cow but a cow, there is no man but a man. It is well known that an ox or a dog is not an ass, nor is man or an angel God; fools and madmen may speak so. But that it should be a special service of God or wisdom, that is nothing. Moreover, as true and certain as it is that God is God, it is uncertain that Mahomet is God's apostle. What is the use of such a great foolish glory in these vain words, that he who speaks such words will be blessed without doubt?

76 Item, Mahmet says in the Law: that all men are of one kind, and of one faith, but God has made them of many kinds, having sent many prophets. Dear, what appearance does this have that it should be true? God wants to have unity at the highest, and not various sects. The devil and evil men (by God's decree) separate men from the unified truth in various errors and sects.

(77) Item, Mahomet says, as from the mouth of God, to kill the unbelievers, that is, those who are not Saracens. And yet say, they can think no good thing unless they are guided by God. If they are not guided, it is foolish, even murderous, they kill for that which they are not able to do. But if they are able, it is foolish to force them. For GOtte does not like forced services. And elsewhere he himself considers it a foolish, unskillful thing to kill those who do not believe, or to force them to believe. For so he says in the chapter of Jonah: "If God would, all who are on earth would believe; and you want to force people to believe? No one can believe unless God gives it to him. More about this in the following chapter.

78 Thirdly, his law is contrary to reason and animalistic, because of the things it teaches. He makes a separate chapter of ants, of the spider, of smoke. But why does God give such things about ants and smoke etc.? Item, he says: God can never forgive him who turns his back on his enemies. Rather, what fool would consider it a sin for one to flee,

If he saw the danger? without wanting to make his own foolhardy and belligerent.

79 Item, when he teaches 1) about washing, that is indeed foolish and ridiculous. He says that if they want to pray, they should wash the hands and face, and below (with leave) the hindmost and foremost, as he calls it roughly enough, also the soles of the feet and the arm up to the elbow. But where they could not have water, they shall thrust the hand into dust, and rub the hands with dust, and so rub the face also therewith etc. If one teaches to wash the heart, as Jeremiah says [Jer. 4, 4], that would be more reasonable. What is the sense of rubbing dust on the face?

80 But this is exceedingly great, gross unreasonableness, which he teaches about divorce. For a Saracen may repudiate his wife and take her again, as often as she loved him, 2) but so far that he, who repudiated for the third time, must not take her again. Unless the other husband has not slept with her properly or perfectly 3). Therefore, if they would like to have their wives again, they give money to the one who has taken the rejected woman (who is sometimes a blind man or some other lowly person), so that he may be heard publicly to say that he wants to divorce her; when this has happened, the first one can take her again. 4) But it also happens that the same other man likes the woman so much that he says afterwards that he cannot divorce her; so he has lost both money, bride and hope. But such laws should not be imposed on humans, but on unreasonable animals 5).

Fourth, Mahomet's law is also against God and all reason, that he sets man's highest and last good (eternal bliss) in carnal pleasure. For throughout the whole of the Alkoran he promises his Saracens this blessedness, that they will possess watery gardens, wives and concubines, young, clean, sedate, in purple robes, golden and silver cups over the tables, and all kinds of delicious food; all this he tells especially in the chapter Elrahman,

1) Marginal gloss: O holy water, where are you?

2) Side note: This is dog and sow wedding, not marriage.

3) Marginal gloss: "Perfect", what that is, the devil or Mahmet's impudent hemlock himself interprets in my place. Fie on you, you shameful devil and cursed Mahmet.

4) Here should probably be read: "that the same other man's wife" etc.

5) Randglosse der Jenaer Ausgabe: Nämlich den Säuen und Hundm.

that is, merciful. And in the Book of the Doctrine of Mahomet, which is highly respected among them, he sets the order of the food and says: "The first dish shall be the liver of the fish Alimpeput, a very sweet food. Then fruits of the trees, one after the other. And now comes further on in the same chapter, where some ask him, whether they also will do carnal pleasure? He answered, "If there were not some pleasure, it would not be a blessed life, and the rest would be nothing and in vain, if this pleasure of the flesh did not follow.

And the final opinion of the Alkoran and the Saracen sect is to put the blessedness in carnal and belly pleasures. And do not do that, that they interpret it spiritually to another, wre the holy scripture speaks of the table and meal in the kingdom of heaven [Luc. 22, 30.]). For Mahmet does not say a word about the true blessedness of beholding God and being perfect in all virtues, for he does not desire it, nor does he understand it, but only that which he desires he promises them.

In this he shows himself to be the one who teaches not only against Christ and the prophets, but also against the philosophers and all rational men, who all agree that man's salvation is in knowledge, as Christ says: "This is eternal life, that they may know you" [John 17:3]. And Aristotle says: "Life in the mind is the best. So life according to the belly and carnality must be the worst, which hinders all good understanding.

But because the Saracens do not ask anything, neither according to the holy scriptures nor according to the reason of the philosophers, one must reproach them, as the coarse sows, their sour life, how it may be in that life. For why should eating and drinking, if there is an eternal life, no sickness, hunger, thirst, death or lack? As Mahmet himself confesses and says in his textbook: God will strangle death, after which they will rise immortal and completely healthy. So, what is the use of the work of carnal pleasure, if there are no children or fruits of the body there, since it was ordained by God? Or if there is to be eating and drinking, then there must also be the sweeping out of the body; how does this rhyme with eternal blessed life?

Here Mahmet answers in his textbook: There will be no sweeping out of the filth without sweat 1). And he leads the example

1) Marginal gloss: O a strong sweat it must be.

of a child in the womb, which is nourished and produces nothing. But what such an example does, everyone understands well; for the child neither eats nor drinks in the womb, nor does it have carnal pleasure in eating and drinking, which the mammoth alone seeks, but nourishes itself through the umbilical cord. Also, what kind of bliss is that, since one must sweat, sweat and stink every hour without ceasing, as in a bath or parlor?

But where children are to be born of the work of the flesh, 3) many more will be born after the resurrection than were ever born before the resurrection; and these same children cannot be perfect, like the fathers and mothers, but must be unequal, weaker, more foolish, more meager; how then are they blessed? Also, where there is lust of the flesh, there will also be pain in childbirth for the women of the flesh. Item, the children will also have to die, if they are to be resurrected otherwise.

(87) If those who are born after the resurrection cannot be blessed, but take many wives, they must remain blessed and wait until many wives are born. And thus many more women than men would have to be born. Thus, in a short time, the reign of women would become.

If, after the resurrection of men, their multiplication by fleshly works is to continue forever, this must be followed by the fact that they must either die again and decay or be born eternally without number; this is impossible. Or if the same deceased shall not also rise again, the soul must remain eternally separated from the body, and thus the resurrection will not be of all men.

89. But if children are not to be born, to what end is the lust of the work of the flesh? Perhaps to an eternal fie on you. How much more sensibly the philosophers and pagans speak of this, that such work is not ordered to or for the sake of lust or heat, but again the lust is ordered to and for the sake of the work, so that thereby the animals are stimulated to increase and maintain nature, which otherwise would perish without such work.

90 And why do we not consider the unreasonable animals blessed, as the stags and boars in heat, and dogs and foxes when they baptize or ram, as having already the pleasure in this, so Mahmet seeks there in that eternal life?

2) "not" is missing in the Wittenberger.

3) Marginal gloss Such art shall teach whoever rejects the Bible.

Or what is needed here on earth, or what is lacking, that we are not blessed with equal women in this life, if we can eat and drink to the utmost (as we Germans do), or take many wives (as the Turks do)?

91. Also, if such beautiful pleasure is eternal life, why do they themselves praise all those who abstain from such pleasure with them (the Saracens)? For they also have some monks and clergymen who live chastely, of whom they think much.

92 But what shall I talk sharply with sour unreasonable people? I will continue to talk roughly with them. If there is eternal joy in such carnal lust, what do the souls of the saints who have died do? For they do not eat or drink, nor do they indulge in carnal pleasures, because the body lies rotten.

(93) And whereof are the angels blessed and merry, which neither eat nor drink, neither have they wives?

(94) Further, if eternal blessedness is that a man may have many wives, and without number concubines, where shall the wives be blessed and happy, if they also shall not have many husbands according to the free pleasure of the flesh? Again, how can a man be happy if his wife is to have many husbands? From this it must follow that either the man will be unhappy if his wife wants to have many men beside him; or the woman will be unhappy if she alone wants to have one man, but the man wants to have many women beside her; and yet both should be happy, according to the lust of the flesh, as Mahmet teaches.

95 This is enough to say how unreasonable, shameful and sinful the law of Mahomet is in this play. Although it contains many more foolish and unreasonable things than that God swears by the faithful city, by the garden of figs and the garden of oil, as he clearly says in the chapter Eltim (that is, fig). So all reason teaches that all who swear swear by that which they hold higher than themselves, rather than by a higher witness to confirm their word, of which [the Epistle to the] Hebrews also says that since God had nothing greater by which to swear, He swore by Himself [Heb. 6:13.].

Item, that he forbids wine for the sake of drunkenness, as he says in many places, since wine is a good creature of God, and the abuse of the good creature is to be condemned. But perhaps he suspected his Saracens that they could not drink wine moderately, so he had to forbid it.

Chapter IX.

From public gross lies of the Alkoran.

He himself, 1) Mahmet, in the chapter of Jonah says: Who teaches the truth? He answers: God teaches the truth, and is the truth, one should follow. And again: It is not proper to speak anything in the divine law without God. Now it is well known that lies and falsehood must be spoken without God. For St. Augustine says: "If a lie were found in the Gospel, the whole Gospel would be suspect and nothing. For God cannot lie.

Now it is true that in the Alkoran there is much that is written in the Gospel, Moses and the prophets, but Mahomet adds so many public lies from his own head that his book is suspect and false and must be attributed to him who is a liar and the father of lies [John 8:44].

I will summarize his lies in the Alkoran in ten parts. First, he lies shamefully about himself, then about the Christians, the Jews, the apostles, the patriarchs, the devils, the angels, the Virgin Mary, Christ, and God.

(100) Of himself he thus teaches that he is the end, seal and silence (or cessation) of all prophets, and that he gives the order to kill all those who claim to be prophets after him. Against this not only the Jews and Christians say (as God's hand is not shortened by Mahomet) that many of them are prophets after Mahmet, or have had the spirit of prophecy, but also they themselves accepted a prophet in Babylon called Solem (that is, leader), whom the Tatars slew, and with him not a small number of the Saracens. Further, he leaches from himself, and exalts himself as from the mouth of God: If all spirits or angels and all men would do together, they would not be able to make such an Alkoran as he is. This he may understand as he pleases, that it is not possible without God's doom or without God's help, it is a blasphemous lie.

