Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  For afflicted with chronic insanity they bring nothing against me but the statutes of men, the glosses of the Father and the acts, or ritual, of past centuries, those very things which I deny and impugn and which they themselves confess to be untrustworthy and often erroneous. I dispute de iure, and they answer me de facto. I seek a cause; they show a work. I ask, By what authority do ye do this? They reply, Because we do it and have done it. So for reason they give their will, for authority their ritual. For right they allege their custom, and that in the things of God.

  There is in their schools a most vicious method of arguing, which they call begging the question. This they learn and teach till grey-headed, — in fact, till burial, — with infinite sweat, with infinite trouble, poor unhappy men. But when they come to apply their teaching, they do nothing except viciously beg the question. And so when I exclaim: The Gospel, the Gospel, Christ, Christ; they reply, The Fathers, the Fathers, use, use, statute, statute!

  When I say, the Fathers, use, statute have often erred; we must have a stronger and surer authority — Christ cannot err; then they are like the mute fishes, and become as the Scripture saith, like deaf adders that shut their ears lest they hear the oice of the charmer. Or they reply thus to me, in words which they always have on the tip of their tongue: Ambrose saith so; art thou wiser than Ambrose? Do you alone know? And this is all they have to say. As though the question was between Ambrose’s teaching and mine; or as though I could not answer: You misunderstand and misinterpret Ambrose. What is gained, I ask, by disputing with those who are blind and bad-tempered and utterly senseless?

  Of such a character is the book of the King of England, who does nothing but perpetually cast in my teeth traditions of men, glosses of Fathers and use of past centuries. He rages, he curses, he is all vituperation and virus because I wish to be considered more learned, more holy and more important than all the rest of mankind. He is not content that I allow others such things for their free use, but this new God fixes as necessary articles of faith for us all whatever has been said or done by the custom of men, which articles unless I believe, he makes of me in his furious anger a heretic, or I know not what kind of monster. Where, pray, did this new God, the King of England, come from, this Creator of new articles of faith? Till now I have heard of but one God with the right to make articles of faith and to require belief in them.

  In fact this new God, who goes beyond the other madmen, brings in a new madness. For the other madmen have endeavoured to pervert the Scriptures that I have brought forward and give them another meaning; but have dared nothing without alleging and boasting of Scripture support. But this new God, marvellously confident and cock-sure that owing to his divinity whatever he says must be done, or has already been done, testifies by his own confession that he wishes to set aside my chief foundation, and leave it for others to attack, whilst he only attacks what I have built on it. He wishes with straw and hay to fight against the rock of the word of God, so that one cannot tell whether he acts so from sheer madness, or whether Henry’s stupidity is innate in Henry’s head, justifying the proverb: A man must be born a King, or a fool. For what fool even would say: I will prove there are seven sacraments, but I will leave untouched the strongest argument of my adversary? You would think that this book had been written by the dearest enemy of the King to disgrace the King eternally.

  But not to seem to treat with contempt the name of so great a King, and to answer a fool according to his folly, I will show his foolishness in a short treatise as far as my other occupations permit. At another time I will handle more fully and with proper seriousness the King’s blasphemies and cursings. Nor does the fact that scarcely any one believes that this is the King’s own book move me in the least degree. I am willing to grant that it is the King’s, as its title declares it is, and to turn my attack against the fool-King, who has allowed the rascally sophists to use his name and fill the whole book with so many lies and such venom that it has expressed more exactly than could any picture that Lee, or the counterpart of that Lee [Wolsey], — the frozen freezing slimy sophist, the hog who is of the kind that his fat Thomist fellows love to have him in their company, — lest the English Pharoah should be without the support of a Jannes and a Jambres.

  Then let not King Henry impute it to me but to himself if he meets with rough and harsh treatment at my hands. He does not come forth to battle with a royal mind, or with any drop of royal blood, but with a slavish and impudent and strumpet-like insolence and silliness, proving nothing by argument but only by cursings. And what is more disgraceful in a man, and especially in a man in the highest position, than openly and deliberately to be, so that you can recognize him as a Sophist, a creature of ignorance and virulence? He would deserve some consideration if he had erred like a man. But when knowingly and designedly this damnable and offensive worm forges lies against the Majesty of my King in Heaven, it is right for me, on behalf of my King, to spatter his Anglican royal highness with his own mud and filth, and cast down and trample under foot the crown that blasphemeth Christ.

  Next since it is agreed that the Thomists are such a stupid and clearly lazy kind of Sophists, that nature has produced nothing more senseless or more slothful, and since our Henry wishes in this book to be regarded as a distinguished Thomist, sleeping and snoring over the sacramental character and efficacy of water, and uttering things exploded which in their academies his fellow Thomists are no longer able to tolerate, he seems to us to require to be wakened out of his sleep by some rough words (if by any means from his profound slumber he can be awakened) and to be told of his dreams and the vain imaginings of his drowsiness. For no other reason is this book of his so pleasing to our Sophist neighbors than that it is distinctively Thomist, and therefore our mouths who read it are munching their lettuces.

