Page:The letters of Martin Luther.djvu/326

 excellent of men, to reissue some of Athanasius’s writings upon the Trinity has my warm approval. Among these I enjoyed immensely that which was held before an approving judge, under Constantine the Great, viz. the disputation between Athanasius and Arius. The very thought of the delight with which I devoured it as a young monk, when it was put in my hands by my spiritual director in Erfurt, doubtless a true Christian, even beneath the accursed cowl, is to this day one of my pleasantest recollections; and yet this was only a personal pleasure for my special benefit. But what you propose is something much greater. I behold Christ’s spirit working in and through you in desiring to preserve and defend those doctrinal articles concerning the Trinity in their purity in the church of God, for whose maintenance that saintly man Athanasius did not shrink from drawing down upon himself all the demons in hell, in the world, and the whole kingdom of God.

Your resolution is therefore, most excellent Pommer, salutary and good in this depraved age, when all our articles of faith are being assailed by the emissaries of Satan, especially those on the Trinity, which certain skeptics and epicureans are beginning audaciously to scoff at; and they are ably assisted, not only by these Italian grammarians or rhetoricians, which they think they are, but by certain Italian-German serpents, who by word of mouth and in their writing scatter broadcast the bad seed, whereby they excite the admiration of their own followers and boast of their success.

But these Devils, or Epicureans, or Skeptics, or Lucians, or whatever kind of adventurers, Italian or German, they may be, are nowhere when brought into the presence of Him who said to our servant Jesus Christ, “Thou art my Son”; and again, “Sit thou at my right hand.” Let us await the laurels these giants will carry away with them from those seemingly glorious assaults upon God. Such a gigantic war is nothing new; an Euseladus or a Typhaus has nevertheless been overthrown once in a century, while our servant Jesus Christ has nothing else to do but overthrow these giants, and will not cease doing so till at last,