(101) He denies that Christians give God a companion; this is a blatant lie, for Christians throughout the world say that God is one and indivisible, indeed that nothing is more united than the Godhead or divine essence.

102 Further, in the chapter Telteumpe (that is, repentance), he denies that Christians consider their bishops, pastors and monks to be God; this is a public lie; although Mahmet speaks such things.

1) Marginal gloss: Pro se dicit, ut sibi credatur.

out of ignorance of languages. For the Christians in Persia and all the 1) Oriental countries call their bishops, pastors, monks or clergymen Rampan (that is, master or overlord), but in Arabic Rampa is God's name and means Lord, so that it means God alone; just as with us God is called HErre, and when one speaks of God, it is God's name alone; otherwise men are also called Herre; therefore in this Mahmet, as an enemy, obliges himself with lies to us Christians.

He further denies that the Christians make Mariam a goddess: for in the chapter Elmaide (that is, table) he introduces Christ as apologizing before God for not having taught the world that his mother was a goddess. The Christians do not say that Mary is God or Goddess, but the most pure feminine image. For the Gospel does not call her a goddess, but a feminine image. Whoever says otherwise about the Christians is lying as a Mahmet and a devil.

In the same chapter he speaks of Christians and Jews: they cannot be God's children or dear friends, for they must suffer much, like sinners. This is also wrong, for the Scripture often says: God's saints must suffer much, even death. And where are the holy friends of God, the Saracens, who have had to suffer many a distemper from the Tatters?

(105) From the Jews he teaches, for in the chapter Telteumpe (Repentance) Mahmet says that the Jews make Eleazar a god and teach him: He is the son of God. This is a public lie, for the Jews do not make a man God, nor call him God's son. Further, in the chapter Elnasa (Women), he teaches that the Jews should say: they have killed Jesus Christ, the son of Mary, the apostle of God. So the Jews say Ficht, because they do not consider JEsum as Christ nor as God's apostle, but as an evil man, whom they have killed for blasphemy.

In the chapter Abraham (whom they call Moses' father) he denies that the apostles said to Christ that they were Saracens and successors of the apostle Mahmet. This is a public lie. For the apostles and Christ were over six hundred years before Mahmet, and Mahmet came forth in the time of Heraclius, who began to reign in the year Domini six hundred and twelve, and is now seven hundred years that Mahmet has been. Now it is more than a thousand and two hundred years since Christ was born. How then can the apostles be Saracens? for he himself says in the chapter Elcamnar that it was commanded him by God that he should be the

1) "all" is missing in the Wittenberger.

be the first Saracen. If he is the first Saracen, he denies that the apostles were Saracens; if they were Saracens, he denies that he is the first Saracen.

Of the patriarchs he teaches the same, that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their children were Saracens, as he puts it in many places in the Alkoran. He also says of Noah that he was a Saracen. Yes, he says that the flood came upon the earth because he preached to the people that they should become Saracens, and they did not want to. The lie is as obvious as the previous one. How can Noah be a Saracen who has been over two thousand and six hundred years before Mahmet, when Mahmet wants to be the first Saracen?

(108) The Saracens also lie, saying that God promised Mahmet that no one would enter Paradise before him. Then God took him and brought him to Paradise, where he saw many men and women and said, "Lord, what is this? And God said unto him, Marvel not; these are all thy followers. Now it is not possible to be Mahmet's successor ohn through the Alkoran; but he is not revealed before Mahmet, as it is written in many places inside, and especially in the front. But such a gross lie must not cause much embarrassment to him who has a little sense.

He lies about the devils, for he writes a special chapter about them in the Alkoran, and there he freely says that a great number of devils were glad when they heard about the Alkoran, and they confessed that they might be saved by it, and they also called themselves Saracenes, and so they were saved. How gross this lie is, must not be proved.

(110) Of the angels, he denies that they all worshipped Adam, except the devil. Item, he denies when he says that when he came to God with the angel, he saw an angel a thousand times greater than the world, who wept for his sin, and Mahmet obtained mercy for him through his prayer. And many other great 2) lies he tells, of which we will hereafter say in his false face.

Item, he holds that the angels have a tangible body; for in chapter Sad he says: The angels are made of fire, men of earth. In other places he says that they are of great space, as will follow.

In the chapter Abraham he publicly says that she is Abraham's daughter.

2) Thus the Wittenbergers. Jenaer: larger.

Aram 1) was the father of Moses and Aaron. And in the chapter Mar Jem, that is, Mary, 2) it says that Mary, the mother of Christ, was Aaron's sister. It is true that Moses and Aaron had a sister called Mary, and all three were children of one father, Aram, as 2 Mos. 2, 4. 7. says. But between that Mary and this Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, are more than a thousand five hundred years, and that Mary died in the wilderness when Moses brought the children of Israel out of Egypt.

Of Christ, he therefore denied that Christ had never said of himself that he was God and the Son of God, but apologized to God that he had not taught this to the world. This is a public lie, because John 14:1 says: "If you believe in God, you also believe in me"; and John 5:18, when he called himself the Son of God, the Jews wanted to stone him and said: "He makes himself like God"; and there are many sayings in John when he calls himself like God. If then Mahomet would have believed his own words, when he said that one should take the gospel as a witness to his alchemist (as said above), then he would have to punish his own lying mouth, that he says that Christ did not call himself the Son of God, or that he praised himself like God; or he would have to lie in that he takes the gospel as a witness to his alchemist.

He further says that Christ was not crucified nor did he die, but God would let him die at the end of the world etc. If Mahmet thinks the gospel is right (as he boasts), why does he deny the gospel? If he thinks it is wrong, why does he praise it? For it is proved above that Mahomet lies, saying that the gospel is counterfeit in all the world. And much more shameful lies he tells about Christ against the gospel, which he praises so highly.

From God, therefore, he surely denies the gospel, vowed by him as the truth, that it is impossible for God to have a son, for he has no wife; and this he always proclaims, as if it were a solid, delicious reason. But such wisdom is just as if I said, "God cannot live, for He neither eats nor drinks, neither poops nor pees, nor snorts nor coughs. Christians know well how God can have a son, and there is no need for Mahmet to teach us how God must first be a man who is a woman.

1) Should be "Amram" according to Num. 26, 59.

2) Above in § 46 the chapter "Maria" is called "Marti!

A man who has a cow to beget a son, or a farmer who has a cow to beget a calf. How is the Mahmet drowned in the flesh of the woman, in all his thoughts, words, and deeds; he can neither speak nor do anything before such a heat; it must all be flesh, flesh, flesh.

And why does Mahmet call Christ the Son of Mary, the Word of God, the Spirit of God? If he is an oral word of God, as the word of all prophets is called the word of God, then he has not so highly praised Christ, whom he exalts above all men; for then he would also have to be the word of Mahmet, as of the apostle of God. And for the sake of such a verbal word, God should not speak as two (as is spoken through and through in the Alkoran): We, we; for it is not that a speaker would call himself and his word: we. But if he considers Christ to be an eternal Word, who has always been with God, why does he deny that he is God or the Son of God, born without a woman? because Word or Spirit cannot be born of women.

In the chapter Elminim he thus teaches: 3) If God had a son, the world would be in great danger of becoming divided. For he thinks that God is nothing higher than a man, whom the son may disobey. Although it is a miracle that he does not also indicate here the women's danger, that they might become disunited for the sake of a whore (like bad boys), as he was disunited with Zeith, his steward, for the sake of his wife, ut supra.

118) Mahmet teaches in the chapter Elezar that God and the angels pray for Mahmet and for the Saracen etc. I will not say anything about the angels now. Dear, when and where, or how does God pray for them? Or whom does he ask for them? Does he ask the angels, or the people, or himself, or the devils? And if everything else would be possible, then he could not ask himself, because Mahmet penetrates, it is nothing, but a single God.

He also tells many other lies and impossible things. As in the chapter Elasiar, where he speaks as if from the mouth of God, 4) if we were to send this Alkoran to a mountain, you should see how he would be destroyed by great fear and trembling before God. Thus we have heard above how he lied 5) about the moon being divided, and many more lies that lead to

3) Marginal gloss: Poeticum est, ut de Jove et Saturno, de Sole, et Phaethonte.

4) Marginal gloss: Vult suos terreri.

5) Marginal gloss: Ei, Pfui dich, Teufel.

much are to tell, that no reasonable man can believe, his Alkoran is from God.

120 There are still many more unrhymed Narrentheiding, which are taken for certain truth in the Saracen, than glosses or commentary on the Alcoran, and are clearly written in the Commentary Nähmet, of which we (who are very many) want to tell a little.

One thing is: that the sky is made of smoke, the smoke of the mist of the sea, the sea of a mountain,' which is called Caph, which surrounds the whole world and carries the sky. Says: The sun and the moon were equal in size, and there was no difference between day and night; but when Gabriel flew once, he touched the moon with his wing, therefore it became darker,

122, Item, he says: the wild sow was born from the elephant's mud, and the mouse from a pig's mud, the cat from the lion's forehead. They interpret this as follows: 1) When Noah was in the ark with his children and animals, when they went into the secret chamber, the ark would sink, especially when the elephant was there. Then Noah was afraid, and asked God; who answered, "Go therefore and worship before his backside, even to the hole where the mud goes out. When he did so, the muck came out with a very large pig, which now rooted in the muck, as is its kind. A mouse grew out of it and began to gnaw at the boards of the ark, and they were terrified. And Noah asked God, who told him to strike the lion on the forehead; then a weasel (or cat) came out of his nose and ate the mouse. And this shall be the cause why they must not eat swine's flesh.

In the same chapter he says that at the end of the world God will kill all creatures, including angels and archangels. Angels and archangels, and will leave nothing alive without God alone, and death, which is an angel, called Adriel. Then God will command Daniel to kill himself. When this is done, God will call out with a loud voice and say, "Where are the rulers and lords of the world? And then everything will be resurrected.

Item, Mahmet wrote a book of twelve thousand wonderful words. 2) When some wondered and asked if they were all true, he answered: 3) Only three thousand were true, but the others were all lies. And if now in this

1) Marginal gloss: O Satan, O Satan, you shall pay. 2) Marginal gloss: Vsl things.

3) Marginal gloss: Vide securitatem Satanae et fiduciam mentiendi.

The Saracens say that they find something false in the book: Oh, Mahmet 4) himself said that not everything is true; and this piece is one of them, but the other remains true. Methinks they do the same with the Alkoran. For although 5) many lies are found in it, but because there are also some true sayings in it, they consider it to be God's word.

