so belong in chapters shown below.
1. the interpretation of the Bible.
2. of the interpretation of the New Testament.
3. the use of the divine word, of which D. Luther wrote one in the Bible.
4. D. M. M. Lutherus de vero usu Psalterii, mit der Verdeutschung des Thomä Venatorii.
5. how God puts an end to the raging and raging of the enemies of the gospel.
6. how God's word has traveled in the world.
7) In what way God appeared to Solomon.
8. Our Lord God's regiment is considered foolish.
9. human blindness, that one does not recognize God's physical goods.
10. from the printing house.
11) How worldly hopefulness was punished.
12. from the yard ride.
13. what the money has for a force in the world.
14. the church and the world image.
15) How God preserved D. L. against the raging of the world.
16. of the world's ingratitude.
17. a rule of D. M. Luther.
18 The Knowledge of Christ.
19. how to resist evil desires.
1. interpretation of the Bible. 1)
(Cordatus No. 1006.)
The adversaries read our translation more than ours, who do not care much that it has stood us enough. I have this testimony from H[archduke] G[eorg], who once said: If only the monk completely translated the Bible and went where he was supposed to go; and the papists also praise it 2c.
2. another, of interpretation of the New Testament.
Doctor Martin Luther said that M. Philippus Melanchthon had forced him to translate the New Testament, because he had seen that one had interpreted the Evangelist Matthäum, the other the Lucam; so he would also have liked to bring Sanct Pauli Epistles, which had become somewhat dark or obscure, back into the light and into a proper order. Erasmus would have written about the New Testament and made many words about it, but it would have been very pointed.
(Here find 6 lines omitted because contained in Cap. 1, § 3.)
If I were as eloquent and rich of words as Erasmus, and were so learned in Greek
1) §§ 1 to 6 belong to the first chapter: Of God's Word or the Holy Scriptures.
than Joachimus Camerarius, and so experienced in Ebraic, like Forstemius, and would be even younger; ei, how I wanted to work!
3. use of the divine word, of which D. M. Luther wrote one in a Bible, Matth. 10, 40.
(Here 9 lines are omitted because contained in Walch, old edition, vol. IX, 1405.)
That one should read the Bible diligently, of it D. M. Luther once said this rhyme:
As one ran in the Bible, so his gable stands on the house.
4. D. Mart. Luth. de vero usu Psalterii
2) Usus psalterii et scopus.
Credens tentatur et tribulatur, tribulatus orat et invocat, invocans exauditur et consolatur, consolatus gratias agit et laudat, laudans alios instruit et docet, docens hortatur et promittit, promittens minatur et urget, qui credit minanti et promittenti, denuo eundem circulum currit.
2) The text of this § is reproduced according to a manuscript of Luther from the year 1543 found by Archivrath Bodemann in Hanover in 1877, which Mr. D. Wrampelmeyer has communicated in a note to Cordatus No. 80.
Germanization Thomä Venatorii from Nuremberg:
He who believes in Christ must suffer much. Suffering calls for help without end. Calling is to be confident.
Consolation gives thanks to God the Lord. But thanks also to the others teaches, drives, promises good, and converts.
Promised comfort and strength without measure, Who follows this without ceasing, Who runs the way, as now said, Until he hunts bliss.
5. how God puts an end to the raging and fury of the enemies of the gospel.
(Contained in Cap. 2, § 131.)
6. how God's word has traveled in the world.
Doctor Johann Forsterus has often said that he heard from D. M. Luther's mouth that the teaching of the Gospel has now been in the whole world. For first it began in Orient; then it came about noon; third, about the setting of the sun; but in our time, as fourth, the divine word also came about midnight. And D. Luther used to say: In the bag 1) one will see the fishes; as if he should say: The church towards midnight will give the most Christians, that before the end of the world God's word will create much fruit.
7) In what way God appeared to Solomon. 2)
First, in dreams; for there are three kinds of manifestations of God: I) through dreams; 2) in visible form; 3) through inner revelation, which are the best, that our Lord God puts something into the heart. There David is a master inside, when the Holy Spirit says: This or that you shall do. So he says in Moses: Si fuerit Propheta inter vos, appa
1) Bag in the middle of the catch net.
2) §§7. 8. 9rmd 10 belong ms other chapter: Of "God's works.
rebo in visione aut somnio. "If there is a prophet of the Lord among you, I will reveal myself to him by dreams or by sight."
