Part 10 (1/2)
Yea, it is God alone who should canonise them And let every man stay in his own parish, where he finds h all the shrines were one Here we find baptisreater things than all the saints in heaven, for it is by God's Word and sacra as we despise such great things God is just in the wrathful judgment by which He appoints the devil to lead us hither and thither, to establish pilgries, to found churches and chapels, to secure the canonisation of saints, and to do other such fool's-works, by which we depart from true faith into new, false misbelief This is what he did in olden times to the people of Israel, when he led them away froh he did it in the nah all the prophets preached against it and were persecuted or so doing But now no one preaches against it, perhaps or fear that pope, priests and monks would persecute him also In this way St Antoninus of Florence[208] and certain others must now be made saints and canonised, that their holiness, which would otherwise have served only for the glory of God and as a good exah the canonising of saints ood now; just as ood in olden times and are now scandalous and injurious, such as feast-days, church-treasures and church-adorn of saints neither God's glory nor the ilory, in that one church wants to be so more than others, and would be sorry if another had the sae were common property So entirely, in these last, evil days, have spiritual goods been oods, that everything, even God Himself, has been forced into the service of avarice And even these special advantages lead only to dissensions, divisions and pride, in that the churches, differing from one another, hold each other in conteifts which God bestows are the common and equal property of all churches and should only serve the cause of unity The pope, too, is glad or the present state of affairs; he would be sorry if all Christians were equal and were at one
[Sidenote: Prohibition of Special Privileges]
pThis is the place to speak of the church licenses, bulls and other things which the pope sells at his laying-place in Roard them, or at least make theives away licenses and privileges, indulgences, graces, advantages, faculties[209] to Wittenberg, to Halle, to Venice and, above, all to his own Ros to all churches alike?
Is he not bound to do for all Christians, gratis and for God's sake, everything that he can, and even to shed his blood for theives or sells to one church and not to another? Or must the accursed reat a difference a Christians, who all have the sas? [Eph 4:4 f] Are we to be blind while we have eyes to see, fools while we have our reason, that they expect us to worshi+p such greed, knavery and hu as you have er! And yet they are not asha us hither and yon with their bulls! Their one concern is the accursedelse!
My advice is this: If such fool's-work cannot be abolished, then every pious Christian man should open his eyes, and not be misled by the hypocritical Roman bulls and seals, stay at home in his own church and be content with his baptism, his Gospel, his faith, his Christ and with God, Who is everywhere the same; and let the pope reive you as ives you in your parish-church Nay, the pope leads you away froifts, which you old, hide for oods, the letter for the spirit You see this before your very eyes, but you are unwilling to notice it If you are to ride to heaven on his wax and parcho to pieces, and you will fall into hell, not in God's name!
Let this be your fixed rule: What you ood nor of God; for what is from God, to wit, the Gospel and the works of God, is not only given without money, but the whole world is punished and da to receive it as a free gift We have deserved of God that we should be so deceived, because we have despised His holy Word and the grace of baptis delusion upon all those who have not received the truth to their salvation, to the end that they may believe and follow after lies and knavery,” [2 Thess 2:11 f]
which serves theht
[Sidenote: Mendicancy to be Prohibited, and the Poor to be Cared for]