But we Christians know that God neither lies nor can lie. And as St. Augustine says: "Where a few lies are found in the Gospel, it would be fair to reject it as useless gibberish and not a Gospel, Quia commune dictum est: Fidei non potest Msuro sudesse, Lying cannot make blessed, but condemns. Therefore, faith cannot stand on any lie.

And I consider it certain that the reasonable and learned among the Saracens believe nothing of the Alcoran, but must despise such fictitious teachings among themselves. And that this is so is indicated by the fact that they do not want to debate publicly with other scholars, as I have experienced myself, and do not allow the Alcoran to be brought out publicly. And they are disgusted beyond all measure when it is read by others, and they do not want it to be interpreted into another language.

127. We Christians, however, who know and take comfort in the truth that abides forever and shuns no light, gladly talk with others about the Gospel, and are glad that others also read it, do not throw it under a bushel, but put it on the lampstand, that [it] may shine freely to all the world, and wish that it may be interpreted into all languages, and are not ashamed to publicly confess and praise the suffering of Christ (which the Mahomet mocks and ridicules with the Saracens and pagans) with writings and words.

The X. Chapter.

That Mahmet's law is murderous, tyrannical, and furious.

This proves that the Alkoran cannot be God's law. For it is, to speak briefly, a law of death and rage. For it not only leads to eternal death, but also forces people to believe what Mahmet says through bodily death. Although in the chapter Em-.

4) Marginal gloss: cuckoo his name.

5) Marginal gloss: Alkoran lies, and yet is supposed to be God's word, so God must be Mahmet's liar.

6) "mit andern" is missing in the Wittenberg.

pacara 1) (that is, cow) speaks: Compulsion is not in God's law. Because it is already separated right and wrong. But where can be greater compulsion than through murder? Therefore, the law cannot be from God that compels people.

The Saracens call it with a special high name Elesalem, a wholesome law of God. Yes, rather, as said, a murderous and furious law. But such was the way of such a law and master, that the people had to consent to eternal death through love of life and fear of the sword. The Christians, however, in turn, despise bodily death and life and attain eternal life.

For when Mahomet, or rather his master the devil, saw that his law was contrary to God's law in the New Testament, and also contrary to himself, and had no reason nor miraculous sign, and was full of tangible lies, he could well think that many would persuade and contradict him. Therefore he gave him his own right instrument, the sword, to kill. And therefore he set a commandment in his Alkoran, that all those should be put to death who oppose this law and do not believe. Therefore he does not speak in one chapter, but throughout the whole book as a common commandment: Kill, kill.

But Christ teaches us Christians to love our enemies, to pray for those who persecute us, and to do good to those who offend us [Matt. 5:44]. St. Augustine says: "A man may be forced to confess with his mouth that he believes, but that his heart should be forced to believe is not possible.

132 So we read that Mahmet brought his cousin, his father's brother, who said, "How, my dear cousin, my brother's son, will I kill you if I do not? Mahmet answered, O cousin, I will kill thee. And he said, Can it be no other way? Not otherwise, said Mahmet. Then said his cousin, Well, I will follow thee with the tongue only, and not with the heart, for fear of the sword. And Omar, the son of Catempadi, forced, said: Lord, you know that I will become a Saracen only for fear of death. So the son of Empiasca also became a Saracen out of fear of the sword, sending letters to Mecca (which a woman brought hidden in her hair), warning them in the city of the future of Mahmet, that they should beware of the violence of Mahmet's teaching.

133 And here it is to be noted that there are four kinds who hold Mahmet's error. The first ones, who come in through the fear of the sword (such as

1) In the Jenaer probably wrong: "Emparaca"; in § 49 it was called: "Inpakara".

The others, deceived by the devil, believe that such lies are the truth. The others, deceived by the devil, believe that such lies are the truth. The third, who do not want to leave the faith of their ancestors, and say that they believe as their ancestors believed. And these are the ones who, having been idolatrous before, respect Mahomet's cult better than the previous idolatry.

(134) The fourth, who for the sake of the free life, and that they may have many wives, and other indulgences, prefer this temporal impurity to the eternal joy of that life. Those who are called wise and learned among them do not believe that their law is right and good, but the free pleasure of this life suppresses reason, just as among us Christians many learned and wise people do not keep the gospel, even though they believe it is right and good; nor do they prefer to lead an Alkoran life, regardless of the fact that they believe there is no truth in it.

And this is the sign in both, that some Saracens become Christians, and some Christians become Saracens. Although a Christian would not become a Saracen in his end, but in his life. But a Saracen would rather become a Christian in his end than in his life. And so both would rather die Christians than Saracens, if they were not forced otherwise by force.

Now there are three signs that this law is a murderous and furious law, about which it is said that he often says, "Kill, kill. The first that Mahmet said: his law would remain as long as they would remain strong with weapons and violence. But as Chrysostom says: the truth is of the kind, the harder it is stormed, the stronger it becomes. Again, the lie, if it is assisted by equally great power, yet it falls from itself. Thus, the Gospel of the Christians, persecuted for about three hundred years, has grown the most, both in the number of believers and in miraculous clarity.

The other sign is, that when they come together, that their preacher should teach them the law of the Saracens, and deliver the word, he putteth forth a sword, and holdeth it bare in his hand while he preacheth, or putteth it in a high visible place for a terror. On the other hand, when Christians preach, they do not lift up the sword, but the cross, and do not show a murderous sign, but a friendly one, as men sent by Christ in the midst of wolves, like sheep.

2) Marginal gloss: Sicut apud nos.

2254II Luther's writings against the Turks. W. xx, ssos-ssio. 2255

The third sign that it is a murderous law is that among the Saracens are raised Assessinii, 1) future murderers. To these they promise eternal life for murdering, God grant that they murder or are murdered over it, and send them out into the whole world to cunningly strangle the worldly lords. These Assassinii have castles and houses on Mount Liltum, and are under the Sultan of Babylon, who is the head of the Saracens. And although these Assessinii are true Saracens and live according to the laws and customs of the Saracens, they are not called Saracens, but Ishmaelites, as the tribe and root of the Saracens, and the most distinguished defenders and upholders of the Mahmetic Law. For they are specially nourished and educated to murder. Of which vice not only the Christians, but also the Tatters are afraid, who say that they have no law without the natural right. 2) The Saracens are the most noble defenders of the Mahmetic Law. Thus it is certain that the Saracen is a murderous and furious law, not of God, but of the devil.

Chapter XI.

That the Alkoran is not God's law, because it is disorderly.

What is from God is well ordered, Romans 13:2, which can be seen in both nature and holy scripture. And it is certain among Christians and Saracens that Moses' Law, Prophets and Gospel are from God. Moses keeps a very fine order, starts from the creation of the world, and goes through the whole books orderly according to time and history. The prophets do the same and write in order, under which king, and also say a given thing in order. So also the gospel goes in the finest order, it begins with Christ, how he was conceived and born under Augustus, Herod, and who ruled at that time. Then how he lived, preached, did miracles, then suffered, died, and rose again etc.

But in the Alkoran there is no order at all, there is no account of the time or years, no person of the kings or rulers of the same time, also no orderly speech of the things. For the first chapter, which is the title of the book, begins with prayer and praise to God. And after such a short prayer he starts the book, and the same is the other chapter of the red heifer, of which is written in the fourth book of Moses Cap. 19, 2. The third ca-

1) Randglosse: How? if that were the Zigeunex or Tattern.

2) Walch had resolved this with "Thätern".

The first chapter is about the house of Abraham, whom he calls the father of Moses. And he says much about Christ, saying that the Virgin Mary was the sister of Moses and Aaron. After this the fourth chapter is about women. From then on, in the other chapters, he chops it up so messily that no one can say why this is in front, that is behind, or this is in the middle.

Thus he also speaks of no matter properly, but falls from one to the other, unk mixes one into the other as a madman or who would always be elsewhere, much less remains ev on the way, if he is to prove or conclude something in turn, but sets a saying, on which he introduces, that nothing rhymes with it. As, since he always therefore washes, God is high and good, and Alkoran is a law of salvation, and God is God, and that there is no God except God, and Mahmet is a true prophet. Dear one, how does it hang together that Mahmet is a prophet, God's servant, and God is God?

In the chapter Elmaida (that is, table) he says: God has given us the house of Elaram (that is, calling), which is the house of the table, and the fast moon of the Saracens. And this is so that you may know that God knows all things that are in heaven and on earth, and knows all things that come to pass. But who is so great as to doubt that God knows all things? And if anyone doubted it, how does it rhyme that the Saracen's table and paschal moon make anyone know how God knows all things?

And he always speaks as if he were in a dream, and especially at the end of the book, when he still lacks words. As in the chapter Elkaphetim (that is, heretics) he says: "O cursed ones, I do not worship what you worship, and you do not worship what I worship. 3) To you be your law, to me be my law. 4) What heretic or idolater could not speak thus? What is the use of investigating the truth?

I have not found a single disputation in the whole book that would be proper, but the words and rhymes are fine. For the whole book is made in rhyme or poetry, of which the Saracens boast very much. And this is to prove that Mahmet is a true prophet. For an unlearned layman could not speak so rhyming 5). But above we have proved that God does not use poetry or rhyme to speak with men or through prophets.

3) In both the Wittenberg and Jena editions, the phrase is duplicated: "I pray - anbete".

4) Marginal gloss: What is that said?

5) i.e. chivalrous.

The XII. Chapter.

That the Alkoran is not God's law, for it is unjust and evil.

That the Alkoran is an evil and unjust law is evident from it. For in the chapter Elcaph, and in the chapter Elgem, that is, the devils, it is thus written that it pleases the devils and the devils have pleasure in it. The devils, however, are evil, perverse spirits, to whom nothing can please unless it is evil and perverse. The alcoran is also the cause of all evil, such as murder, robbery, perjury and the like. For he not only indulges in such things, but also commits them, especially murder, as was said above.

(146) And it does not help if someone says that he commanded to kill the unbelievers and not the believers. For thus he says: The believer shall not kill a believer. Yet he says to kill the unbelievers if they do not pay tribute. So I hear that not giving tribute is cause enough to kill. Why is it not rather the cause that they do not believe?

147] In many places he says that there is no greater sin than to ascribe lies to God. Now the Alcoran does the same, and ascribes many more lies to God than those told in the 9th chapter above. But we could indicate many other such lies, as in the chapter Elemphaal (that means profit or benefit) he says: There are several profits of God and the apostle, and one should give the fifth part of the profit to God.

Tell me, has God become so mischievous that he permits robbery, that he may take the fifth part? or is he so poor that he cannot feed his poor and widows, orphans and strangers (of which he speaks there), so that he permits robbery? If he makes such a profit, indeed, Mahomet makes God his companion to do evil, who cannot have a companion to do good.

