1. from the terminists.
2. D. Luther's judgment of Lombardus.
3. from the time under the papacy.
4. a different one from the fathers.
5. from St. John the Martyr.
6. from St. Augustino.
7. from Hieronymo.
8. from the fathers.
9. from Gerson.
10. by Johann Hüß.
11. Luther's judgment of the school theologians, some nuns' sons.
12. from Dionysio.
1. from terminists.
Terminists was the name of a sect in the high schools (among which I have been): they are opposed to Thomists, Scotists and Albertists; and were also called Occamists, from Occam, their first beginner and founder, are the most recent sect, and now the most powerful also in Paris.
The dispute and quarrel among them was whether the word humanitas, humanity, and similar words, mean a common humanity that would be in all men; as Thomas and the others hold. Yes, say the occamists and terminists, it is nothing with such a common humanity, means all people in particular; just as a painted image of man interprets all people.
But now and in this matter, the terminists, the terminis propriis, must speak of a thing with proper and own words, as they are called and read in themselves, and not interpret the words strange and wild; otherwise it is called work 2) speaking of it. As, init a carpenter, I must speak in his terminis' and with such words as they are called and used in their trade; namely, angle iron, and not crook iron; axe, and not hatchet.
So also let the words of Christ remain and speak of the Sacrament in suis Terminis, with the words as Christ spoke and used them. As: This does; shall not
2) D. i. with the tsrminls tsolinlols, the terms of art.
mean: sacrifices. Item: the word corpus, body, is not supposed to mean both figures; as they now torture the words, and like to steer from the road, against the light text.
2. verdict D. M. L. von Lombardus. 1) (Lauterbach, Jan. 10, 1538, p. § )
Peter Lombardus was a very diligent man, of excellent mind, and wrote many splendid things. He would truly have been a great teacher of the church if he had based himself completely and righteously on the holy scriptures; but he himself confused his book with many useless questions. They were nevertheless very good minds, but not such times as we have now. For the scholastics got to the point of teaching that man was unharmed; he was wounded to some extent, but he could fulfill the law even by his own powers, without grace; but a man who had obtained grace could fulfill the law more easily than by his own powers. Such monstrosities they taught and did not see the case of Adam, did not see that the law of God was spiritual.
3. time under the papacy.
(Lauterbach, Feb. 2, 1538, p. 18.)
On February 2, the Elector of Saxony, Duke Henry of Saxony, the Landgrave, Margrave John came to Wittenberg and welcomed Luther for a sermon on the following day, which he held in praise of the Lord's Prayer. That evening Luther conversed happily with Amsdorf and discussed much of the studies of the previous century, where the most astute people were engaged in useless lectures, whose sophistical expressions are quite unknown and incomprehensible to people in our time. For Scotus, Bonaventure, Gabriel, Thomas were, since the Pabstthum flourished, very idle people, they had to fantasize. Gabriel wrote a book about the Canon of the Mass, which in my opinion was the best at that time. When I read it, my heart bled. The reputation of the Bible was nothing against Gabriel. I still keep the books that thus martyred me. Scotus has very well
1) Cf. §11 of this chapter.
written about the third book sententiarum. Occam was a very perceptive scholar in method; he was eager to expound things and extend them to infinity. Thomas is very loquacious because he is seduced by metaphysics.
Well, God has led us out miraculously and has led me, yet unknowingly, over the game now for the twentieth year. How difficult it was at first, since we moved to All Saints' Day in Kemberg in the year 17, where I had first resolved to write against the gross errors of indulgence, and D. Hieronymus Schurf resisted me: "Do you want to write against the pope? What do you want to do? One will not suffer it. I said: If one had to suffer it? Soon after, Sylvester, Magister sacri palatii, entered the battlefield and flashed this reason against me: Whoever doubts a word or work of the Roman Church is a heretic. 2) Luther doubts the word and work of the Roman Church. So 2c. That's where it started. For the pope distinguishes a threefold church. Essentially, it is the body of the Church itself. Representationally, it is the Collegium of Cardinals. According to the exercising power it is the pope himself. There is no mention of a concilium. Because the pope wants to be the church with exercising power, over the writing and the reputation of the Concilium. Duke George is only zealous for the essential church, because he wants to be the church himself. He hates the pope, therefore he wants to reform him, as a reformer of the church, so that the bishop of Mainz has only one bishopric and trots along with 14 horses, the bishop of Merseburg with three, and that the pope refrains from his simony. For all papists profess that the bishops should remain, but be reformed. But the papists must not dare to consent to a reformation. Italy has been humiliated many times, but it is still proud. Now, however, it is afraid, sees and acknowledges its wickedness. Only that it does not want to be punished by us Germans, by a barbarian nation. But if an instigator were to rise up in Italy and have a handler, he would want to do something.
