Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1507-1521.djvu/316

 recently decreed/ presents you with the freedom of the city of the saints? And will he, whose authority you have weak- ened and whose indulgences your disputation has made go hungry, give it to you? It will profit you nothing to wash your robe in the blood of the Lamb.* For eternal life what need is there of a bull of the "representative Church"* and the agreement of the professors, without which you will cer- tainly be non-suited before the celestial tribunal for deciding the right to be called saint. O wretched Christianity! O primitive faith! Thus must all divine things depend on and be contaminated with human ones ? Let anyone who can, now deny that the Church of God is smitten with a terrible per- secutor. . ..

In the judgment of all you have been condemned not ac- cording to soimd doctrine, but according to Louvain. Even so the Pope's thunder smites many not Christianly, but Ro- manly — for new words must be coined to describe new er- rors. If, indeed, they have written anything, yet they sup- press it expecting the agreement of their allies, so that they can all rush upon you together and so crush you. They labor much to accomplish this plan both in Italy and in Germany; and by delaying their refutation they win hatred for them- selves for daring publicly to condemn a Christian without giving their reasons for so doing. For it may come to pass that their allies will change their opinion and not wish to subscribe to the doctrinal condemnation, as it is now rumored of our friends at Erfurt.* Dorp, whose authority with the learned is greater than all the rest of the university, has re- fused to assent to the condemnation of you by Louvain. Would that they would publish something less insane, so that in the strength of Scripture you might break their frivolous folly to shivers like the vessel of the potter,' and might slay their foolishness with the sword of the Holy Spirit. You would not have great difficulty in doing this, but would add

xin the Lateran Council of 1516.

sReTelation, rii. 14.

'A quotation from Prierias' Dialogut,

^This probablf refers to the judgment of Erfurt in the Reuchltn case; the desire of the unirersity to withdraw this is spoken of in the Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum, ii. 3 a.

BRerelation, ii. 27.

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