Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1521-1530.djvu/200

 by faith alone, and works have nothing to do with it. I do / not see that it does any good to dispute about the way Luther / wishes these things to be understood. I see, too, that many of those who are devoted to him are remarkably stubborn, and in Luther's writings there is much malediction, which is often irrelevant. These things make me have some doubts about their spirit, because I wish that spirit which I favor to be pure. They take no advice, and when they are admonished they take the other side and involve a man on the smallest occasion.

You call me a laggard;* what, pray, do you wish me to do? What I have written heretofore I have written of my own accord, and even though I am polite, I do not betray the truth of the Gospel, but declare it, as far as may be. I had good hopes of this Pope,* now I fear that he will deceive me. Nevertheless I have admonished him of his duty, politely, in- deed, but as I thought expedient. I wrote him a long private letter.* He does not reply, and I fear he is offended. If you had read it you would not say that I was polite, when the occasion demanded something else ; I would have written him even more freely if I had seen it would do any good. It is madness to court destruction if you gain nothing by it. I left the pleasantest region in the world that I might not be in- volved in the business of the Pharisees,* for I could not live there otherwise, and my health is such that I cannot live just anjrwhere. The tyranny of the Pope does not please those whom Luther displeases. Who does not see, who does not grieve, that the bishops have been changed from fathers into has been said to me in more than one place. What is now going on is leading, as I see, to a revolution, and what the end of it will be I do not know. The world is full of the worst men, the kind that always break out in turbulent times. Though I am a man of no high position, I admonished the bishops and the princes in my book on The Prince* What

> Cunctator,

•Adrian VI.

•Probably tbat in Opera, Hi, 744.


 * Brabant. Cf. Kalkoff, AnfSnge der Gegenrgf, •'« d. Nitdtrl.» i, 65ff.


 * The Institutio prindpis ChruHani (1515)* V**^* Emerton, Erasntus, 2$$^^

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