Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1521-1530.djvu/265

 good men so cheap and thrust them aside so disdainfully ; per- haps they will get too much of it and go elsewhere. If my testimony is worth an3rthing, he is innocent in this case. I 'am rolling this stone all by myself. But you, who bear an old grudge against him, give immediate credence to whatever those lying and sacril^ous canons write, and direct your sus- picion against him, and convict me of sedition. But the Elector's propensity to hold men cheap is well known. This is the way we honor the Gospel. We cannot give one of its ministers a single paltry benefice to live on, but we make no difficulty about granting riches to other people, to support them while they blaspheme our God. Worst of all, and most deceitfully of all, you bid him go away, and yet wish it to appear that this is the last thing you would do ; and then you think that Christ does not see this knavery. Why do you not either plainly bid him leave, or else simply bear with him ? Only tell us, and we shall cure your sickness, if we are so repulsive and nauseating.

Jonas is the man who ought to be bought with a great price and kept in the land, but you hold him cheaper than stubble and seagrass.^ But God is just, and because of this injustice of yours, He compels you to support ungrateful scoundrels and dangerous hypocrites in luxury. I do not think that we have done or are doing the Elector any harm, and I will not speak of the services we have done him. Unless, indeed, you think it is no service that through us the Gospel has been brought to light, by which your souls are saved and no small measure of this world's goods has begun to flow, and is daily flowing, into the Elector's purse, so that even if we have earned the hatred of others, we certainly ought to have earned from you better treatment than this that we have received. Unless, of course, the saying must be fulfilled,* "They rendered evil for good," or that other saying,* "No prophet is accepted in his own country." Nevertheless the Lord will feed us so that we shall not want, even though you take away our living and your paltry, accursed money. If you undertake to do anything in

» Virgil. Eccl. vii, 44: Horace, Sat, ii, 5, 8. 'Psalm XXXV, 12. 'JUuke iv, 24.

�� �