Collected Works of Martin Luther

by Martin Luther

  But to return to that illustrious Thomist King, who condemns me for writing things contradictory, and for being nowhere consistent. He has shown, wretched scribbler, suffering from lack of matter, with what abusive words he can waste much paper, a royal work this no doubt. With what good faith he acts thus, let the reader judge from this fact, that the bewitched Thomist does not bring forth a single quotation, by way of example, with which to convict me of inconsistency. The glorious King is merely rhetorical after such fashion a» this: Luther contradicts himself, who therefore believes him? To have said so was sufficient for this new Defender of the Church and this new Divinity, recently set up in England. There was no need to give an example, lest Luther should be given an opportunity of clearing himself, and of handling the foolish King as becomes his Thomist dignity.

  Since then it has pleased this mask of a King with worthless words, without quoting an example, to play the fool in a matter so serious and sacred, I state without mask and openly: The King of England, this Henry, clearly lies, and with his lies, acts the part of a comic jester rather than that of a king. Of this crime, I, Luther, openly accuse this evil-speaking Thomist, and by the testimony of my books and my world-wide readers, I convict him. Let his royal majesty and your humble servant be from now on discounted as far as I am concerned; I am speaking to a lying buffoon, hidden under a kingly title, and speaking concerning divine truths, which it is every Christian man’s duty to protect from lying abuse. If the foolish King so much forgets his Kingship that he dares to come into public view with open lies, and does so while treating of sacred subjects, why is it not a right and proper thing for me to throw his lies back in his face, so that if he derives any pleasure from lying against the divine Majesty, he may lose it when he hears the truth about his own majesty?

  Nor is this an occasion when I ought to consider being patient when this frivolous buffoon attacks with lies not me and my life (which I could have borne) but my teaching itself which I am very certain is not mine but Christ’s. Let him blame himself and his lies if he is compelled to hear things unworthy of his Kingly name. His wicked mouth has deserved this; for he has blasphemed my King, Who is the King of glory.

  For my teaching is in no particular contradictory, nor can be contradictory, because it is Christ’s.

  And everywhere throughout the world let it be now agreed that I have taught concerning faith, concerning love, concerning works, and concerning those things which the Spirit of Christ has taught, always with the same meaning, and that I have inculcated and written always the same things, — although by practice and daily study I have advanced more and more, and have treated these subjects now in one way and now in another instance more variously and more copiously, in the very same manner in which the sacred Scriptures treat these things themselves.

  But if he means that I am not consistent in the things which I have treated outside of Scripture, namely concerning the Papacy, Indulgences, Masses and tares of this kind, from which at first I modestly dissented and afterwards utterly condemned (that I may pardon such a great king for this lie which is against the man Luther in merely human concerns), who is there that does not see his Thomist folly and stupidity? For in all his Thomist study he has never got so far as to know what is the meaning of dogmas conflicting or not conflicting. Come, my noble Thomist, to the school-master’s whip, and I will teach you what is meant by conflicting dogmas.

  If this is to conflict in dogmas, as the Thomist King declares, if a man should think otherwise, when he knows the truth and revokes his error, than he thought before, I ask which of our wisest and most holy men was ever consistent? We shall damn the whole epistles of Paul because after his conversion he calls dung what before, when he was in Judaism, he had considered to be gain. Let us damn also Augustine, who retracted many things in his book Retractions, and taught very differently from his first teaching. Nay, according to the inestimable wisdom of this King, let sinners cease repenting and changing their thoughts for the better, lest the angry King of England put out a book and damn them for their inconsistency and disagreement with their former selves.

  And why does not the King consider himself in his wisdom? Why does he now drink wine, who once drank his nurse’s milk? Why is he now armed with a sword, who once went in a boy’s breeches? Why in fine doth he condemn me for what he does himself? For in this book of his he praises me because at first I approved of the Papacy, and then he damns me because I disapprove of it. Why was it not lawful for me to think otherwise of the Papacy than I once thought, and to change my errors for a better opinion? Who would ever believe that a King could rave in this absurd fashion? Unless he were a Thomist and had declared himself serious by his virulent lies, you might think he was jesting as in the days when he used to wear masks.

