Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1507-1521.djvu/220

 £ck (whom now, without sin, we may juage and accuse)

ever playing the part of neither a good man nor a gentle- ui. He gave the Bishop of Brandenburg a memorial on the tides which the brothers of Jiiterbogk have falsely cooked » against me.^ The man is impudent and shameless, ready

assert or deny anything for a little puff of glory. His only
 * ii is by right or wrong to hurt Wittenberg. I am opposing

[11, and with God's help will expose the sycophant and his lies

the public.

Meantime the Bishop of Brandenburg, without hearing ie other side, is spreading abroad Eck's falsehoods, and by is name giving them, in the eyes of many, authority, thus ^urting me, and showing fairly the animus he has always Uid towards me. I fear that I can hardly do anything with- >ut involving him, and betraying how like his ignorance and rashness is to that of Eck. The Franciscans are working with iiem ; we are the only ones whose press is too slow to publish nir answer quickly.

According to your wish I have begun publicly to apply lyself to the foundation for commemorating Christ's Pas- ion,' and the more I think of it the less I find to please me. he Church is already overburdened with ceremonies, so lat almost all the serious concerns of Christian piety have ^nerated into superstition. This means to have an easy lith in external works and complacently to leave out the real >iritual essence. Wherefore I am not yet prepared to say jw I can make this foundation at once seemly without and nitful within. It is difficult to combine both, since the gospel as placed the most excellent piety in fraternal love and tutual good-will. I will write more later. Farewell, and jmmend me to my patron the elector.

Martin Luther, Augustinian.

tFn&cts Guntlier became preacher at Juterbogk and in Passion Week, 15x9* dtrercd a series of sermons containing various propositions considered heretical r the Franciscans of that Tillage. These friars published a broadside entitled rtscWt pgr Ffirts Minores de observantia propositi. . . Episcopo Branden- wgtnti contra Lutheranos, which came into Luther's hands in May and was lawered by him on May 15. Enders, ii. 36. When the Elector Joachim of randenbtirg Tisited Leipsic in the summer of i5i9> he requested Eck*s opinion I these charges, which was giren in a memorial handed to the Bishop of rsndeobcirg.
 * C/- supra, no. 17X.

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