(149) And though the Alkoran at times forbids robbery, perjury, and other evil, yet such a prohibition is more like an allowance. For he says: You shall not do evil, for it is not pleasing to God; but if you do it, he is merciful and gracious, and will gladly forgive you. But from robbery in particular he gives nothing everywhere, that one should give back. Nor is it their way, but it is enough for a Saracen to say at its end: There is 1) no God but God, and Mahmet is God's apostle; as is said above.

1) Wittenberger: be.

150 He speaks freely of perjury in the chapter Elmin: God will not reckon perjury to you, but rather that you do not call upon him; as if he should say: Perjury does not deserve guilt, but only punishment. For afterwards he says: For such a transgression it is enough to feed ten poor people, or to clothe so many, or to release a prisoner; whoever is able to do this truly shall fast three times.

From this all evil must follow, for they are not afraid to rob, cheat, swear falsely and break faith, even though Christians are commanded to believe even enemies and unbelievers.

But they, the Saracens, have an oath that they do not easily break, which we will see hereafter. Mahmet speaks of himself in the chapter Elmetare that God had dispensed with him or allowed him not to keep what he had sworn legally and honestly. For example, he no longer wanted to lie with the Jacobite woman, whose name was Mary, and was perjured about it, and Michael and Gabriel had to be witnesses to this permission, as he denied. Should such a law of God be, since so much evil, indeed all evil, comes from here, and ascribes such great poisonous lies to God?

153. Above these lies he gives God more, not only lies, but also foolish lies; for he says: God has excused Himself that He did not send an angel, but the man Mahmet. And could have sent an angel, but they could not have walked safely through the world. 2) How? Could Mahmet have walked through the world more safely than the angels? Or could God not protect them? Or, if he wanted to understand pious peaceful people through angels, it is certain that pious peaceful people walk through the world more safely than the wicked.

154] Item, he is always pointing out how God says that He did not make the world as a joke. 3) But who is so foolish as to think that God has made the world his joke?

Item, the Mahmet, a man and Saracen in daily fornication, introduces in Cap. Elinir Elazapi, 4) as God says thus: You shall not enter anyone's house uninvited or uncalled. Then God says: When you have gone in and eaten, come out, and do not stand and preach to the doorkeepers, for it is displeasing.

2) Marginal gloss: Forte quia non haberent gladium, sicut Mahmet.

3) Marginal gloss: Ut nostri: He did not make the sky for the geese.

4) Wittenberger: Elazapir.

lich and ashamed to preach there. 1) But God is not ashamed to preach the truth.

In sum, what he wanted to do or had done, he put it to God, 2) as if He had commanded him to do it. From this came all evil, as if God had commanded it in his law, murder, rob, commit adultery, swear falsely, commit incest with the wife of the time, break the oath for the sake of Mary, the Jacobite, and keep faith with no one. So it is no wonder that the devils are pleased with this law,

Chapter XIII.

Who is the master of this law, and how uncertain the alcoran is.

157 The wisest among them had certainly for it, and is also convinced with a strong reason, that the first master of the 3) Alkoran was not a man, but the devil, who out of old envy, by God's doom for the sake of man's sin, publicly and violently started such an abomination of the end-Christ. For when he saw that he could no longer defend the multitude of idolatry, nor resist the gospel and holy scriptures that were spread throughout the world, he thought to deceive the world with a fictitious faith, which would be like a middle way between Moses and the gospel,

For this he needed a man, yes, a devil, named Mahmet, who was an idolatrous man and poor, yet arrogant, and famous in the black arts; he would much rather have taken a better name than a man, if he had been allowed to, just as he would much rather have taken another animal than the serpent to deceive man, under which his wickedness would have been more beautifully hidden. But the divine wisdom did not want to allow it otherwise, than that he would take such an animal, and now also attack the world through such a man, so that the world could easily understand what the law would be, which would be given through such a master.

159 When Heraclius the Persian had defeated King Cosroe, and had brought the holy cross to Jerusalem with great triumph, Anno six hundred and twenty after the birth of Christ, and Anno fifteen Heraclii etc.

1) Marginal gloss: Hic nescio, quid dicat translator.

2) Marginal gloss: Sic facile est, esse prophetam etiam porcis.

3) Wittenberg and Jena: the.

4) of a better name man" - the figure of a man of a better kind.

He was an Arab who had become rich through a widow he had married. After that, he became a captain among the highwaymen, and came into such high office that he intended to become king in Arabia. 5) But because he was of low estate and reputation, they did not accept him. Then he pretended to be a prophet, and after he had the falling sickness or the falling plague, and always fell down, so that no one would believe that he had such a plague, he said, An angel had spoken to him. And after that he said some sayings, which he heard (as he said) like a bell ringing in his ears.

160 But when he was an unlearned layman, the devil gave him right companions, some apostate Jews, and some lost Christians, the heretics. For a Jacobite named Baira attached himself to him, who stayed with Mahmet all his life, and it is said that after his death Mahmet did nothing. But of the Jews Phinees and Audia named Salon, then Audala 6) and Selem, they became Saracens, and some Nestorians, who agree very much with the Saracens and say that God was not born of Mary, but the man Jesus Christ.

And at that time Mahmet made something as a law by his fellows, took something from the Old Testament, something from the New Testament. But the people did not have the Alkoran at that time. For one reads in their histories thus that Mahmet spoke: The Alkoran came down to me above with seven men; what now is enough, that is enough. These men were Naphe, Eon, Omar, Omra, Eleesar, Asir, the son of Cethir and the son of Amer. Then we said to them, Let it be read before Mahomet. And they all said, Nay; but before the seven elders, and afterward before Mahmet.

It is certain that the seven elders did not agree with those, the previous elders, according to the words of the book, which they now keep. This is clear from the fact that the words of the first part are repugnant to the words of the second part. For after the death of Mahmet no one understood Alkoran except Audala the son of Mesetud, and Zeith the son of Tampeth, and Ocanan the son of Ophin, and the son of Oenpe, and the son of Tap. But of Alete the son of Abitalem, some said he understood one part, but some said no.

But each of them made his own Alcoran, quite unlike the other Alcorans. And they were also at odds all their lives, and

5) Marginal gloss: Münster.

6) Probably: Abdallah. Cf. § 60.

None of them worshiped the other's Alkoran. After her death, the people went astray and were divided in the Alkoran until the time of Mermpan son of Elecen, who gave them the Alkoran they have now and burned all the other Alkorans. Also the seven reeves of the cities contradicted him that he had not used proper and clear language after their kind.

164 In their histories it is also said that the chapter on divorce was longer than the chapter on Bovis, which at first had two hundred and thirty sayings, and now has no more than twelve. The others say that the chapter "Ox" had a thousand sayings, but now has eighty-seven. They also say of a mighty one, named Elgas, that he had eighty-five sayings from the Alkoran, and had added so many others of a different meaning.

How is it true, then, that they say of the Alkoran that God should have said: We have sent down the admonition (Alkoran) and also want to receive it?

Some also say that Mahmet died of poisoning, and at that time the people had no Alkoran. But when Empeumpecer took the reign, he ordered that everyone should read together what he could. And so he provided the alcoran that they now have, and burned the others.

But in the chapter Elaram it says of the Alkoran that no one understands its interpretation except God alone, and he who has a high understanding; we believe him, for it is all from God. And of course it is true that in this book there is so much disorder and incorrectness (as told above) that it teaches nothing, but is overwhelmed with folly and lies. So they finally agreed that this is the Alkoran they have now, and say that God revealed it to Mahmet, who wrote it from the mouth of God.

168 Elphacae, that is, the great teachers and interpreters, have never been united in their interpretation, nor will they ever be. So not only are those who live in the morning at odds with those who live in the evening, but also those who live in the morning are divided among themselves, and those who live in the evening are divided among themselves; even in the same school there are disgusting sects, so that one condemns the other; some follow Mahmet, and he is the most, some follow Hali, who is the least and the best, and say: Mahmet has taken by sacrilegious force what Hali has done.

169. some scholars stood up in the philosophia against both sects, began to read Aristotle and Plato, and left all of them.

Sects of the Saracens together with the Alkoran. When Caliphas of Babylon noticed this, he built schools, Academiam and Stantzeriam, which are very delicious, and changed their lessons into the Alkoran, and decreed that all who came from the countries to Babylon to learn the Alkoran should have free lodging and food, and commanded that those Saracens who studied in the Alkoran should not study in the Philosophia. Therefore, they consider that those who study in the Philosophia are not good Saracens, because they despise the Alkoran, for reasons indicated above in the eighth and ninth chapters.

Chapter XIV.

From a peculiar shameful big lie and appearance.

The Mahomet sets a fictitious face, which is supposed to be an interpretation of a part of the Woran. He speaks in the chapter "of the children of Israel": Praise be to him, who let his servant travel in one night from the house of prayer Elaram, that is, from the house of Mekka to the most femal house of prayer, which is the holy house of Jerusalem, which we bless etc. The interpretation of this saying is this: one day Mahmet said his morning prayer in the Psalms, and when he had finished it, he said to the people: O people, notice that yesterday, as I was leaving you, Gabriel came to me after the vesper prayer and said: O Mahmet! God has told you to visit him. I said: Where shall I visit him? Gabriel said, "In the place where he is. And he brought me a beast greater than an ass, and less than a dun horse, whose name was Elmparac,

And he said unto me, Get thee up, and ride unto the holy house. And when I would have sat up, the beast fled. And he said, Stand still, for it is Mahmet that shall sit out of thee. And the beast said, Am I sent for him? Gabriel answered, "Yes. The beast said: I will not let him sit out, but he shall first ask God for me. And I asked my God for the beast, and sat on it, and it went very softly under me, and it set its foot as far as it could see, to the end of heaven, and so I came to the holy house, nearer than in a moment.

And Gabriel was with me, and brought me to the rock of the house of the holy Jerusalem, and said unto me, Descend, for from this rock thou must go up to heaven. So I got down. And Gabriel bound the beast Elmparac to the rock with a girdle and carried me on his shoulders up to the rock.

1) In the editions: the.

the sky. When we came to heaven, Gabriel knocked at the door. Then he said: Who are you? He answered: I am Gabriel. And again he said, Who is with thee? He answered, Mahmet. And the porter said, Art thou sent for his sake? Gabriel said, Yes. Then he opened the door for us. Then I saw a great multitude of angels, and I bowed my knees twice, and prayed for them.