2) Cf. Cap. 54, § 20.
4. a different one from fathers.
The Fathers have written many good and useful things; however, one should read them cum Judicio, not accept and approve of everything soon, because one has first held it against the guideline of God's Word and examined whether it also agrees with the same.
Hilarius and Augustine have written many beautiful and excellent things about the Holy Trinity and Justification, driven by heretics. Nazianzenus nothing. Gregorius is a monk. Cyprianus a pious man and orator. Tertullianus and Eusebius write only histories. Lactantius, as Augustine testifies, has tractirt foreign things. In peace they did nothing, but in conflict they were powerful. St. Bernard loves Jesus as much as anyone can; but in disputes, when one must stand against one's enemies, he is not St. Bernard. Manichaei, the heretics, provoked Augustine to fight, challenged him, and gave him reason to write so well. The papists do not understand this, but say that he talked too much and wrote too high things.
5. from St. John the Martyr.
Doctor Staupitz told us (said D. M. Luther), he had heard from Doctor Andrea Proles, the best preacher, because he once went to Gotha into the monastery and saw painted Doctor Andream Zachariam (who is buried at Erfurt in the Augustinian monastery in front of the high altar, and is said to have overcome Johann Husten, as it is said) with a rose on his beret; he would have said: "God protect me that I do not wear this rose, because he has overcome Johann Husten unjustly, through a forged Bible, namely, since Ezekielis in the 34th chapter said: "Behold, I myself will punish my shepherds and not the people, non Populus. Chapter thus confessed: "Behold, I myself will punish and punish my shepherds (to this was said), and not the people, non Populus." They found this text in Johannis Hussen's own bibles, pointed it out to him, and concluded from it: "Behold, you shall not punish the Pope, but God will do it Himself. Then M. Spalatinus said: The devil has brought this text into the Bible. Yes, said D. M. Luther, it
1) This narrative is in other relation Walch, old edition, vol. XVI, 2562, U 6 and 7.
has stood in it in the same way as it has come in. So the pious, holy man was condemned and burned.
Item: M. Johannes Agricola read a scripture of Johannis Huss, full and rich in spirit, patience and prayer: and as he was martyred in prison by the stone, and despised by the emperor Sigismundo, D. M. Luther marveled at such a great spirit and steadfastness, and said: He has been a great man; for soon after his death the emperor Sigismund had no luck. M. Luther marveled at such a great spirit and steadfastness, and said: "He was a noble man, his death was well smelled; for soon after his death Emperor Sigismund had no more luck, was never well again, became the most wretched regent, and was defeated by the Turk. The Bohemians devastated Germany everywhere, Nuremberg had to give them plunder: they came as far as Zeiz. The Germans have beaten the Bohemians several times with heel money.
(Here a paragraph is omitted because contained in Cap.
27, § 142.)
6. from St. Augustino.
Augustine therefore became an excellent teacher, that the heretics, the Pelagians, who defended free will, attacked him hard, that he had to defend himself vigorously, and finally collected; taught faithfully about the grace of God.
But since I understood Paulum by God's grace, I have not been able to respect any doctor; they have become very little to me. In the first I read Augustinum. But when the door was opened to me in Paul, so that I knew what the righteousness of faith was, then it was over with him. These are the most noble and best sayings in Augustine: Sin is forgiven, not that it is no longer there, but that it is not imputed. Item: The law is fulfilled when that is forgiven which neither happens nor is done. The books of Confession in which he makes his confession teach nothing, but only incite and provoke, have only examples, but it is nothing.
7. from Hieronymo.
(Cordatus No. 1307.)
Among the writers, I hate none in the same way as Jerome, who has only the name of Christ; he writes of fasting,
Food, virginity, but nothing of the works of faith. Therefore Doctor Staupitz, who read him diligently, said: I would like to know how he would have been blessed, and Andreas Proles, his predecessor, said: I would not have wanted to have Jerome as prior, he was much too strange.
8. from fathers.
(Contained in Cap. 57, § 2.)
9. from the Gerson.
(Cordatus No. 571. 572. 573.)