  If I have trampled down for Christ’s sake the idol of the Roman abomination after it had stood itself in the place of God and had made itself the ruler of Kings and of the whole world, who is this Henry, this new Thomist, this disciple of the idle monsters, that I should treat with respect his poisonous blasphemies? Let him be the Defender of the Church, but let him know that the Church which he boasts of and upholds, is the Church of the scarlet woman, drunk with the wine of her fornications. Both that Church and him, whom I consider its defender, I will attack with the same fierceness and, with Christ as my Leader, I will demolish them both. For I am certain that it is from heaven that I have my teachings; for they have triumphed against him [the devil] who in his little finger has more power and craftiness than have all Popes and Kings and Doctors put together. They will therefore accomplish nothing, who boast of their Bulls condemning me, with names and titles attached, and make much capital of their books attacking me, written by royal authors.

  My teachings will stand, and the Pope will fall, although he should be supported by all the gates of hell and the powers of the air and the earth and the sea. They have provoked me to war; and war they shall have. They despised the offered peace, and therefore they shall not have peace. Let God see who will give in first, the Pope or Luther. So it is our pleasure in Christ to wax more proud day by day against these foolish and useless Rulers, the more that they choose to rage against us.

  But before we come to the matter itself, I will first rid myself of two crimes, which the Thomist King, who is effeminately querulous, imputes to me. One is that I often contradict myself. This impudent lie against his own conscience is worked so hard, and repeated so often, throughout the whole book that it is quite evident that he did not write this book from he love of teaching, or (as he pretends) of proving that there are seven sacraments; but from the disease of his virulent mind, so that when in his stomach he could neither digest nor discharge downwards the poison and pus of the envy and malice he had conceived, he might find an occasion to vomit it out through his filthy mouth, caring for nothing except to fill with untruth the minds of men and excite against me universal hatred. It would have been disgraceful if even a lowborn strumpet had
so lied and had so raged with such brazen impudence and such weakness of mind. Other conduct would have been more seemly for a Kingly mind and for one of royal blood. My second crime is that I have covered with my abuse the Pope and the Church, that is, have abused Satan’s procurer and procuress and his sect, of which King Henry has lately been declared the Defender, — with indulgences!

  With the object therefore, of exhibiting this lie to the world, it is worth while here to go over again in their order the things of which I have written. Of these things there are two kinds. The first kind consists of things which are taught in the sacred Scriptures, viz.: —

  1 Of faith

  2 Of love

  3 Of hope

  4 Of works

  5 Of sufferings

  6 Of baptism

  7 Of penance

  8 Of the Lord’s supper

  9 Of the law

  10 Of sin

  11 Of death

  12 Of free will

  13 Of grace

  14 Of Christ

  15 Of God

  16 Of the last judgment

  17 Of heaven

  18 Of hell

  19 Of the church

  20 Of similar things

  For these are the names of the things which a Christian man must know, and which are necessary to salvation. These I have treated in such a way that no one can accuse me of ever thinking otherwise than I thought from the beginning of my writing. I have never contradicted myself. I have always kept the same understanding with which I began, and been consistent with myself. The witnesses to this are my extant books, and all my readers who have read them. Another witness is the conscience of the King that condemns him when he lies about me.

  Nay, who could believe that so great a King would not only dare to lie and boast that I contradict myself, but would even openly assert that I have so taught the faith that I both wish good works to cease and wish evil deeds to be permitted? As though there were not men alive who have read my writings, and can confute this impudent lie, while his own conscience convicts him, being one who confesses that he has read a great part of my writings. It is an utterly unworthy action that this King should have dared to answer me only with lies. He should have taken pains when about to write against heresies that he might not be found out in even the semblance of a lie. But now he has covered himself with lies. Who will believe any part whatever of his writing after he repeats and inculcates the same glaring lie throughout his whole book?

  The offering of the viper keeps the inborn qualities of its nature, and imitates the example of its parents. For even against Paul, when he had taught that all the sons of Adam were justified without works, his enemies made the same accusation, as he writes in Romans (Chapter III): Some say we teach, Let us do evil that good may come. But what is the judgment upon them? Their damnation (he says) is just.

  And what can I pronounce against my King, concerning his lie, except the same judgment of damnation?

  There is another kind of things which are not found in Scripture, viz.: —

  1 Of the papacy

  2 Of the decrees of councils

  3 Of doctors

  4 Of indulgences

  5 Of purgatory

  6 Of the mass

  7 Of academies

  8 Of monastic vows

  9 Of bishops as idols

  10 Of traditions of men

  11 Of the worship of saints

  12 Of new sacraments

  Although these are similar, they are tares sown by Satan, by means of the brains of his Roman idol, in the Lord’s field. Without these tares the Church is not only in her most healthy state but she cannot even live unless she be without them, or be suffered to use them according to her own free will. For nothing more pestilent can be taught in a Church than to make those things necessary which are not necessary. For by this tyranny consciences are ensnared, and liberty in believing is extinguished. A lie is worshipped in place of the truth, an idol instead of God, and an abomination in lieu of holiness.