Then Gabriel took me and led me to the other heaven. But the two heavens were as far apart as a road that could be traveled in five hundred years. And when he knocked, the answer was the same as before. And so on to the seventh heaven. In the same heaven (as he writes) he saw a great multitude of angels; the size of every angel was many thousand times greater than the world is. Each one had seven hundred thousand heads. Every head had seven hundred thousand mouths. Every mouth had seven hundred thousand tongues. And every tongue praised God with seven hundred thousand tongues. 1) And he saw one of the angels weeping, and asked why he wept? And he answered, that he had sinned: and he prayed for him. Then he said, Gabriel commanded me to another angel, and the same to another, and so on, until I came and stood before God and His judgment seat. Then God touched me with His hand between my shoulders so hard that the coldness of His hand went through the marrow of my backbone. And God said to me, "I have put prayer on you and your people.

When I came down again to the fourth heaven, Moses advised me to go up again and relieve the people, 2) because they could not bear so much praying. And in the first coming again I attained from ten to the fourth part. And in the fourth coming I attained to the seventh part. And at last the number of the prayers was so few that almost little remained. But when Moses said that they could not yet bear so much, I was ashamed that I had gone up so often. And would go up no more, but came again to Elmparac, and rode down again and again unto the house of Mecca. And all this happened closer than in the tenth part of the night.

(This face we have left much more outside, because we have told).

When Mahmet told all the people, a thousand people fell away from his law.

1) Marginal gloss: Calculate how many languages an angel has.

2) Marginal gloss: He has grown weary of praying, so he wants to file away with lies.

And when they said, Dear, go up to heaven by day, that we may watch and see how the angels meet thee, he would not acknowledge his lies, but said, Praise be to God, I am nothing but a man, and yet an apostle.

In the chapter "Prophets," he says of those who sought miraculous signs from him and spoke to Mahomet in this way: Thou speakest many dreams and heapest up blasphemies, or speakest poetically, bring us at least one miraculous sign, as the former have done. He answered: "We (says God) have turned back cities before the unbelievers, do you think that they would believe? Why do they wait for miraculous signs? Then he answered, "Those who were before you did not believe in miracles, so you would not believe in miraculous signs without the sword.

177 Now listen, you Saracens who believe the Alkoran to be true, he himself, Mahmet, testifies that he has done no miraculous sign. And he is much more whom the sword has devoured than those who willingly followed him, as said above. And this shameful lie and false poem alone should be enough to embarrass all that Mahmet has said and done. For, as has often been said, the Holy Spirit made him lie so grossly that anyone could easily recognize his false poem. Now he says of himself unheard-of miracles; now he says that he has done no miracle; now he says that he is a man and a messenger; now he says that he is more than an angel and above the angels. And why did he need an ass or a beast to go from Mecca to Jerusalem, if he could go to the uttermost heaven without an ass? And how could he suffer such great splendor of the angels in heaven, saying [that] when an angel appeared to him, he fell to the earth every way, and lay, and foamed, and his hands and feet were bent? To this he does not say that he was raptured in such a vision, but went up with body and soul. And he says to the signs: God touched him between the shoulders with his hand, and [he] felt the cold through the marrow of his back.

Chapter XV.

Of six common questions in the Alkoran, against the Saracens. 3)

Let us hold six questions before the Saracens, to which, if they cannot answer them, they should recognize themselves and convert to the truth.

3) In the old editions: "is", which we, like Walch, have omitted.

56th Bro. Richard's Relocation of Alcoran. W. xx, Wis-Am. 2265

179) The first: What does the Alkoran want with it, that he introduces God so often speaking as in many persons? For so he speaks in the chapter Elmpaceram, in God's person: We commanded the angels that they should worship Adam; and so henceforth he lets God speak through the whole book to the end, now as many persons, now as One Person, when it is certain among the Saracens, as well as among the Christians, that God is one, and has no companion nor equal. For they cannot say here that God speaks thus in his person and in the person of the angels. For he speaks this to the angels, or from the angels, when he says, "We have commanded the angels," and this speech of God is not from the angels, but from the angels, as the chapter Sad also testifies, that all the angels worshiped Adam, without the devil.

In many places in the Alkoran, he performs such a speech of God as spoken in many persons, in addition in such works in which the angels cannot have a part or fellowship with God, as in the creation of the world and the justification of the ungodly etc. For in many places it is thus written: We have created heaven and earth, and all that is between them, 1) and we have not judged man in vain. And we sent the Son of Mary, and we gave him the Holy Ghost, and the gospel, and miraculous works, and such like. In which works the angels may not have part nor fellowship with God. For they themselves are created by God, and do not create heaven and earth with God. etc.

Neither can the Saracens say that such speech is of God and of another being, which would be called wisdom and understanding, over the created understanding, through which God creates everything. For it is evident that what is apart from God is a creature, or being created by God. For the creature is not at the same time a being created by God, and with God a creator. Nor can it be said that God speaks in this way because of many of his attributes or names, except that he is called the eternal power, wisdom, justice, goodness, etc., which the Arabs call Saphat. For all these are not peculiar and other beings apart from God, but the one divine Being Himself; indeed, no angel nor man may speak of himself as many, for the sake of such attributes, since they are not the Being Himself, but may be with and from.

182. it is true, it is found in one place in Moses, that God speaks in such a way, Gen. 1, 26: "Let us make man in our image", which the Jews interpret as meaning that God is

1) "is" is missing in the Wittenberger.

talk with the angels. But this is against the holy scripture, which does not say that man was made in the image of angels, but in the image of God. As Moses himself interprets it soon after v. 27: "God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him." Therefore, this is a speech of the Father to the Son, or of the whole Trinity to itself; for God is one in essence, and triune in persons.

Thus Mahmet might well have said, from his own words, since God calls Himself We or Us, that there is One God and three Persons; but he makes a false sense under right words, as if three Persons must be three Gods. Therefore he says in the chapter Elnesan: "O company of the Book, be not lax in your law, and say nothing of God but the truth, that Christ is the Son of Mary, an apostle of God, and the Word of God, which He has put into them by the Holy Spirit. See, there he names the three, God, Word, Holy Spirit; but that he does not confess three gods for the sake of the three, he quickly adds: You shall not say that there are three Gods, for God is one God. Thus the Holy Spirit admonished him and drove him, so that he had to pronounce the highest article with words of our faith, and yet led the wrong mind into it. For we also say that God is one, and yet God's Word and Holy Spirit are with God, and not three gods.

The other question: The Alkoran always remembers the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. Does the Holy Spirit work, and who is the Word of God? For in the chapter Elpalceram God says: "We have given Jesus, the Son of Mary, to perform public miracles and signs, and have made him perfect through the Holy Spirit. And this is what he always proclaims throughout the whole chapter. And in the chapter Elmaide: Mary, we have poured into her the Holy Spirit; and in many places he speaks thus.

Here the Saracens cannot say that he is a creature, like an angel, or good spirit. For he (that is, God) speaks of One Holy Spirit. But the angels are many, all holy, and all God's spirits. Why then does he speak as of one special one and say: the holy and our spirit? Nor would it be a special praise that God should not have given Christ, whom the Alcoran praises very highly, more than an angel, or holy spirit, as a guardian. For that is what he does to all men, as the

2) "be" put by us instead of "is" after § 187, where the same citation recurs.

Alkoran says in the chapter Elntaide: 1) God makes His spirits angels and us apostles.

Furthermore, the angels cannot (yet no creature) sanctify a man, but it must be God who does both by and without means, and he alone can forgive sin, as the Alcoran says. Thus, such a spirit that does such works must be true God, just as he who speaks of such a spirit: We have given the Holy Spirit, and have poured in the Holy Spirit etc. So then, if there must be one inseparable God, it follows that whoever gives the Spirit, and the Spirit so given, must be essentially One God, personally distinct. Thus Mahmet, though ignorant, must testify with words against himself to our faith's highest article, and does not understand what he says.

The third question: In the same way, we may also ask about the word of God; for in the chapter Abraham, the angels say to the holy Mary: O Mary! God has exalted you above all women. And soon after: O Mary! God proclaims to you, or His word proclaims to you. And in the chapter Elnesan he says: "Say nothing about God except the truth that Christ Jesus, the son of Mary, is an apostle of God, and is the Word of God, which He has placed in her through the Holy Spirit. So he confesses that Christ is the Word of God.

The question now arises: What is such a Word of God, whether it is a human, transient word, or an essential word? One cannot say that (it) is a human word, because it is supposed to be God's word; so also the human word was not put into Mary by the Holy Spirit, much less born from her.

The Gospel and the Alkoran also speak of a single word of God, which is not the voice of man. For the word of man, which is also called and is the word of God, is many, and by it was not heaven and earth created, nor was it born of Mary. And what special praise of Christ would that be, that he should be the Word of God, that he should preach the Word of God: when all the prophets preach the Word of God, and yet none is called the Word of God; Christ alone is called the Word of God in the Gospel and the Alkoran. But Mahmet wants to exalt Christ far above all prophets, because he is the Word of God.

190) But because 2) he speaks of the essential imperishable Word, it is evident that it must be

1) In the old editions "Elmaice", which is probably a misprint. Compare the note to § 209.

2) Thus the Wittenberg edition. The Jena one offers instead of: "Weil - redet" the words: "Will - reden".

be an eternal word and true God. For just as the word spoken from the mouth of corruptible men must be corruptible, so the word that proceeds from the eternal mouth of God, through which (as the Alcoran confesses) heaven and earth were created, must be eternal and incorruptible, and thus a true God. But since there cannot be only one God, it follows from this that God and His Word must be essentially One God, and yet personally distinct. And this is the word by which God spoke and made all things, John 1:1, 2, 3, as is also written in the Alkoran. So that the Mahmet here once again confesses with words, yes, with our words (however unwittingly) the high article of the holy Trinity in God.

When Mahmet hears that the Christians preach that God has a son, he could not think more highly than that without a wife there could be no son. Therefore, the coarse companion does not bring up any other reason than that God does not have a wife. And did not think that David in the Psalter, which he praises so highly, gives God many sons, you say Ps. 82, 6: "You are gods, and children of the Most High," and yet God has neither one nor many wives.

Even if it is impossible to have sons without a woman, it must be just as impossible for women to have sons without men. Why then does he believe that Mary would have a son without a husband? But he is too coarse to understand how God has a son. And yet he speaks the words, as he learned from the Arians, that Christ is God's word; however, like a jackdaw 3) learns the language of men, which it does not understand.

193 Notice that when he said that Christ is the Word of God, he adds that Christ is with God like Adam, to whom he said when he made him from the earth: Esto, be a man. How does this rhyme with the one where he says that God poured his Word and his Holy Spirit into Mary? and thus the Word was born from Mary.

