Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1521-1530.djvu/387

 and two who are competent to pass on doctrine and character. These men, at your Grace's command, ought to have the schools and parishes set in order and provided f or, where it is necessary.

If there is a town or a village which can do it, your Grace has the power to compel it to support schools, preaching places and parishes. If they are unwilling to do this or to consider it for their own salvation's sake, then your Grace is the supreme guardian of the youth and of all who need his guardianship, and ought to hold them to it by force, so that they must do it. It is just like compelling them by force to contribute and to work for the building of bridges and roads, or any other of the country's needs.

What the country needs and must have ought to be given and helped along by those who use and enjoy the country. Now there is no more necessary thing than the education of the people who are to come after us and be the rulers. But if they cannot do it and are overburdened with other things, there are the monastic properties which were established chiefly for the purpose of relieving the common man, and ought still be used for that purpose.

Your Grace can easily think that in the end there would be an evil rumor, and one that could not be answered, if the schools and the parishes went down and the nobles were to appropriate the monastic properties for themselves. This charge is already made, and some of them are doing it Since then these properties are of no benefit to your Grace's treas- ury, and were given in the first place for purposes of worship, they ought rightly to serve this purpose first of all. What remains over your Grace can apply to the country's needs, or give to the poor.

In the second place. Doctor Carlstadt has earnestly begged me to write your Grace to allow him to live at Kemberg,* for he cannot stay in the villages because of the churlishness of the peasants, as your Grace can learn from this letter of his and the one to John von Greffendorf ; * and yet he shrinks from

^ Vide supra, no. 742.

VoL I, 38of.
 * Grafendorf (Grafendorf, Greffendorf) was the Elector's chamberlain. Vide

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