Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1521-1530.djvu/340

 the fate of Miinzer, and found refuge in Luther's house for three months. As a price of his protection, however, Luther forced him, 1^ means so drastic that Carlstadt says he would have been better treated in Turkey, to publish a recantation. This he did on July 25, in the following intentionally ambiguous language: "I recognize before God, without jest and from my heart, that all that I wrote, spoke or taught from my own brain or discovered for myself, is human, false, unpraiseworthy, deceitful, satanic, to be shunned and avoided.** This was, of course, taken as a recantation of the doctrine of the sacra- ment, and was a bitter blow to the Zwinglians, cf. Capito to Zwingli, CR., xcv, 4a4f. For the next three years Carlstadt lived on a farm at Kemberg. Barge, ii, 366^., ARG^ ix (1912), p. 274!!.

Grace and peace in Christ. Serene, highborn Prince, gracious Lord I I come again with trouble and vexation before your Grace, who hold your office from God. Carlstadt begs for a trial to excuse himself from the charge of sedition, and has .sent me a i^etradJQSLipf his errors which I shall publish. I cannot advise you to let him return to Orlamtinde, but think favorably of granting him a trial. If your Grace please I think he might be tried at Wittenberg, and if he were acquitted and his retraction found sufficient, your Grace might permit him to reside at Kemberg, or some village near by, on condition that he should never preach nor write any more, but should keep still and support himself by manual labor. As other lands would speedily exile him, it would be the safer to receive him here. I write this because I am sorry for the poor man, and your Grace knows that to the miserable and innocent mercy should be shown. Melanchthon and I also think that his silence should be bought with this favor and grace so thai he could not raise a complaint against us in other places, either out of revenge or because made desperate. It would do good to those who had embraced his errors and mightily damp them to see him living only on our favor and permission. I present this for your Grace's favorable consideration. God bless you. Your subject, Martin Luther.

704. LUTHER TO NICHOLAS HAUSMANN. Enders, v, 245. (Wittenberg), September 27, 1525.

Grace and peace in Christ. Keep on with what you are doing, and put up with what you can, my dear Nicholas. L

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