194 But if he should be called the Word of God, because he was created like Adam, and it is said of him: Esto, be Christ the Son of Mary; then all creatures 4) must be called the Word of God, because it is said to all: Esto, be, or become. Thus Christ would not be the word by which all things were made, as he is confessed above; but he himself must also have been made by another word, like all creatures.

3) In the old editions: "Dale".

4) Thus taken over by us from the old edition of Walch instead of: "dem alle Creatur nach" rr.

The fourth question: Why does Mahomet praise so highly Moses, Job, David, and say: The Psalter is a noble book? But above all books he praises the gospel, because he confesses that truth and salvation are in it. It 1) asks (I say) why the Saracens do not read, nor have, nor teach such books, which the Mahmet praises and points to? For the Christians, when they heard such books praised by Christ, took them from the Jews, and interpreted them into all kinds of languages, and still hold them high, reading and preaching them in their churches.

For the Saracenes pretend out of their mahmet that the Jews have falsified the Old Testament, the Christians the New, and that nothing true has remained in the world, for as much as is in the Alkoran, this is proved above to be a lie. For this is against Alkoran himself, who directs his Saracenes to such books, saying: there is truth and salvation in the Gospel, and if they doubt in Alkoran, let them ask the Gospel; and is not that such great prophet should direct to false books.

But this is the reason why the Saracens do not read such books. For their scholars know that where the Saracens read such holy truthful books, they would easily find the lies of the Alkoran. That is why the Alcoran, out of the devil's malice, has protected himself so that his lies would not be revealed, and has built many defenses against it. The first, that he commanded them to kill all who speak against the Alcoran, as above in Cap. The other is that they shall not debate with people of other sects. The third, he forbids to believe all who are not of his sect, as in the chapter Abraham: You shall believe no one except those who follow our law. The fourth, that he separates himself from all and says: "My law to me, your law to you. If the Saracens wanted to follow Alkoran, because he praises Moses, David, Solomon and the Gospel so highly that truth and salvation are in it, they would do well. But now they remain condemned, even by their own Alkoran, who directs them to the right books, and yet they despise them.

The fifth question: Why does the Mahmet always indicate these words? Believe God and the apostle; obey God and the apostle; follow God and the apostle etc.? For therefore it seems as if Mahmet wanted to make himself God's

1) So the old issues. The meaning is: you ask cheap etc.

2) Wittenberger: is.

He always claims that there is one God and that he has no equal or companion. For that Christ says: If you believe in God, then believe also in him, he does this justly; for he is natural God, and equal to God from eternity. Otherwise, the prophets do not speak in such a way, 3) that they join or resemble God, and say: Listen to God and me, follow God and me.

The sixth question: Since the Alkoran says many and glorious things about Christ, but little and low things about Mahmet, why do the Saracens not prefer to follow Christ rather than Mahmet, and the Gospel rather than the Alkoran? And that both may seem the clearer, let us set black and white against each other and hear what the Alcoran says of both.

Of Christ, the Alcoran says that he was announced to his mother by an angel, sanctified by the Holy Spirit, and conceived by the power of God the Most High, not by natural power, and born of the most holy virgin Mary, who is the purest of all women. But of the Mahmet he says none, but that he is an orphan and wretched, and hired by God.

Further, the Alkoran says of Christ that he is God's word, therefore nothing was unconscious or uncertain to him. But Mahmet is an uncertain prophet. For he himself confesses that he does not know how he and his people will fare. For he speaks to his Saracens: I do not know whether I or you are right. 4) Therefore it is also said that he said of his father and mother, "I would like to know how they have lived, or how they are doing.

It is also said that he was bewitched by the Jews, namely, that the women stuck his waxen image in the face full of needles and threw them into a well. And it is commonly said that he was killed with poison, which he got because a Jewess let his vein run.

Item 203: Christ comes from Abraham and Isaac, to whom the promise of the blessing of the inheritance is given; but Mahomet comes from Ishmael, to whom the promise does not concern, but

3) Marginal gloss: Hoc est frigidulum. Nam 2 Paralip. 20, 20. dicit Josaphat: Credite Domino et prophetis ejus. Et Paulus: Imitatores mei estote, sicut ego Christi: [This reason is somewhat dull; for 2 Chron. 20:20. saith Jehoshaphat, "Believe the Lord and his prophets." And Paul (1 Cor. 4, 16. according to the Vulg.); "Be ye followers of me, as I of Christ."]

4) Marginal gloss: Papale: Nescit homo, utrum amore an odio dignus sit.

It is written of him: "He will be a wild man, his hand against all, and all hands against him" etc. Gen. 16, 12.

Item 204: Christ never committed any sin, for God's Word and Spirit cannot sin; Mahmet was an idolater, a murderer, an abuser of women, a robber, and full of all vices. Although they say that God has forgiven him.

Item: Christ performed many great healing miracles, but he did not perform one, as the Alcoran testifies. For that which is said of him is either a lie, or impossible, or foolish, or of no avail. For example, that he has cut the moon in two, or that a camel has spoken, or even that he has done them in secret, for he himself confesses that he has done many things by night and in secret, which he could not prove when asked during the day. Therefore also some said unto him, Thou sayest how thou goest up to heaven by night; go up by day, that we may see and believe.

206. But Christ did great and glorious miracles in the daytime, publicly, before many observers, and his works are manifest. Item: Christ has been a surpassing Master, as the Alkoran says; and in the chapter Elmaide God says: O Christ, notice how I have given you the Holy Spirit to speak. Item: In the cradle I taught you the Book, Wisdom, Mosaic Law and Gospel. But Mahmet was an unlearned master, a layman, who knew no other language than his mother tongue, nor understood the interpretation of his own law. For he says that God understands the Alkoran.

Item: Christ, according to the Gospel, was crucified, died, rose again, and sits at the right hand of God. Although the Alkoran says that he did not die, but that God took him to himself. Now he says what he wants, so far he agrees with the Gospel that Christ is alive, but Mahmet is dead. Now it is better to have a living helper than a dead one. Why then do the Saracens not rather follow Christ than Mahmet, and rather the Gospel than the Alkoran? And it is reasonable to believe that the best law is given by the best master.

Chapter XVI.

How the gospel surpasses the alcoran.

From all that has been said above, it is easy to see how the gospel is far above the Alkoran. For we have thus proved that the Alkoran cannot be God's law, because neither the Old Testament nor the New Testament testify to it.

[It does not agree with others in speech or teaching, it is repugnant to itself, it is not confirmed by any miraculous sign, it is contrary to reason, it contains public lies, it is murderous, it is disorderly, it is harmful, it is uncertain; all this is proved from the Alcoran itself. And he who reads the Alcoran himself will find it better that we may boldly say, If you will not believe us, read the Alcoran. But in the Gospel all this is contradicted.

And he himself, Mahomet, before all the prophets that are now, or that may come, highly commendeth Christ, and exalteth the gospel above all the books of the holy scriptures. But we know that no testimony of doctrine or life is so strong and powerful as the praise of those who reproach us. For in the chapter Elmaide 1) God says: "We have made the way of men through Jesus Christ, the Son of Mary, the most true prophet, and have given him the gospel, which is law and light and public truth. So the Alkoran praises the gospel in many more places. And it is revealed to the world in the highest way, in all places, in all languages, so that I may boldly say to the Saracens: If you want to believe your Mahmet or not, read the Gospel yourself.

210. Further, the Alkoran says in the chapter Elemphal: Since God wanted the truth to be certain by His word, and the heretics to be reigned in, and the truth to be right, and the lie to be destroyed, God has thus provided and ordered, so that the world would not be corrupted by ignorance, that this law, which is common and necessary to all, namely the law of the Gospel, should not be written in one place, but in all countries, not in one language, but in all languages, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and then faithfully interpreted.

211 Therefore, at the end of the Gospel, Matth. 28, 19, Marc. 16, 15, Christ commanded His disciples to preach the Gospel confidently to the whole world. And so that they would be able to do this, He gave them the gifts of speaking with all tongues and the power to perform miracles. But the Alkoran says that he was given to them 2) alone, and only in Arabic.

1) In the old editions: "Elmeide", while in 2 103 and 2184 it is "Elmaide" and 2 28 and 2 34 Elmaida". Also "Elmaice" (2 185) is probably a printing error. Aehnnchen errors we meet also with other Arabic chapter names, e.g. "Inpacara" (2 49) and "Empacara" (2 128), "Elmpaceram" (2 179) and "Elpalceram" (2184); "Elemphal" (2 210) and "Elemphaal" (2 147).

2) Jenaer: him.

Language given by God, as the Saracens firmly insist that no one can understand him who does not know Arabic. Now it is obvious that not all the world can learn Arabic, nor can all of them, and yet they boast (as has been said) that no one can be saved except those who live by the law of the Saracens. Therefore, it is reasonable to ask them why God wants only the Saracens, or those who know Arabic, to be saved, 1) since the Christian Law is written in all languages, teaching that God wants all people to be saved.

As the Saracens, who alone call themselves the blessed or preserved by name (as said above), and all others truly want to be saved, they must learn to recognize Christ, the only Savior, and read the gospel in whatever language they want; then they will find all that is proved above about the Alkoran, the contradiction.

They will find how Moses and the prophets testified to the same thing, and that it is not against itself, nor rhymed or poetically put, but simple and bad speech, for the benefit of the simple, that they may understand it well. It is also not full of its own praise, nor does it need shameful, lewd, but mean, honest words. There is no fairy tale or twaddle in it beforehand. And even though there are parables in it, they interpret themselves afterwards. So it is also perfect, not only the outward work, but also the inward evil desires.

Item 214: It does not permit murder, robbery, violence, or injustice; indeed, it teaches that one should suffer such things for God's sake, and pray for enemies, persecutors, and blasphemers. Thus it is also, as said above, orderly, and certain, by certain masters; not so disorderly, incorrect, and by uncertain masters, as the Alcoran. It also does not reject people who do not believe soon; it does not say to them, like Mahmet, "My faith is mine, your faith is yours," as if he alone asked where he would be blessed, not where the others remain. But it teaches to be ready to answer all who desire causes of their faith and hope, wanting all men to be blessed, and not themselves alone.

215 And this is also due to a wise man of understanding, that he should show the reason and cause of what he does and teaches; otherwise every fool would give the law, and make what he would, and then say to those who asked him the reason and cause, To me be my law, to you be your law, to me let no man believe contrary or otherwise.

1) Marginal gloss: Vsl, an vslit onmss ^radioarn IlnAuam älsosrs.

Chapter XVII.

What the Saracens answer to all this.

