Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1521-1530.djvu/448

 the worst of fools/ who, like Moab,* is bold beyond his power and proud beyond his strength, as he has always been. We shall pray against these murderers. Hitherto we have spared them, but if they try an3rthing again, we shall pray God and advise our princes to destroy them without mercy, for those insatiable blood-suckers will not rest until they see Germany dripping with blood.

We are sweating over the work of putting the Prophets into German. God, how much of it there is, and how hard it is to make these Hebrew writers talk German! They resist us, and do not want to leave their Hebrew and imitate our Ger- man barbarisms. It is like making a nightingale leave her own sweet song and imitate the monotonous voice of the cuckoo, which she detests. Farewell, and pray for us.

Martin Luther.

799. FRANCIS DYNAMIS TO WOLSEY.

Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, iv, no. 4396. (June 19, 1528.)

Presumably "Dynamis" is a Greek form of the English name "Strong."

Confesses a previous acquaintance with George Constantine,* Fische,* Bilney* and others, whom he abhors as pestiferous followers of Luther, at whose suggestion he had translated into English the first book of Francis Lambert, De Causis Excaecationis* and a letter which Bugenhagen sent "ad fideles (sic enim eos vocat) in Angliam."* He had visited Paris and spent ten months in Constantine's house, and there he had bought Luther's works, De Servo Arbitrio and De Captivitate


 * Dukc George

'Isaiah xvi, 6.

'Constantine (1501 ?-i 559) Bachelor of Canon Law at Cambridge, 1524. He went to Antwerp, where he assisted T]rndale and Joy in translating the New Testament After being seized (the DNB. says in or about 1530) for distributing prohibited books, he escaped and returned to England, becoming an Anglican clergyman. DNB.

In 1528 he wrote a book called ''The Supplication of Beggars/' DNB.
 * Simon Fish (ti53i) studied at Oxford, fled to Antwerp 1525, and again, 1527.

■Thomas Bilney (ti53i) studied at Cambridge, where he became Bachelor of Laws. In 1525 he began preaching, was arrested in 1527, recamted and released 1529, but was rearrested and burned 1531, DNB.


 * De causis excaecationis mMttorum seculorum, Nuremberg, 1525.

^ Epistola ad fideles in Anglia, Wittenberg, 1525.

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