Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1521-1530.djvu/53

 the one kind commit sin. For who can take this [the wine] by force, against a tyrant's will? Therefore there is no compulsion here save that of reason, which declares that Christ's institution is not observed; but the Scripture gives no decision, and without a word of Scripture we cannot pro- nounce it sin. It is Christ's institution, but freely granted, and it cannot be imprisoned, neither the whole of it nor any part of it. . . . It pleases me greatly that you are restoring the whole institution of Christ. This was the thing I had in- tended to work for before an)rthing else, if I had returned to you; for now we know this tyranny and can resist it and are not forced to receive only the one kind.

I, too, will never say another private mass. Let us pray the Lord, I beseech you, that He will hasten to give us a larger portion of His Spirit, for I suspect that the Lord will soon visit Germany as its unbelief, impiety and hatred of the Gospel deserve. But then this plague will be charged to us, on the ground that we heretics have provoked the Lord, and we will be "a reproach of men and despised of the people,"* while they find excuses for their sins and justify themselves, that He may prove that the wicked cannot be made good either by kindness or by wrath, and many will be offended. The Lord's will be done. Amen.

If you are a preacher of grace, then preach a true, not a pretended grace ; if grace is true you must bear a true, not a pretended, sin. God does not save pretended sinners. Be a sinner and sin mightily, but believe more mightily, and re- joice in Christ, who is victor over sin, death and world.* We must sin so long as we are what we are ; this life is not the dwelling-place of righteousness, but we look, says Peter,* for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. It is enough that by the riches of God's glory we


 * Psalm xxii, 6.

'This passage is frequently quoted against Luther, and interpreted as an en- couragement to sin. As it stands here it is merely a rebuke to Melanchthon's characteristic timidity. The sense of it is, — "Be a man and a Christian. As a man, you will sin, but when you have committed a sin, do not be paralyzed with fear of consequences, but be bold in faith, for Christ died for sinners.*' Cf, Luther to Cronberg, infra, no. 534, and P. Smith, in Lutheran Survey, March 14,

1917, p. 653. ■ II Peter iii, 13.

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