21 One of our greatest necessities is the abolition of all begging throughout Christendo!
It would also be easy to e and the serious intention, to the effect that every city should provide for its own poor, and adht be called, whether pilgrims or mendicant monks Every city could support its own poor, and if it were too ses also should be exhorted to contribute, since in any case they have to feed so uise of mendicants In this way, too, it could be knoere really poor and who not
There would have to be an overseer or warden who knew all the poor and informed the city council or the priests what they needed; or soment there is no other business in which so , and yet it could all be easily abolished Moreover, this free and universal begging hurts the common people I have considered that each of the five or six mendicant orders[211] visits the same place more than six or seven tiars, the ”stationaries”[212] and the palmers[213], so that it has been reckoned that every town is laid under tribute about sixty tiovernment in taxes, imposts and assessments, what is stolen by the Roman See with its wares, and what is uselessly consureatest miracles that we can continue to support ourselves
To be sure, some think that in this way[214] the poor would not be so well provided for and that not so reat stone houses and monasteries would be built This I can well believe Nor is it necessary He ishes to be poor should not be rich; and if he wishes to be rich, let him put his hand to the plow and seek his riches in the earth! It is enough if the poor are decently cared for, so that they do not die of hunger or of cold It is not fitting that one man should live in idleness on another's labor, or be rich and live co to the present perverted custom; for St Paul says, ”If a man will not work, neither shall he eat” [2 Thess 3:10] God has not decreed that any oods save only the priests, who rule and preach, and these because of their spiritual labor, as Paul says in I Corinthians ix [1 Cor 9:14], and Christ also says to the Apostles, ”Every laborer is worthy of his hire” [Luke 10:7]
[Sidenote: Prohibition of Endowed Masses]
22 It is also to be feared that the many masses[215] which are endowed in the foundations and reatly arouse the wrath of God It would therefore be profitable not to endow any more, but rather Masses to abolish arded only as sacrifices and good works[216], though they are really sacraments, just like baptism and penance[217], which profit only those who receive them, and no others But now the custo and the dead, and all hopes are built upon them; for this reason so many of them have been founded and the present state of affairs has co, especially for those who fear that through the discontinuance of these masses their trade and livelihoodmore about it until we have co of what the ood for These many years, alas, it has been made a trade practised for a temporal livelihood, so that I would henceforth advise a man to become a shepherd or to seek some other trade rather than become a priest or a monk, unless he first knohat it is to celebrate , however, of the old foundations and cathedrals, which were doubtless established in order that the children of the nobility (since, according to the customs of the Gerht be provided for in these foundations, and there be free to serve God, to study, to beco of the new foundations, which have been established only for the saying of prayers and masses; for after their example, even the old foundations have been burdened with like prayers and h it is also of God's grace that they too cos, i
e, to the wailing of organs and of choral singers, and to dead, cold otten and spent Such things pope, bishops and doctors should exaiven to thes inanother This is the work of avarice and of the spiritual law
Again, no one person should be allowed any longer to hold more than one canonry or prebend He must be content with aThis would do aith the excuses of those who say that they must hold more than one such office to ”ht be so broadly interpreted that a whole land would not be enough to maintain it! Moreover avarice and veiled distrust of God assuredly go with it, so that what is alleged to be the need of ”a proper station” is often nothing else than avarice and distrust
[Sidenote: Sodalities and Indulgences]
23 Sodalities[218], indulgences, letters of indulgence, ”butter-letters,”[219]else of the sort, are to be drowned and destroyed There is nothing good in therant you dispensation to eat butter and to absent yourself froht also be able to leave this power to the priests, froht to take it I speak especially of those fraternities in which indulgences, ood works are portioned out Dear friend, in your baptisels, saints and Christians on earth Hold to this fraternity and live up to its deh The others--let theuldens_ But if there were a fraternity which contributed money to feed the poor or to help soood, and would have its indulgence and its luttony and drunkenness[221]
Above all, we should drive out of Gerates with their ”faculties,”[222] which they sell us for large suh that is sheer knavery For exaains, dissolve oaths, vows and agreements, break and teach ed to one another; and they say the pope has the authority to do this It is the evil Spirit who bids them say this Thus they sell us a doctrine of devils, and takeus to hell
If there were no other evil wiles to prove the pope the true Antichrist, yet this one thing were enough to prove it Hearest thou this, pope, not most holy, but most sinful? O that God from heaven would soon destroy thy throne and sink it in the abyss of hell! Who hath given thee authority to exalt thyself above thy God, to break and to loose His commandments, and to teach Christians, especially the German nation, praised in all history for its nobility, its constancy and fidelity, to be inconstant, perjurers, traitors, profligates, faithless? God hath commanded to keep oath and faith even with an enemy, and thou undertakest to loose this His commandment, and ordainest in thine heretical, antichristian decretals that thou hast His power Thus through thy throat and through thy pen the wicked Satan doth lie as he hath never lied before Thou dost force and wrest the Scriptures to thy fancy O Christ, ment break, and destroy the devil's nest at Rome! Here sitteth the man of whom St Paul hath said that he shall exalt himself above Thee, sit in Thy Church and set himself up as God [2 Thess 2:3 f],--the man of sin and the son of perdition! What else is the papal power than only the teaching and increasing of sin and evil, the leading of souls to dauise?