  This rather is the meaning of conflicting dogmas, when at one and the same time you teach contradictory things, at the same time defending and maintaining both of them, and refusing to revoke, or condemn, either one of them. This is the way the insane Papists act when (in Matt. XVI) they make the Rock both Christ and the Pope, when Christ is holy and the Pope impious, and when holiness has as much in common with impiety as light with darkness, and Christ with Belial. For the Papacy only stands (or rather falls) by its inconsistent, contradictory and lying dogmas, which teach, assert and maintain both of these conflicting teachings at the same time.

  Let the reader then see from this one argument how asinine is the ignorance of the Thomists, and how mentally puerile is their insolence, which does not allow them to understand their own words. And yet they dare to write a Defence of the Sacraments, and to boast of their fine bombast, which is the proof of their incredible lack of knowledge. For I think this book of the King’s was written for this reason, that the world might never believe I had falsely accused the Sophists of folly and ignorance, especially the hogs that are among them (I mean the Thomists). For my judgment by this work and sign manual of theirs has received both demonstration and confirmation.

  To the other vice with which the King taunts me, I mean my incisiveness, I reply that first he should have proved that my incisiveness was wrong and the papacy did not deserve it.

  And why does Christ Himself (Matt. XXIII) attack the Scribes and Pharisees with such vehemence and call them hypocrites, blind, fools, full of uncleanness, hypocrisy and murder? And Paul, how often he speaks with vehemence against the concision (as he calls them), and the false prophets, who adulterate and corrupt the word of God, calling them dogs, deceitful workers, apostles of Satan, children of the devil, full of guile and malice, deceivers, grandiloquent, frequenters of houses and leaders astray of women? And will the flippant Thomist accuse them as he accuses me of hatred and pride?

  Moreover in order to exhibit his Thomist brain and plebeian nature, he behaves like an actor on the stage and rages so against me with curses, accusations and lies throughout his whole book (and not one of his charges does he prove beforehand) that for no other reason does he seem to attack my incisiveness than to justify his fits of cursing in the eyes of his sordid fellow-Thomists and earn a Thomist aureole. Foolish dolt! He knew perfectly well that I believe the papacy to be anti-Christ’s Kingdom, which even Job (III, 6) commands should be cursed by those who were ready to raise up Leviathan. And everywhere doth the Spirit command us to convict the world of the sin of impiety, and both commends, and requires from us, this holy and just incisiveness.

  But the King, as though he had established the fact that the papacy was holy, rages against my bitterness with cart-loads of insults and maledictions. It is as I said; he has chosen to act the Thomist hypocrite and masquerader, and in the eyes of such it is extreme perfidy and the worst of heresies not to adore one’s teachers as though they were angels of God, even though they are the pests of the whole earth. To pay no attention to their behest, this is indeed a crime that not even burning can sufficiently expiate. But I, who hitherto have been somewhat lenient toward the papist monsters, in the hope of their coming to their senses, no
w when I see of what kind of nature they are, given over to a reprobate mind and deplorably wilful, going to their own place with Pharoah their leader, I am resolved to use towards them no more modesty, no more pity. (Nor will I any longer permit my friends to bridle their pens, but will quietly despise them if they should do so.) If I have to treat with them, I will do it with all the violence that I can in order properly to irritate and anger them, the stupid blocks, the silly asses, the fatted swine, since they deserve no other consideration than to be brought to their punishment. And I will do this for the magnifying of Henry’s Church and of Henry, its renowned Thomist Defender, lest he should be able to complain that with no result he has condemned my bitterness of speech with his holy curse.

  Let us come now to the pith of the matter, and after the manner of Aristotle, who is the God of the Thomists, let us first in general and afterwards in particular argue on these subjects. The sum, the general and only strength of Henry’s wisdom in this so royal little book of his, lies not in the authority of Scripture, nor the urgency of reason, but in that Thomist form of disputation: It seems so to me. I think so. I believe so.