8. Our Lord God's regiment is considered foolish.
The devil took great offense at the lowly and foolish works of our Lord God in sending His only begotten Son down from heaven into the world and placing Him in the womb of the virgin Mary. There the devil thought, he wanted to make it much better. For the devil is oversighted, he cannot see below himself, he only sees high things, he walks along and sees above himself. So our Lord God throws a poor little preacher under his feet, and the devil stumbles and falls to the ground. Then he gets up again, and looks up again; so God throws something at his feet again, and he falls. And it happens to him, like the Thaleti Milesio, 3) he looked at the stars, and fell over them into a pit.
So are all the heretics, they are all transparent; he cannot see among himself. I have, praise be to God, learned the art of believing that our Lord God is wiser and wiser than I am. What I know in theology, I know because I believe that Christ alone is the Lord, since the Holy Scriptures speak of it. My grammar, even my Hebrew language, would not have given it to me, I know that very well. This can also be seen in the old fathers, as St. Bernard and St. Augustine: when they speak of Christ, how lovely is all their teaching! but apart from Christ, their teaching is as cold as ice or snow.
I read the Bible a lot in my youth, because I was a monk; and you also read it diligently, because this alone does it. For if I did not have the Bible, 4) I would make a bad Moses out of Christ. Now we have the dear Christ again, therefore let us give thanks for it, and keep it firmly, and suffer over it what we ought.
3) Thales of Miletus, one of the seven sages of Greece.
4) So Stangwald instead of "had".
9. human blindness, that one does not recognize the physical goods of God.
Doctor Martin Luther once drove over a meadow and said: "Now the right and true meaning of these words comes to me, since God speaks in Moses to the children of Israel, Ex. 3, 8: "I will give you a land flowing with milk and honey", that is, everything that belongs to this life, this land will have superfluously. Consider what good and good alone come from the meadows, for meadows give milk, butter, cheese, roast meat, wool. Do we not have to confess ourselves that the divine majesty has painted itself also in the smallest and least creatures, that our reason must see, grasp and feel him as a creator of the world, also as a sustainer of all creatures, who gives everything abundantly to enjoy O our sorrowful blindness and great unbelief, that we do not see nor believe such things; yes, also do not recognize God's gifts, nor ever thank God for them.
In former times, said D. M. Luther, then I could not understand the verse in the song of Moses, where it is said 5 Mos. 32, 13.: Mei de Petra, God give honey from the rocks; because on the rocks there grows grass and trees, there fly the little bees on the flowers and on the blossoms, and suck the juice of it, and work honey from it.
1V. Of book printing house.
(Cordatus No. 983. 984.)
It is wonderful that all the arts have now come to light in the same way, and that at the same time all of them are despised so much, like the art of printing, the highest and last gift of God, through which He drives the thing, but how despised it is also by those who practice it!
It is the last flame before being extinguished in the world. It is at the end, as Jerusalem happened when it despised the very best Christ with his most holy preaching; then it perished. But it is not because all the saints who sleep (as it is written in Revelation [14:13]) are waiting for that day.
11) How worldly hopefulness has been punished. 1)
D. Martin Luther said over tables in 1543: "Courtship must perish, as can be seen in the case of those of Brück in Flanders who, without any just cause, imprisoned the Emperor Maximilian in their city and wanted to tear off his head: when the von Brück wrote to the council of Venice, seeking their objections, the Venetians replied: Homo mortuus non facit Guerram. But methinks the people of Brück have realized it. Solomon says (Proverbs 16:18): Superbia praecedit casum, et exaltatio casum: When one begins to be proud, the fall is at the door.
(This paragraph at Cordatus No. 1473.)
The Venetians had painted Maximilian in very great courtly fashion, as he sought money with his hand in a bottomless bag, and the Florentines, as he rode on a crab, with the verse as an inscription: Tendimus in Latium [Virg. Aen. I, 205), nor did he humiliate them, I believe, since he is now dead, nor through our Carl, to whom God bestowed this.
Doctor Martin Luther once said of a prince: "This duke has been esteemed very clever, but there has been little understanding behind him; but he has been like a pointer, as one has placed him, so he has also gone: the nobility has ruled it all.
12th yard drive.
A prince in the realm led the rhyme: Through with joy. But it did not last long: when he was driven by lands and people, he was through, but with little joy.