Gerson saw very well that we are like lost sheep when we are alone; therefore he said that Christ instituted his supper for communion. This Gerson alone wrote about the temptation of the spirit, the others all wrote only about bodily things. None of the others, neither Augustine, nor Bernard, nor Scotus, nor Thomas 2c., has written of the pettiness of the spirit than he. William of Paris also wrote something, but the scholastic doctors did not even come to know the Catechism.
Gerson alone has comforted consciences under the pope, saying, Ah, it must not all be mortal sin that is done against the pope, for [as] a shepherd 1) do not have on, the hearers do not pray 2c. And some he has delivered from despair. He has been a very good man, but he has not come to that, that he comforted the Christians through Christ and the promises. He did not abolish the law, but lessened it, saying, Oh, all sin need not be so grievous.
When I compare Moses and Christ, Christ knocks the bottom out of the barrel and says: "Do not put your trust in Moses, but in Christ. If you are not pious, then I am pious. And this is the art of the Christian, that I may leap from my sin to the righteousness of Christ.
1) Schepler or Scheppler, the scapular, a shoulder garment of the religious clergy. Cf. Walch, St. Louis edition, vol. XIII, 2427, § 12, Erl. Vol. 29, 370 and 374.
which is as certainly mine as this is my body. If I live, I live to him; if I die, I go to him. I am baptized in him, I receive him in the sacrament, I am taught in him. He takes care of us, only that we trust in him. I am surprised that I do not learn this science, but all my students have it down to the nail 2).
10. by Johann Huß.
The blood of Johann Hussen still condemns all papists today. He was a pious, learned man, as you can see in his book about the church, and I love it. For he died, not like an Anabaptist, but like a Christian. Christian weakness is seen in him, and yet God's power is stirred in him and raises him up again. The struggle of the flesh and spirit in Christ and Hussen is sweet and lovely to see. The testimony of all is that Jerome of Prague was a very eloquent man, but Huss was very learned. He could do more than the whole world, but was innocently condemned. From that time on, the papacy began to fall. Then someone said: Costnitz is now a poor, miserable town. Yes, said D. M. Luther, I believe that God has punished them for having led the dear holy man, Hussen, to the fire with armed and fortified citizens and people.
In Johanne Huss the Holy Spirit has been very powerful, said D. M. Luther, who alone held so joyfully and firmly to God's word, against so many great people and nations, Italia, Germany, Hispania, Gallia, England, so gathered in the Concilio at Costnitz; against which clamor he alone stood and had to bear it, and was burned over it. So I will be much safer, God willing, dead than alive.
(The following at Cordatus No. 253.)
John Huss took away briars from the vineyard of God, but I came
2) To the nail test, i.e. to the most exact. - Cordatus directly follows the preceding with the piece reported in Cap. 7, § 113.
in the fight against the pope in a flat field. When I [Cordatus] said that he had done much more against the pope than Huss, he denied it very much, that this was not true, and said: Through John Huss it had happened that gradually after him the pope had fallen more and more, who in his time would have been in highest honor and power. Moreover, after John there had always been some good men who had contradicted the pope, but before John there had been none.
11 Judgement of D. M. Luther of school theologians, some nuns' sons. 1)
(Cordatus No. 680.)
Magister Sententiarum 2) was a great man, for he read through all the writers; then he also knew all the concilia and decrees. If he had gotten into the Bible with this diligence, it would have worked. It was not meant to be. About his origin it is said that he was an illegitimate child of a nun, and there were three brothers: Petrus Longobardus a theologian, Gratianus
1) Cf. § 2 of this Cap.
2) D. i. Petrus Lombardus or Longobardus.
a jurist, Comestor a historian who wrote the scholastic history; each the greatest in his faculty.
12. from Dionysio.
(Cordatus No. 993.)
Dionysius with wondrous verbiage wrote much of the divine names, of the heavenly hierarchy and church, and by such strange stuff of words he earned himself a divine name, namely, by inventions, and it is not probable that this was the disciple of Paul; nor was it the well-known martyr Dionysius, but someone at Paris. 4)
3) In the table speeches probably more correct: "church history". Rebenstock II, 237; Bindseil III, 137.
4) The three men named Dionysius mentioned in this section are 1) Dionysius Areopagita, member of the Areopagus in Athm, first bishop of the church there. Apost. 17, 34. 2) Dionysius Alexandrinus, disciple of Origen, 248 bishop of Alexandria, d. 265 after many sufferings in the Decian and Valerian persecution. 3) Dionysius of Paris, who is said to have founded the church at Paris about the middle of the third century, or, according to Gregory of Tours, only later. (Wrampelmeyer.)