  And here let me record a story of my Amsdorff. The foolish King argues, as my Amsdorff is wont to tell concerning the Leipsic theologians, whose custom is when the Respondent has denied the assumption of his Opponent for the Opponent to prove it by saying, It ought to be so. When the Respondent again has denied it, then in the second place the reply is made: And how can it be otherwise? It must be so by right and by Thomist reasoning, because Henry has said so.

  And so after I in my book on the Babylonish Captivity had especially attacked this general Thomist principle, and had set up the divine Scriptures against the ritual, usage and authority of men, our Lord King in his Thomist wisdom gives us nothing else than: It must be so; Usage has it so; Such is the ancient custom; So I believe; The Fathers have so written; The Church has so ordained, etc. Even if I were to write a thousand books more, and prove by the Scriptures that the usage and authority of men is of no value in matters in faith, it would be easy for the Thomist King to reply in a thousand books, and passing over the Scriptures brought forward by me to keep on repeating: It must be so; Usage has it so; The authority of men says so and says nothing else. If I were to answer, How do you prove the validity of man’s usage and authority? He replies: It must be so; It seems so to me; So I believe; Are you alone wiser than all other men?

  You see therefore, reader, these intractable blocks merely desire that one believe them only. I do not ask them to believe me; but to believe the clear word of God. They demand that we believe the worm-eaten product of their brain, old wives’ tales; and they despise the word of God. Nor have I altogether denied either their usages or their authorities; but I want those things to be free and optional which are written outside the sacred Scriptures. I merely refuse to hold as necessary articles of faith those articles that are based on the words of I wish these to be tolerated which are well expressed and well put together without the testimony of Scripture, and T wish them to be tolerated without raising strife against them. But these blocks wish to make for us articles of faith out of every word of the Fathers, which is so far from being what these holy men intended to be done with their writings, that they could be offended with no greater blasphemy than that which is perpetrated while their free words and actions are made by these lethargic Thomists into necessary articles of faith, that is, are turned into lying snares to destroy men’s souls.

  Let this then be my general reply to all the bilge-water of this senseless Thomist crew, which the King scoops up into his book. I divide them into two kinds, in this way: If they maintain any use or authority of men which is clearly contrary to the Scriptures, let that use be anathema, that authority, that King, that Thomist, that Sophist, that Satan, nay, even that angel from heaven. For nothing should be of any worth which is against the Scriptures, but only what is in accord with them. Of this nature is the argument which the stolid King produces concerning the omission of the second part of the Sacrament, where he even contends in his Thomist folly that usage is able to make something into an article of faith, in face of the plainest statement of the Gospel, as we shall see.

  From this madness none of the old heretics ever suffered; for till the present time the heretics made a specious use of Scripture, and none of them openly condemned it. It is only the Papists and Thomists, this worst of new abominations, who have taken on the brazen manner of the strumpet, so that they confess that thus and thus the sacred Scriptures state, and yet they will not allow men thus to think. Not even Satan himself so openly blasphemes and gives the lie to what is right, even in the very face of the Divine Majesty.

  If any usage and authority of men be allowed, which are not repugnant to the Scriptures, I do not condemn them, but wish them to be treated with toleration with this one provision, that they do not interfere with Christian liberty, and that we have the option of following them, keeping them, or changing them when and wherever and how we please. But if they wish to take away from us this liberty, and try to establish them as articles of faith, again I say: Let him be anathema who has presumed to do this, whether he be a senseless Thomist, or foolish Papist, or a King, or a Pope. Such is the procedure which our Lord King urges for making into articles of faith his Sacraments of confirmation, matrimony, holy orders, extreme unction and the mixing of water in the wine, etc.

  But to us, against this Thomist straw and stubble, those divine thunderbolts are more than overpowering, whereby Christ (Matt. XV) passes judgment on all the traditions of men, saying: In vain do they worship Me with the teachings and commandments of men. What avail the universal dregs of this demented Thomist against this one saying of Christ, that I may pass over many others recorded elsewhere? If what is commanded by men is but vain, how brazenly does this stolid King, from men’s commands, make for us articles of faith! And so by this one saying of Christ is completely overthrown this unhappy, and wretched Defender of Henry’s Church, and at the same time the whole of Henry’s book.