13. what money has for violence in the world.
Qui non habet in nummis, It does not help him that he is pious.
Qui dat pecuniam summis,
He probably does badly what is crooked.
1) §§ 11 to 16 belong to the fourth chapter: Of the World and its Kind.
14. the church and the world image.
(Here a section of 24 lines is omitted because contained in Cap. 1, § 9.)
Doctor Martin Luther said: "The world is like a drunken farmer: if you lift him up in the saddle on one side, he falls down again on the other side: you cannot help him, no matter how you stand. So the world also wants to be the devil.
15 How God Preserved D. M. Luther has preserved against the world's ravings. 1)
Doctor Luther often said in his life: If he died on his bed, it would be a great shame and defiance to the pope, because our Lord God would give him so much to understand: Pabst, devils, kings, princes and lords, you shall be enemies of Luther, and yet you shall not harm him. It was nothing with Johann Hussen. I think that no one has lived in a hundred years to whom the world has been so hostile as to me. I am also hostile to the world, and know nothing in tota vita that I would like to do, and am quite tired of living. Our Lord God only come soon and take me quickly, and especially come he with his youngest day, I want to immediately 2) gladly stretch out my neck to him, so that he strikes it with a thunder, that I lie.
16. of the world's ingratitude.
Doctor Martin Luther said: Let us pray and continue in gratitude; there is no other way, because as Christ says Joh. 4, 37: "Alius laborat et alius metet": One sows, the other reaps. I comfort myself with the example of Moses: He sowed in vain when he brought the people out of Egypt. After that they still cried out over him: "Tu vis dominari nobis": You want to rule over us, 4 Mos. 16, 13. that he still has to lament: "Domine, si accepi tauros de manibus eorum" etc.: Lord, have I ever taken oxen from them as a gift? 4 Mos. 16, 15. Samuel also complains about this, 1 Sam. 12, 3. St. Paul also, Apost. 20, 33.
1) Cf. cap. 35, § 1.
2) So put by us instead of [the words", which seems to us to give no right sense.
At another time, Luther spoke of the world's ingratitude and said: "Whoever does not want to lose his good deeds today must die before they are shown. For we cannot live any other way than the way Christ lived. What thanks has he earned in the world? We must serve in vain here, and earn ingratitude on top of it.
(Here 4 lines are omitted because contained in Cap. 4, § 61.)
17. a rule of D. M. Luther. 3)
In the articles of faith concerning the Trinity, the incarnation of the Son of God, and the sacraments, we must not judge according to the mere insight of reason, since God's and man's judgments in these matters are heavenly different; but we must remember his word, which holds out to us his power and' goodness, to whom we should command it, who will do it well, and not spoil it for us. Christ in his humanity is personal and essential in the sacraments. But how this happens, we do not have to inquire. No one can say why God spared the Ninivites, in which there were more than 200,0004) people, and not the Sodomites.
18) The Knowledge of Christ. 5)
Doctor Martin Luther once said: "In the incarnation of the Son of God, we are to study and learn forever, just as the prophets have always studied in their Moses; but we do not study much in our evangelists. I have often said this, and I am sorry for it myself, and yet we never learn it. Yes, this will be eternal life, and the life of angels, that we will always desire to know more: there one will always see something new that one has not seen before. We are almost ad substantiam, yet we cannot know that this Son of Mary is both God and man at the same time; but ad quantitatem we cannot come to know what a great thing it is, the
3) § 17 belongs to the sixth chapter: Of the Holy Trinity.
4) Corrected by us from 20000, after the omitted § 15 of the 17th cap.
5) § 18 belongs to the seventh chapter: Of the Lord Christ.
Son of God. Qualitatem we can also not recognize what he is. So we can also not come ad Relationem, how he is in intention to us.
19) How to resist evil lusts. 1)
2) Doctor M. Luther once said that in the Lives of the Ancient Fathers there was the history that
1) § 19 belongs to the ninth chapter: Of Sin.
2) The same story in a different relation Walch, old edition, Vol. XIV, 395.
A young hermit had many evil lusts and desires and did not know how to get rid of them. Therefore, he asked the Father for advice on what to do for him. He said, "You cannot prevent birds from flying in the air, but you can control them if they do not nest in your hair. So no one will be left without evil thoughts coming to him, but let them fall out again, lest they take deep root in us.