Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1521-1530.djvu/129

 to me through their commissioners, I would reply as follows. In the first place, I wish that questions of this sort were done away and suppressed, so far as possible, for they are un- profitable and dangerous to the common people, who are un- educated and fickle and are easily drawn away from the things that are necessary — that is, from faith and love — ^into these new and strange matters. Satan is clever; he starts these things so that he may have a way of corrupting the simplicity that is in Christ, and introduces questions that are, as Paul says,* interminable. This is what he did when he spread philosophy and ceremonies throughout the world, and none of the bishops resisted him, or stood for the liberty and purity of faith. Thus even now, among us, he is quibbling over the wor- ship of saints and what the saints are conscious of in heaven, and I have it in mind to take the matter up with him, so far as the Lord permits. This is doubtless what has happened with the Waldensian brethren also. Do this, therefore I Urge, insist on, demand the things that are necessary ; namely, faith and love, and if they do not first embrace these things, then denounce their frivolity, which occupies itself with these ex- ternalities, and not with the things that are necessary. For even the sacrament itself is not so necessary that faith and love are to be let go on its account. It is foolish to quarrel over these cheap things and neglect the precious and salutary things.

Neverthelesss, for fear they may think that importunate fools cannot be answered, I should say that a man is free to adore or invoke Christ in the sacrament, and he who does not adore Him commits no sin, neither does he commit sin who adores Him. Let this be the end of this contention. Do not allow either party to be coerced, and let no one adduce circumcision, or judge another. Do you hold this sort of contention over this matter in contempt, and by your con- tempt condemn it. Where faith and love are present there can be no sin either in adoring or in not adoring Christ in the sacrament; but if faith and love are not present, no one will be without sin, whether he adores Christ or not; nay, no one will ever be without sin no matter what he does. For faith

»I Timothy i, 4.

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