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 286 LUTHER'S CORRESPONDENCE AND LcL 2aB

228. LUTHER TO SPALATIN.

Enders, ii. 327. Wittenberg (between February 12 and 18), 152a

Enders dates this "soon after February 18/' but internal evidence seems to me to make it more probable that the letter was written after that of February 12, but before that of February 18. In this dating I follow Hoppe in the St. Louis Walch edition, vol. xxi^ na 263.

Greeting. Good Heavens! Spalatin, how excited you are! More than I or anyone else. I wrote you before not to as- sume that this affair was begun or is carried on by your judgment or mine or that of any man. If it is of God, it will be completed contrary to, outside of, above and below, your or my understanding.

But let me tell you again that I would not have the least part of this cause decided by your fate or by mine, and that my only fear has always been that I should be left to myself and thus write what would please human wisdom. You must beware of being too wise and I of being too foolish. Too much folly, I confess, displeases men, but too much wisdom still more displeases God, who has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise.*

You do not see that my long suffering in not answering five or six wagonloads of Emser's and Eck's curses was the sole cause why those bloated makers of placards' dared to revile me with their ridiculous folly.

Secondly, I know that I do not care that at Leipsic my sermon' was forbidden and suppressed in a public edict, for I despise their suspicion, reproaches, injuries and malice. Forsooth must we allow these bold men to add to their other furious acts the publication of libels, stuffed not only with lies, but with blasphemy against the gospel truth? Do you forbid us even to bark against these wolves?

The Lord is my witness, how much I have restrained my- self for the sake of the bishop's name, not to treat this

^i Corinthians, i. 27. Luther is aniwering Spalatin'f objections to the too great violence of his answer to the Bishop of Meissen. Cf. supra, no. 227.

s"Schedularii/' referring to the "Schedula" of the Bishop of Meissen.

^Sermon on the Sacrament of the Body and Blood. Weimar, iL 738.

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