Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1507-1521.djvu/251

 will not have the brazen impudence to assert. Any boy can see that Christ speaks of sucK men. The passage of the apostle to the Corinthians^ was taken from Eck, as it were by force, though he babbled about its being very clear for him. Paul's words clearly mean that the day of the Lord shall prove everyone's works, which day, he says, shall be revealed by fire. Whence even an insane person can see that Paul's words speak of the last judgment, in which the world will be dissolved by heat; and that only by force or a figure of speech (for which there is no evidence) can they be applied to purgatory. Christ's words in John,* about purg- ing the Branch, have been applied to purgatory by a certain Vincent,' than whom no one ever twists the sense of Scrip-, ture more. If the word "purge" always connotes the idea of purgatory, why don't they apply it to the text of Luke, ii.* "When the days of her purification [purgationis] were ful- filled." What can they understand who consider Vincent's words articles of faith? The text in Maccabees* is left, and is quite plain. But that book does not make articles of faith, nor do the Fathers consider it an authority; the second book especially is several times rejected by Jerome. In short, although I know that our Church believes in purgatory, I do not know that all Christians do. It is certain that no one is a heretic for not believing in purgatory, nor is it an article of faith, since the Greeks who do not believe it are never considered heretics, except by these new abnormally keen heresy hunters. And at the council of Basle the Greeks gave a splendid account of their faith. Farewell and pray for me.

Martin Luther, Augustinian,

195. JOHN ECK TO THE ELECTOR FREDERIC OF SAXONY.

Endcrs, ii. 226. German. Ingolstadt, November 8, 1519.

This prolix letter of nearly thirty pages is mainly a detailed the- ological argument in answer to Luther's letter, supra, no. 172. I

>i Corinthiana, iii. 15, "If any man'a work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.'* •John, XV. 2.

"Vincent of Beauvais, died 1264, treats of purgatory in his Speculum tuorale. ^Lnke, ii. 22. ^2 Maccabees, xii. 46, quoted supra, no. 163.

�� �