  When therefore the sacred Scripture says nothing at all concerning these things, the mad Papists, the masters of lies and framers of idols, have started a business, worthy of themselves, which is to twist the whole of Scripture and deprave it into poisons and lies, so that those passages which taught us concerning faith had to have a Papacy created to interpret them; those which taught humility had to have set up beside them the pomp of tyranny, until they have succeeded with their unlimited lying in throwing everything into confusion, in abolishing the whole Scripture and establishing in its place the reign of a doctrine that is written out of the Roman heart, a heart possessed by that most wicked Satan. And so they have made the rock of the unconquerable faith to be the Papacy and the Pope, who have not only been overcome by disgusting errors and sins, but are being overwhelmed and absorbed by daily abominations. And so where Christ teaches no one is great in His Church except he be the servant of all, they have made a new nose for this saying, and have decreed that unless it be great nothing is of any worth in the Church of God.

  As they were carrying on their abominations the Lord drew me in my rashness into the middle of the crowds, and in the matter of lying indulgences enabled me to extort certain passages of Scripture from Satan, as one might wrench the club from the hand of Hercules, and to restore the Scripture interpretation to its rightful meaning. Whereupon, O living God, how hot their fury began to boil, ready to mix heaven and earth and fire and water, unable to endure that some out-of-place feathers should be plucked from the crow, which they had prettily adorned to represent the Vicar of Christ.

  Indeed I treated that crow at first very humbly and reverently, and was especially insistent that the Papacy was not a negligible thing; for I did not know then that it diametrically opposed all Scripture. I was content to expound the Scriptures only, and in the meantime to hold that the Papacy was in its character such as are the kingdoms and dominions of men. But they, hardened by long use of their tyranny and elated by the success up till now of their fraud (as Daniel calls it), despised my modesty and reverence and presumed to set up their idol in the place of God and intrude it into the very heart of the Scriptures. Then Christ gave me a spirit that despised both the fraud and the fury of the Papists, and brought it to pass that the more I saw into the Scriptures the more certainly I found this abomination had been foisted therein, until the thing coming to such a pitch by the hand of the mighty One that wrestled with Jacob, I became convinced by the clear and pure Scriptures that the Pope, the Cardinals, the Bishops, the Priests, the Monks, the Monasteries, the Masses and the whole of that organization, with their dogmas and rituals, was nothing else than mere shews, idols, gew-gaws, lies, and that abomination standing in the holy place, showing itself as though it were the true bishops and the real church, while all the time it was that same scarlet woman, who sits on the many-headed beast and makes the kings of the earth drunk with the cup of her fornications and abominations.

  Of all these things Peter prophesied: False teachers shall bring heresies, denying the Lord who bought them, blaspheming the way of truth, and with feigned words shall make gain of you in their avarice (ii Pe. II). This sacrilegious people have all one obsession; they wish to justify themselves in God’s presence by works, and not by faith alone. Whence it is necessary that Christ be denied and faith made of none effect, while lucre is increased, and the wealth of the whole world absorbed for their Masses and their Vigils. For thus do the perverse followers of the abomination pervert everything; the works, which they ought to use toward men, they offer to God; the faith, by which alone God is served, they offer to men.

  They believe all the doctrines of men, but they do not believe God. They do good to no living man; they only do good to God.

  And so, compelled by truth, I am driven to retract certain things that I have written, wherever I have written good things concerning the Papacy and concerning the things that are taught without Scripture warrant. Now at last I revoke these things, and am unfeignedly
sorry that I ever wrote one syllable concerning the good of the Papacy, and of its rule. And I beg my readers diligently and wisely to beware of those errors of mine. Moreover that which made that bewitched Thomist King angry in my book on the Babylonish Captivity, I revoke, confessing that I said less than I should have said. It is giving too much honour and glory where I say: The Papacy is the mighty hunting party of the Bishop of Rome; for that example of Nimrod suits all those secular rulerships, to which God wishes us to be in subjection, to honour them, bless them and pray for them.

  More truly I speak of the Papacy: The Papacy is the most pestilent abomination of Satan, its leader, that there ever was, or will be, under heaven. So I revoke my book on the Babylonish Captivity in favour of Lord Henry, the new Thomist, lest the majesty of the Thomist name should be impaired by excessive anger. This revocation this so learned and so terrible Thomist will extort from me. Should there be no power in his book itself to move Luther, the King has added threats, openly advising that this heretic unless he comes to his senses should be burned. In this he has acted most Thomist-like; for by these threats he was convinced that Luther would be terrified and would follow whatever lies and blather the Thomist tongue in this royal book should babble. In truth, while I live I will be the enemy of the Papacy; if I am burned, I will be twice its enemy. Do what ye can, ye Thomist swine. Ye will have Luther as a she-bear in your way and as a lioness in your path. He will attack you on all sides, and will give you no rest until he has broken in pieces your iron necks and brazen foreheads, either for your salvation or for your destruction. Till now it has been enough to have lost patience; from now on, since hardened and blinded ye continue to raise your horns and become of your own accord incorrigible and unreformable, let no one expect me to say anything against your deplorable state that is either honeyed or mild. For I wish you to be irritated more and more until all your strength and fury being exhausted ye fall down one on top of another. He that first silences the other, let him be the victor. As ye wish, so be it done to you.