In olden times the children of Israel had to keep the oath which they had unwittingly been deceived into giving to their ene Zedekiah was miserably lost, with all his people, because he broke this oath to the King of Babylon [2 Kings 24:20; 25:4 ff] Even aary and Poland, Wladislav[223], was slain by the Turk, with so many noble people, because he allowed hiate and cardinal, and broke the good and advantageous treaty which he had sith the Turk The pious Eood fortune after the Council of Constance, when he allowed the knaves to break the safe-conduct which had been given to John Hus and Jerome[224] and all the trouble between us and the Bohemians was the consequence Even in our own times, God help us!
how much Christian blood has been shed over the oath and alliance which Pope JuliusLouis of France[225], and afterwards broke? How could I tell all the troubles which the popes have stirred up by the devilish presumption hich they annul oaths and vohich have been s, and takingcan possibly be worse than the Roman See He suppresses God's commandment, he exalts his own commandment over it; if he is not Antichrist, then let some one else tell who he can be! But h time that we seriously and honestly consider the case of the Bohemians[224], and come into union with them so that the terrible slander, hatred and envy on both sides may cease As befits my folly, I shall be the first to submit an opinion on this subject, with due deference to every one who may understand the case better than I
_First_, Weourselves, and grant the Boheue were burned at Constance in violation of the papal, Christian, imperial safe-conduct and oath; whereby God's coiven aht to have been perfect and to have patiently endured this great injustice and disobedience of God on our part, nevertheless they were not bound to approve of it and to acknowledge that it ell done Nay, even to-day they should give up life and liht to violate an imperial, papal, Christian safe-conduct, and faithlessly to act contrary to it So then, although it is the impatience of the Bohemians which is at fault, yet the pope and his followers are still more to blame for all the trouble, error and loss of souls that have followed upon that council
I have no desire to pass judgment at this tih I have not yet found any errors in his writings, and I ament nor honest condemnation which was passed by those who, in their faithless dealing, violated a Christian safe-conduct and a commandment of God Beyond doubt they were possessed rather by the evil spirit than by the Holy Spirit No one will doubt that the Holy Spirit does not act contrary to the conorant as not to know that the violation of faith and of a safe-conduct is contrary to the coh they had been promised to the devil himself, still more when the promise was made to a mere heretic It is also quite evident that such a promise was made to John Hus and the Bohemians and was not kept, but that he was burned in spite of it I do not wish, however, to make John Hus a saint or a h I confess that injustice was done him, and that his books and doctrines were unjustly condements of God are secret and terrible, and no one save God alone should undertake to reveal or utter theh he were never so wicked a heretic, nevertheless he was burned unjustly and against God's commandment, and the Bohemians should not be forced to approve of such conduct, or else we shall never come into unity Not obstinacy but the open admission of truth must make us one
It is useless to pretend, as was done at that tiiven to a heretic need not be kept[227] That is as much as to say that God's commandments are not to be kept to the end that God's commandments may be kept The devil made them mad and foolish, so that they did not knohat they were saying or doing God has commanded that a safe-conduct shall be kept This coh the world all Howa heretic! We should vanquish heretics with books, not with burning; for so the ancient fathers did If it were a science to vanquish the heretics with fire, then the hang-men would be the er need to study, but he who overcaht burn him at the stake