216) To this some quarrelsome and spiritual Saracens want to answer, thus: We do not say that the Gospel is not from God, if the Alkoran publicly testifies to it. Nor do we say that it has a defect or is imperfect because it is from God, but it proclaims such high and perfect things that the world is not able to keep it. 2) For who can love God with all his heart and his neighbor as himself? 3) Who can pray for his persecutors and blasphemers? Who can do good from the heart to those who do evil to him? And many other high things are given in the gospel.

Because it was such a law that could not be kept, God advised the world with the law of blessedness, and made the commandments easier, and gave the world the Alkoran, which is not so difficult, and people can easily be saved by it. 4) Therefore they say that the Alkoran is better for the common man, and for the world very much enough for salvation; and for this reason they call the Alkoran with a special name the law of salvation. Thus they conclude that the Alkoran has come in the place of the Gospel, 5) and what was good in the Gospel is in the Alkoran, so that henceforth one may have nothing of the Gospel.

218 But this is a public lie; for it cannot be said with truth that the gospel was given for a time, that is, until the Alcoran, and the Alcoran should have come in its place; because the Alcoran himself testifies that truth and blessedness are in the gospel. For how can truth and blessedness depart? Or from whom should they depart?

219] Furthermore, it is not good to say that after God gave the gospel, He only afterwards realized that the world could not keep it, and therefore changed His word and eased the commandments; just as if God did not know what we were or what we were able to do until He learned it afterwards: for a man knows beforehand what his cattle can or cannot bear. Rather, God knew beforehand whether the gospel was too heavy, and what men could bear 6).

The Alkoran himself also says that the Saracens are nothing if they do not fulfill the Gospel and Mosiah's Law, as stated above.

3) Marginal gloss: Isn't the Mosis commandment.

4) Marginal gloss: O salutary law!

5) Marginal gloss: O devil!

6) Wittenberger: endure.

321 Further, if the Alkoran is lighter than the gospel, it is all the more dangerous if they do not keep it. Now the Saracens do not keep it, that is obvious; for they drink wine and get drunk, and eat forbidden food with them, do not keep the fasts, nor the prayers, and do not give alms according to their ability, and many other things more, which well know who has lived among them and experienced such things.

It is true that Mahmet would have liked to give an easy law, but he is not forbidden to rule his pen in such a way that he does not write many difficult things under it. First of all, it is difficult that no one understands the Alkoran without God alone, as he says in the Alkoran, although this is foolishly said; ut supra Cap. 8. Item, he confesses that Mary, a virgin, gave birth to Jesus, and that God has a Word and Holy Spirit; which is difficult to believe, and with us confirmed by miracles, as necessary articles for salvation.

223 He is also hard on works, such as circumcising oneself, not drinking wine, and guarding against all drunkenness through strong drink, fasting and praying, and giving alms according to each one's ability, and many other things that very few Saracens keep.

224 If it were necessary for men that the commandments of the Gospel should be lightened, and the Alkoran given as a lighter law, then one might pretend that it would be necessary to give another lighter law, which men could keep, and thus both the Gospel, the Alkoran, Moses, and finally all laws would be done away with, until we would do what everyone desires. Therefore let it remain as Solomon says, Ecclesiastes 12:13: "Fear God and keep His commandments, which is the duty of all people.

Martinus Luther.

This is a shameful law, which itself confesses that not everything is true that is written in it, but, as we heard in the ninth chapter, Mahmet himself confesses that of his twelve thousand words, only three thousand are true, and the other nine thousand are all lies. This is a free devil, who, without all the larva of angels, publicly boasts in his own form that where he teaches something, the fourth part is true, and three parts are lies; so it is certainly all lies, even the fourth part, if it were true in itself.

2. for no one (no one, not even a sensible person) will ever

eternally that a man (if he is otherwise a man who is 1) in his right mind) should be able to believe with seriousness a book or scripture, of which he would be certain that one part (let alone three parts) would be a lie, not having to know which would be true or not true in different ways, and thus having to buy in sackcloth, or eat or drink three pints of poison mixed with one pound of sugar.

No one (I say again) will persuade me that a reasonable man can seriously accept and believe such a book. For it is impossible that a human heart, even the devil himself, can believe a lie. I say, believe seriously; for the devil himself knows well that his lies are lies, and cannot himself believe them to be truth, as little as all his children, who lie secretly or publicly, can believe in themselves that their lie is truth, yes, they know and want it to be lies.

4 If the Turks or Saracens believe this book of Mahomet, the Alkoran, with earnestness, they are not worthy to be called men, as they, deprived of common human reason, have become mere brutes, stone and block. But if they are men and of sound mind, and believe the same Alkoran knowingly and willingly, then no one is guilty of their damnation but they themselves. For their master, Mahmet, and the devil, too, have kept themselves safe, and are honestly excused from their damnation before God and all the world, because they publicly confess that they want to teach lies.

(5) If my pastor preached to me: Do you hear, I will now preach a sermon in which three parts will be lies and the fourth part will be true; and if I do not distinguish between the three parts and the fourth part, but I nevertheless believe everything in the 2) field: Dear, tell me, with what pretense would I accuse such a pastor at the last judgment of having deceived me? He would answer me (the devil himself also): I have not deceived you, but you yourself, I warned you that I wanted to lie to you, and you wanted to have the lies.

1) "a man is who" is missing in the Wittenberg.

2) Wittenberger: ins.

(6) If this were so, the Turks or Mahometists would have to be such people who unite themselves with the devil, committing and prescribing that he should assist them, help them and advise them on what they would like, as they have always been and still are, even great princes and lords. For they must not blame anyone for their damnation except themselves. The devil is innocent in this, they want it that way. And it is nevertheless to be seen from this booklet Richardi that the Mahmet together with his companions had also been such a leveler 1). As with the Arabs, his compatriots, such black arts have always existed, and still are today.

(7) And where the Turks were of the people, the Christians (especially with armor and weapons) would have a hard time against them. For to fight the devil with iron is nothing and a lost cause; one must first, by right faith and with an earnest Lord's Prayer, put the devil, their god, out of the field, and bring God to us with His angels.

Now, I want to put this time (but that without giving) that the Turks are partly also men, and do not believe the Alcoran, as Richardus also testifies that there are many among them who do not believe the Alcoran. For also our Medici and Astronomi have many of the Saracen books, as Avicennam, Mesue, Hali, Albumasar, Alfraganum etc., who admittedly were men, and believed nothing of the Alkoran, but followed reason, as Plato, Cicero, and such philosophers. Such people, I think, have been misled by the sects, and have wanted to be neither Jews, nor Christians, nor Saracens, and have kept to reason and philosophy.

(9) After that, the other group, who believe neither this nor that, are slammed (as they still do) for the sake of great happiness, victory, good, honor, worldly carnal glory and pleasure, who do not ask anything about what is right or wrong, about God or the devil, but because there is happiness, quickly conclude that God must be there, whose gift is all this, and if he were not their gracious God, he would not give it. So it must be right,

1) Thus the Jenaer and the Erlanger. Wittenbergers: "Ebenthewer".

what they believe; and though they know that they believe many lies, God will let it all be good, who nevertheless gives them so much, so helps them, so blesses them, so lifts them up, that they have become drunk with great happiness and, drowned inside, do not consider where they are at home.

(10) Take an example from ours, who want to be Christians and holy churches; they know and freely confess that it is God's commandment, word and truth that they hear, and that what they believe is wrong and unjust. But their hearts are elsewhere than in mammon, temporal power, honor and pleasure, that they knowingly and wantonly despise and persecute the recognized and known truth, to defend their public and recognized idolatry, lies and injustice. And the mob, who daily hears God's commandment that adultery, robbery, theft, avarice, usury, cursing, despising God etc. is great sin, laughs and mocks both the preachers and God in his commandments. And the sum is, where the great God Mammon is powerful, everyone believes and does what he wants, and what he thus wants to believe and do must be right, regardless of the fact that his conscience tells and admonishes him otherwise. And, what is still worse, there are many who associate with the devil, and know that it is the devil, and trust him. For they know that he is a murderer and a liar. All these will not be able to say at the last day that they have been deceived by the devil.

11. Since both of these things are common among us and among us Christians, and the greatest number, disobeying God's commandment, knowingly serve mammon, yes, the devil: What is there to wonder if the Turks, who do not have God's commandment and word, drowned in mammon and such great fortune, believe public lies, or at least consider them harmless lies, because God is so close to them, and so highly honors them with victory and wealth, fortune and whatever they want. They do not think how God gives such great goods, dominion and honor to the worst of boys, nor does he give the whole world to the devil, so that he is called the prince of the world.

12) Now, when such two armies of Turks come against

Dear, give our Lord God good counsel (where he otherwise would not know), which Turks 1) he should help and give happiness? I, for one of the least counselors, 2) want to advise him to give the Mahometan Turks luck against the Christian Turks, as he has done so far, without our counsel, even against our complaint and request. The reason is that the Mahometan Turks do not have God's word, nor do they have preachers of it; they are coarse, insolent sows, and do not know what they believe or believe; but if they had preachers of the divine word, they might, yes, some of them, turn sows into men. But our Christian Turks have God's word and preachers, yet they do not want to hear it, and they become vain sows out of men, desecrating the name of Christ, so that they boast of being Christians and Christian, and yet they are worse Turks than those who boast of being Christians and not Christian.

Item 13: This is also a very fine thing (if this is to be called fine, which the devil himself cannot make uglier) about the Saracens or Turks, that they not only believe such lies, or at least are not afraid of them, but also do not know whether these are the same lies, 3) or who the masters of such lies are. For, as Richard says in the 13th chapter above, they have had so many different Alkorans, some burned, some patched up, and some destroyed and mangled, that they themselves do not know which is the right Alkoran or the right book of lies. That it looks as if the Mahmet has perhaps put something, after which so many masters have come over it, since one has carpentered this, the other that on it, removed and added, according to each conceit, that the name Mahmet alone has remained on it and the present Alkoran (to speak so) must be called the right Alkoran out of arbitrariness and by force.

14. and it is not much better with us

1) "Turks" is missing in the Wittenberger.

2) Wittenberger: one.

3) Erlanger: lie. It will have to be the noun here, because the context reveals that the Turks do not know whether it is just the same lies which the Koran contains, which Mahomet has presented, or other lies. Immediately following, Luther says: "The right book of lies".

Christians also went. For there are so many lies in our Alcorans, Decretals, Lying Sums and innumerable books, since no one knows where they come from, when they began, who the masters are. For it is not known today who the masters of the abomination are, that the one figure of the holy sacrament has been taken out of the church. Item, who of the 4) lying saints, St. Christopher, St. George, St. Barbara, St. Catherine, St. Ursula, and those without number, with their miracles, who first devised the Sacrifice of the Mass, Purgatory, Indulgences, and such idolatry without measure first began. Still, as they come into custom and are written in books, they must be called articles of the holy church, and all those who doubt or believe against them must be heretics.

