Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1507-1521.djvu/292

 cursed and impotent edict irreverently. I shall say elsewhere what their brains ought to hear, when they acknowledge that they have published the edict and begin to defend themselves. I consider them unpeaceable and in a future tract shall not abstain from treating them as violators of law, gospel and common sense, so that they may know how much I have hitherto spared their ignorance and malice.

I see that you have not read the edict with sufficient care. If they were not more ignorant than any asses, they would know that nothing was ever written against me, or rather against God's word, more venomous, pestilent, malignant and mendacious. On this account should we exult, or change our manner of writing, or suffer more? You know how I despise that inconvenience.

If you think properly of the gospel, please do not imagine that its cause can be advanced without tumult, offence and sedition. You will not make a pen from a sword, nor peace of war. The Word of God is a sword, it is war and ruin and offence and perdition and poison, and, as Amos says,* it met the sons of Ephraim as a bear in the way and as a lioness in the wood. I wrote much more vehemently against Emser, Eck and Tetzel, and you never complained. What if even the official' or the bishop himself does not acknowledge pub- lishing the edict?

They write in greater danger than I do, for they have so forgotten all gospel, laws, reason and common sense, that they care for nothing but to condemn me unheard, tmwamed and untaught. They do to me what I have never done to them, at least never to the bishop and the official.

Let them go on as they please. If they have forgotten the dignity of the episcopal office, or even that of his subordinate, doubt not that I will soon remind them of it by citing texts of the Bible. God so carries me on that I cannot fear their rash and untaught hatred. Let God see to it, for he acts through me, since I am certain that none of these things have been sought by me, but that they were drawn from me, one and all, by a fury not my own.

iRather Hosea, xiii. yi. Cf, Amos, iii. 8. ^Supra, no. 227 1 note i.

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