Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1507-1521.djvu/483

 evils, am kept from the sacred things and my life is a cross. I am now on the twenty-first Psalm, "Eli, Eli." Hoping to finish the Psalter, if Christ please, I am working on it with all my might. But as yet not a fourth part of the Psalter has been treated; I simply have to steal the time I spend on it. You rightly warn me to be moderate, I myself know that I am not master of myself, being carried along by I know not what spirit, though I know that I consciously wish no one evil. They press furiously upon me because I have not paid Satan sufficient respect. So pray the Lord for me that I may learn, speak and write what is worthy of him and of mc, not what suits them. Farewell in Christ.

409. LUTHER TO THE ELECTOR FREDERIC OF SAXONY AT

WORMS. Enders, iii. 94. Wittenberg, March 3, 1521.

This is the dedication to the Latin PostUla for Advent, which ap- peared at Wittenberg on March 7, 1521. Weimar, x. i. i.

Most illustrious and clement Prince, I know not to what I ought to attribute it, that I have hitherto been unable to reply to your Highnesses good wishes, and, as one thing gave rise to another, have been forced to differ it from day to day. It was your excellent advice that I should put aside contentious, sharp and polemic writings, in which I have now lost three years, and devote myself to sacred and peaceable studies. You advised that in addition to my commentary on the Psalter, I should undertake homilies on the Gospels and Epistles (com- monly called Postilla) for the ordinary pastor and for the people, for you thought that if I were engaged with such a mountain of work I should have to have peace with my enemies even against their will. Thus your disposition, like your name, is peaceful, so that you often show me plainly how much these contentions about trifles annoy you, for I also can despise those magnificent battles for ecclesiastical lucre, and, with the prophet^ make Bethaven of Bethel.

I cannot easily express my aversion to being plunged in these whirlpools and taken from my studies. My flesh and blood will not quite allow me to treat the obstinate impudence

^Amos, V. 5. Bethaven means "the house of Yanity," Bethel "the house of God."

�� �