15 And the pope defends everything with force, since his high scholars, also cardinals, rebuke and boast with the saying in their rights: Non potest omnium ratio reddi [one cannot give an account of all things, regardless of the fact that God, the Holy Spirit, through His holy apostle St. Peter, tells us to be ready to give everyone the answer, the reason and the cause of our faith [1 Petr. 3, 15]. And St. Paul teaches his disciple Timothy to know from whom he learned [2 Tim. 3, 14]. If a Christian does not know from whom he learned it, nor why he believes this way, what may one believe about God or His Holy Scriptures?

But God has let his final wrath go so that the devil has poured out all his power and wickedness until he could do nothing more evil, namely, that he has created all kinds of lies knowingly and understandable to reason by Mahmet's regiment there in the morning and by Pabst's regiment here in the evening, and that he has not considered us worthy to know or denounce the masters of such lies for the purpose of mockery and exaltation. This is how God should punish our ungrateful, cursed being, for the blood that His dear Son shed to reconcile and redeem us. Oh, Lord God, pray, sigh, cry out, whoever can pray, sigh, cry out,

4) Erlanger: "sanctify".

that the wrath may one day, as Daniel says, come to an end, amen [Dan. 11:36].

(17) But what I am writing here I am doing in order that this booklet may come to the attention of those who are fighting against the Turk, or who are already under the Turk, or who are yet to come, by means of printing or preaching, so that they may resist the faith of Mahomet, since they cannot resist his sword, especially those who would like to be saved even after this life. For I have completely despaired of those who want to wage war against the Turk, and yet with blasphemy, fornication and all kinds of willfulness, neither the Turks themselves are worse than I know that God will not nor can give happiness where such people should wage war for us.

It will be up to those who repent and amend, honor God's Word and His sacraments, humble themselves before God, and pray heartily so that God may be moved and keep His angels with us in the field. Otherwise, it is lost and the punishment must come upon us, be it this or another. For God can no longer suffer it, as is now often preached, and reason must confess.

(19) This should also move a devout Christian, yes, even a respectable heathen man, that there is no discipline or marital status at all among the Mahometans, but only a free life of whoredom. For whoever, according to Mahmet's law, takes as many wives as he wants, rejects them again, and takes them again as often as he wants, or sells them etc., is not a husband, but a true whoremonger or wild whore-hunter. For this is not how God created women, nor how he ordered them to be kept, as Moses and the Gospel teach us by reason. Therefore, such mahmetists are vain whoremongers and fornicators, just as dogs and sows have marriage, since no marriage nor semblance of marriage can be. And it is no wonder that the wild, savage people take pleasure in such a free sow's life and like to become Turks.

(20) That they keep much stricter order besides, as obedience in war, severe punishments in regiment, and much praying,

1) "the" is missing in the Wittenberger.

and the like, that is vain pretense and helps nothing. Behold the murderers' and murderers' guilds, and other desperate societies of traitors and malefactors, how they are so faithful among themselves to keep their oaths and vows, so secretive, so obedient, so diligent, so valiant, so cunning, so careful, how they suffer so much and dare to do harm, that no prince nor lord finds the same among his subjects (except among very few). And it would be a blessed regiment if the subjects were all so faithful, so diligent, so brave, so obedient, to do good, as the murderers, traitors, murderers, devil's flocks are among each other, to do evil. For the sinful flesh is willing and inclined to do evil and to serve the devil, it likes to keep faith and obedience, but to do good it does not want to continue anywhere. Just as a wife is much more faithful and obedient, and does and suffers much more for the sake of the adulterer than for the sake of her husband and children. Again, the adulterer also, according to the saying: The devil's martyrs suffer more than Christ's martyrs, and hell must be earned more sourly than heaven.

21) They also pray a lot, like the married woman, Proverbs 7, 14, does, 2) give and sacrifice a lot. Our highwaymen sing 3) thus: First we will praise Mary, the pure maid, and St. George must be Rottmeister. And what may it much say? Where is more prayer and worship ever heard than among the idolatrous heathen, among the false prophets in the nation of Israel, and among the clergy in the papacy? And yet all their prayers in a heap are not worthy of a letter nor a bag in the Lord's Prayer; indeed, as the 109th Psalm, v. 7, says, they are vain sins, and, Matth. 23, 14, condemned as a great abuse of the divine name, because "what does not come from faith is sin. Rom. 14, 23.

From all this we Christians may see what a cruel, terrible, immeasurable wrath of God has fallen upon the ungrateful world that has despised the Gospel of God. There, towards morning, he has decreed that the beast, the shameful Mahmet, has

2) Wittenberger: "Ehehurn" and "thun"; "much" is missing. 3) Walch and the Erlangers: ostrich robbers.

1) Here, towards evening, he has let the false prophet, the troublesome Pabst, arise, who has deceived and crushed the world much more subtly, so that those who did not want to hear the Son of God there had to hear the son of the devil, the Mahmet, and those who did not want to obey the Holy Spirit here had to obey the evil spirit in the Pabst. 2)

(23) But his causeless mercy, to preserve his dear church, has so tempered such abominable wrath that the shameful Mahmet has not been able to deceive anyone, nor has he himself wanted to be deliberately deceived. For he had to expose his lies so crudely and tangibly, and to arrange his nature so sourly and beastly (as heard above), that no reasonable person (let alone a Christian) could believe him, nor approve of his behavior.

(24) Here, in our country, He has mightily and graciously preserved the Holy Scriptures, the text of the Gospel, and the sacraments in public usage and in the churches, so that the deceived elect may finally, in their distress or at their end, come to terms and take hold of the Lord and Savior in His Word and Sacrament, as happened to St. Bernard and many like him.

(25) And I do not take Mahmet for the end-Christian; he makes it too rough, and has a knowable black devil, who can deceive neither faith nor reason, and is like a heathen who persecutes Christianity from without, as the Romans and other heathens have done. For how can he deceive a Christian who rejects the Holy Scriptures, both New and Old Testaments, baptism, sacrament, keys, or forgiveness of sins, Lord's Prayer, faith, ten commandments, even the marriage state, and teaches vain murder and fornication?

26. but the pope with us is the real end-Christ, he has the high, subtle, beautiful, glittering devil, who sits inside Christianity, leaves the holy scripture, baptism, sacrament, key, catechism, marriage, and the other things in the hands of the devil.

1) Wittenberger: plagued.

2) Jenaer: would have to.

3) Wittenberger: the.

stand. As St. Paul says: he sits (that is, reigns) in the temple of God [2 Thess. 2, 4], that is, in the church or Christianity, namely in such a people that has been baptized, the sacrament, the keys, the holy scripture and God's word. And yet he rules so masterfully that he elevates his Drecketal, his Alkoran, his human doctrine so above God's word that the Christians' baptism, sacrament, keys, prayer, gospel, and Christ himself are no longer of any use, but must believe to be saved by their own work. All monasteries, convents and all his regiment are directed to this.

This devil does not affect those who want to be deliberately deceived, as under the Mahomet, but those who do not want to be deceived, yes, the elect of God, Matth. 24, 24. For he uses all these names, God, Christ, Son of God, Holy Spirit, church, baptism, sacrament and everything that Christians believe and teach, and which the Mahmet rejects. And yet, under such names and appearances, pushes the truth to the ground by his alcoran, as St. Paul says: Speciem pietatis habentes, virtutem ejus abnegantes [2 Tim. 3, 5.].

(28) Mahmet also boasts that he does not perform any signs, but Christ and Paul prophesy that the Pope should sit in the temple of God, pretend to be God, and perform many false signs and wonders [Matth. 24/) 15. 24. 2 Thess. 2,4. If you want to know what these miracles are, read about the saints, the monks, the pilgrimages, the masses, and similar legends, and you will see what false signs are, and what miracles the poltergeists and pilgrimage devils, saints' service or invocations have done in all corners of Christendom. Although some of them are fictitious, and in addition to such signs, Christ also proved His true signs to His own through the prayers of true Christians.

29 And behold, how the gross devil there and the subtle devil here have played the game of matrimony. The coarse, impolite Mahmet takes all wives, and yet has none. The chaste pope takes no wife, and yet has all wives. Are these not strange

4) Here the Erlangen edition reprinted from Walch: "Matth. 34, 15."

Things? He who has no wife has all wives; he who has all wives has none. How does it work? This is how it goes: the impudent, insolent Mahmet leads no pretense of chastity, takes wives (like a whoremonger) as much as he wants; therefore he has none in marriage, nor can he have one in marriage, and is therefore without a wife, or in no marital state.

30. The lily-white, chaste, shamefaced, chastening, holy father, the pope, the tender Juugfrauschaft, leads the appearance of chastity and also does not want to have a wife with God and honor; but how many wives he otherwise takes, not only whores, but also wives and virgins: Look at his cardinalates, bishoprics, monasteries, convents, priests, preachers, chaplains, schoolmasters, and his whole body, without which there are still countless vices that must not be named.

I do not want to count other things than murder and avarice, or else the pope would far surpass the Mahmet in this. For he has instigated so much war, murder and bloodshed among the kings, robbed so much property, land and people, stolen, plundered and maltreated them without rest, and has also practiced such arrogance over all the kings, and all of this under Christ's name in the most blasphemous way, that Mahomet would be almost holy before the world against him.

32. shall we now have luck against the

1) Erlanger: marital.

Mahmet, the outward enemy of Christianity, we must first renounce the inward enemy, the 2) end-Christ with his devil, through righteous repentance, and turn to our Lord and Savior JESUS CHRIST with right earnestness and a simple heart, so that we can pray rightly and with truth, and thus be sure of being heard. Otherwise, we will be as fortunate as our forefathers, who fought against the Mahomet until he came out of the brittle murderous corner of Arabia, and having gained land four hundred German miles away, now knocks at our door and defies us. 3)

(33) Well, God give us His mercy and punish both the Pope and the Mahomet along with their devils. I have done my part as a faithful prophet and preacher. Whoever does not want to listen, let it be. I am excused now, from that day and forever. But those who believe will thank me here and there. For it is they (where God will give happiness) who will earn it for God with faith, prayer and forbearance, and will do the best. 4) May God, the merciful Father, help them through His dear Son Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, blessed forever. Amen.

2) In the editions: den.

3) Taken by us from the old edition of Walch. In the editions: "on our misting."

4) Walch and the Erlangeners: Das.