  Where do you stand, my Lord Henry? Produce your famous hook against Luther! What does your Lordship assert? Seven Sacraments? By what authority? God’s or man’s? Let then your Thomist Lordship hear this judgment, not of Luther but of Him before whom the world’s foundations tremble: In vain do they worship Me with teachings of men. Let your Lordship go and teach their papal Lordships this vain faith and religion, and since thou knowest it so well, do thou defend it. But keep your Lordship’s impure and sacrilegious words from the Church of God, where God’s word only is admitted.

  In fine, so foolish is this proposition of the King that it is repugnant even to common sense. For who does not laugh when in support of our Christian faith nothing is brought forward by these mighty Samsons except length of time and the usage of many men? How then shall we prove that the Turks’ faith is erroneous since it has been in vogue now for about a thousand years, and arose before Germany was converted to Christianity? And is this sufficient reason why, not being able to convert them owing to their remoteness, we should find time to disparage what in our part of the world has come to light? For so who could not rightly justify the religion of the Jews, according to the method of this unconquerable Thomist, because it surpasses ours in length of time? And why should not the nations of the world be said, according to Henry of England, to have persecuted the new religion of Christ rightly? Their idolatry, according to this excellent Thomist argument, ought to be regarded as the true faith because it has the support of so many thousands of years, of so many different countries, and of such long-continued usage! Furthermore, taught by the same Henry, let us even assert that the errors of wicked men are the true faith, because since the beginning of the world they have surpassed in multitude, duration and power the few and insignificant congregations of those who were godly.

  The sum of the whole matter is that if the sayings of men are able to be made into articles of faith, why should not my sayings be made articles of faith? Am
I not a man? Moreover, according to this new Kingly wisdom, all men are compelled to believe the words of all other men. Then let the King himself, as a relief from writing, follow his own prescription and say: I am a man who say so; therefore it must be so; it cannot be otherwise. These arguments are foolish, ridiculous and very like Henry and the Thomists. Just as if the things of the spirit were to be measured by length of time and by use and by right, as though we were measuring an estate or a meadow! But if they say that their assertions in this matter are different from the assertions of others, because forsooth the assertions of the Papists are from the Holy Spirit, and those of others are from men, the Turk will laugh at this futile excuse, and will say: Inasmuch as this you maintain ivithout Scripture and without miracles, by the mere authority of man, you do no more than I would do if I also asserted that my faith was of God. And with the same readiness with which you condemn me, I also condemn your faith; and with the same authority with which you prove your faith, I also prove mine.

  What are we to do now? except to let even fools see that our Thomist Henrys, in their notorious ignorance, have turned our faith into a subject of ridicule; and have strengthened the wickedness of the world; deserving therefore to have their tongue and hands cut off, so that they might never either speak or write again. But all this is done by that restless Satan in order that he may, by his wicked Henrys and sacrilegious Thomists, turn us away from the Scriptures, and fix our faith on the lies of men. For there is no longer any need of sacred Scripture, if it is sufficient for us to be supported by some new sayings of men found outside of the Scriptures.

  But we, giving them our applause as most worthy defenders of the Papists’ Church, at the same time say: Let him b& anathema and accursed who lays any other foundation for our faith than that which is laid already. For Paul (I Cor. II) sanctions with his great authority that our faith should rest upon the words of God when he says: My speech and my preaching were not with the persuasive words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and in power, that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men but in the power of God. With this thunder and thunder-bolt from heaven he shakes and scatters, as wind scatters dust, all the vapourings of this Henry in his most foolish book. For what else does the stolid Henry write than the persuasive words of man’s wisdom, while he gives no demonstration of the Spirit, or of power; but prattles about length of time and the sayings and doings of men? He even has the daring and impudence to demand that we construct our faith on these human foundations, clearly attacking this divine utterance of Paul. Cursed therefore be, nay twice cursed, not only what the stolid Henry attempts, hut also the whole body of this Behemoth, this Kingdom of the Pope with all its dogmas, whereby they strive to remove us from our God, and to pluck His word out of our hearts.