Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1521-1530.djvu/50

 Landgravine of Hesse* had, who is now wife of the Count of Solm. She knew the right answer for this great man when she bade his l^^tes remind him of his grandfather, Podiebrad, and his mother, P/odiebrad's daughter. Do you know what that clever woman told his legates at the Diet of Worms?

At Erfurt Satan has been plotting against us to give our friends a bad name,' but he will accomplish nothing. It is not our friends who are doing these things. He is unable to re- sist the truth and seeks to bring it into ill-repute by inflaming against us the foolish jealousy of fools. I wonder that the city council puts up with it. I am well, thank God, and en- joying a holiday from the papists. Pray for me and farewell. Our illustrious prince does not wish my whereabouts known as yet, and for this reason I am not writing to him.

Yours, Martin Luther.

501. LUTHER TO MELANCHTHON.

Eaders, iii, 205. (Wartbukg), August i, 1521.

During Luther's absence the leader of die Wittenberg theologians was Andrew Carlstedt (c/. Vol. I, p. 41, n. 9). Very early in this period he began to show evidences of the radical tendencies that ulti- mately caused a complete break between him and Luther. In the fol- lowing letter, which is only a fragment, the opening part having been lost, Luther gives Melanchthon his opinion of Carlstadt's views on celibacy and the Lord's Supper, expressed in his seven Theses on Celibacy of June 20, and his twenty-four theses of July 19, nine of which deal with the reception of the eucharist. It is also probable that Luther had received the sixty-six Theses on Celibacy which Carl- stadt issued about this time. Cf, Barge, i, 265, sSpff, 475ff.

You have not yet convinced me that the same rules must be made for the vows of priests and monks. The thing that especially moves me is that the order of priests was instituted by God as a free order; with the monks that is not the case. They have chosen their estate and made it an offering to God of their own accord. To be sure, I am abnost ready to decide that those who entered this abyss before or during the

'Anne of Hesse, mother of the Landgrave Philip, married Otto of Solmi-

taabsch, T-'f aUT /^ (^
 * Cf, lupra^ no. 483, p. 27, n. x, and Kampschulte, ii. p. 127*

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