Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1521-1530.djvu/248

 he has so far avoided doing them and fled from doing them ; and now he boasts of his timidity as a high and knightly deed of the spirit. I went to Leipsic to debate before a highly dangerous assembly. At Augsburg I appeared without safe- conduct before my worst enemy. I went to Worms to answer to the Emperor and diet, although I well knew that they had broken my safe-conduct and planned all manner of wiles and treachery against me. Weak and poor though I was there, yet this is what was in my heart: if I had known that there were as many devils aiming their shafts at me as there were tiles on the roofs, I would have ridden in ; and yet I had never heard of voices from heaven, or the "talents and the works of God," or the AUstedt Spirit. Again, I have had to appear in a comer, before one or two or three, others deciding who and where and how. My poor, troubled spirit has had to stand free, like a wild-flower, determining neither time nor person nor state, nor manner nor measure, and be ready and willing to give every man an answer, as St. Peter teaches.* (Put this spirit, who is as high above us as the sun above the earth, and looks on us as scarcely worms, chooses for himself only harmless, -iriendly and safe judges and ti&arkrs, and will not make answer to two or three in special places^} He feels uncomfortable and tries to scare us with swelling words. Ah, well! we can do nothing except what Christ gives us power to do; if He will leave us, the rustling of a leaf will scare us; if it is His will to uphold us, this spirit will learn something about his boasting. . ..

I have said these things to your Graces, so that your Graces may not be afraid of this spirit or delay action, but enjoin them strictly to refrain from violence and stop their de- stroying of monasteries and churches and their burning of saints,* commanding them, if they wish to prove their spirit, to do so in a proper manner, and first submit_ta investigation, either by us or by the papists, for, thank God! they con- sider us worse enemies than the papists. They use and enjoy the fruits of our victory, take wives and abolish papal laws, though they have not won this victory and have not risked their lives for it, but I have had to win it at jeopardy of life.

^I Peter iii, 15. */.#., the images.

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