Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1521-1530.djvu/280

 your guard and keep to essentials, and be not led astray by side issues. Answer any proposition by asking, Does it make a Christian or not ? If not, do not exaggerate it into an article of faith, and do not fall to it with all your might. If anyone is too weak to follow a certain good practice, let him have time and wait to see what we and others say about the matter. I have taught truly and well the chief articles of faith, and whoso contradicts me must be no good spirit. I hope I shall not go wrong in regard to outward ceremonies, which are the only things those "prophets" prate about.

I freely confess that if Carlstadt or any other could have convinced me five years ago that there was nothing in the sac- rament but mere bread and wine, he would have done me a great service. I was sorely tempted on this point, and wrestled with myself and strove to believe that it was so, for I saw that I could thereby give the hardest rap to the papacy. I read treatises by two men who wrote more ably in defence of the theory than Dr. Carlstadt and who did not so torture the Word to their own imagination. But I am bound, I cannot believe as they do; the text is too powerful and will not let itself be wrenched from the plain sense by argument.

But even if it could happen that to-day anyone should prove on reasonable grounds that the sacrament was mere bread and wine, he would not much anger me. (Alas, I am too much inclined that way myself when I feel the old Adam!) But Dr. Carlstadt's ranting only confirms me in the opposite belief. Even if I had no opinion on the subject to start with, his light, unstable buffoonery, without any appeal to Scripture, would give my reason a prejudice against whatever he urged. I hope everyone will agree with me now that I answer him. I can hardly take him seriously, but am inclined to think God has blinded him or made him mad. For one cannot take him seriously when he mingles such ridiculous propositions with his argument, juggling with Greek and Hebrew, of which everyone knows that he has not had much to forget.

I might stand his raging iconoclasm, for I have been more iconoclastic by my own writings than he by his ranting. What is not to be borne is that he should say th:*^,all who did not do as he bade were not Christians, thereby binding freedom and

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