Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1521-1530.djvu/382

 out us? They are not moved by the fact (to speak only of myself) that three years ago in a German book to the Walden- sians on the adoration of the Sacrament, published with other writings on the Eucharist, I not only testified to my own opinion but even confuted these "significators," * before anyone thought there would be any such people, and with proofs at that, which have not yet been overthrown. Then last year, in a very sharp tract against Carlstadt,* I made known to all the world what I thought and taught. I see no one coming forward who can confute that book, though some of them are so verbose that they can make it rain books. Yet they cry, "Why is Luther silent? Why does he not set forth his own opinion?" Suppose I were to write a thousand books, what good would it do among those furious deaf men who neither hear nor see anything.

The Syngramma Suevicum is out. They do not like it that I praise it, and though my praise is a confession of what I think, they will not listen to it. Oecolampadius wanted to confute it, but he went at his work with no other idea except simply : It is enough to write against it and it is not necessary to disprove its argimients ; the people will believe with us and be content when they hear that a book has been written against it. Unless, of course, it is disproving the arg^uments when Bucer says in this Preface, "The miracles of Christ were of such a nature that when He said. This is it,' the senses could immediately perceive that it was so. Therefore the body of Christ must be visible in the sacrament or it is not in the sacrament." * With such trivialities our consciences are to be

��^ Significatistas, i.e., those who held the doctrine that the words "This is My body" means "This signifies My body."


 * Against the Heavenly Prophets.

Lucae libri duo, 1527, quoted by CR., xcv), 61, note la, as follows: "In the preface to the fourth volume of I<uther's Postilla, which I translated into Latin for the use of our brethren in Italy, I said that as all the works of the Lord were true, and that as bodily things always appeared what they were, then, did the Lord really and truly turn the bread ftito His body, it ought thus to appear. Luther took this worse than I should have believed possible, and for this cause published against me an epistle than which you will see nothing more filled with calumny and cursing. . . . When I wrote that the corporeal miracles of the Lord always appeared corporeally to us, he, carried away by impotent rage, omitted [in quotation] the word 'corporeal,* in which lay the whole force of my argument Then he mocked me with great contempt and a
 * Bucer answered this in his Enarraiionum in EvangeHa Matthiui, Marci et

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