Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1507-1521.djvu/554

 For God the searcher of hearts is my witness that I am most ready to submit to and obey your Majesty either in life or in death, to glory or to shame, for gain or for loss. As I have offered myself, thus I do now, excepting nothing save the Word of God, in which not only (as Christ teaches in Matthew iv.) does man live, but which also the angels of God desire to see (i Peter, i.). As it is above all things it ought to be held free and unbound in all, as Paul teaches.^ It ought not to depend on human judgment nor to bend to the opinion of men, no matter how great, how numerous, how learned and how holy they are. Thus does St. Paul in Gala- tians, i., dare to exclaim with emphasis: "If we or an angel from heaven teach you another gospel, let him be ana- thema," and David says: "Put not your trust in princes, in the sons of men, in whom is no safety."^ Nor is anyone able to trust in himself, as Solomon says: "He is a fool who trusts in his own heart,"* and Jeremiah, xvii. : "Cursed is he who trusteth in man."

Now in temporal things, which have nothing in common with the Word of God and the eternal values, we trust one another, for submission in them or loss of them does not prejudice our salvation. We shall have to give them all up at length under any circumstances. But in his Word and the eternal values God does not suffer one man to risk trust- ing another. For he intends that all men and all things shall be subject to him only, for he alone has the glory of the truth, and is the truth itself, "for all men are liars and vain" as St. Paul splendidly argues in the epistle to the Romans, chapter ill. Nor is this wrong, for that trust and submission is true worship and adoration of God, as St. Augustine teaches in his Enchiridion, chapter i.* But we must not offer this wor- ship to any creature. For St. Paul esteems neither the angels nor himself, and doubtless no saint either in heaven or on earth worthy of this faith, but rather curses them. Nor would they suffer it, still less request it. For to trust to man in matters of salvation is to give to a creature the glory due to the Creator only.

'2 Timothy, ii. 9. *P8alm cxlvi. 3.

•Proverbs, xxviii. 26. *Mi8taken citation.

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