My faithful counsel is that, in order to avoid many sins which have become very common, neither boy nor maid should take the vow of chastity, or of the "spiritual life," before the age of thirty years[271]. It is, as St. Paul says, a peculiar gift [1 Cor. 7]. Therefore let him whom God does not constrain, put off becoming a cleric and taking the vows. Nay, I will go farther and say, If you trust God so little that you are not willing to support yourself as a married man, and wish to become a cleric only because of this distrust, then for the sake of your own soul, I beg of you not to become a cleric, but rather a farmer, or whatever else you please. For if to obtain your temporal support you must have one measure of trust in God, you must have ten measures of trust to continue in the life of a cleric. If you do not trust God to support you in the world, how will you trust him to support you in the Church? Alas, unbelief and distrust spoil everything and lead us into all misery, as we see in every estate of life!

Much could be said of this miserable condition. The young people have no one to care for them. They all do as they please, and the government is of as much use to them as if it did not exist; and yet this should be the chief concern of pope, bishops, lords and councils. They wish to rule far and wide, and yet to help no one. O, what a rare bird will a lord and ruler be in heaven just on this account, even though he build a hundred churches or God and raise up all the dead!

[Sidenote: Conclusion]

[Let this suffice for this time! Of what the temporal powers and the nobility ought to do, I think I have said enough in the little book. On Good Works[272]. There is room for improvement in their lives and in their rule, and yet the abuses of the temporal power are not to be compared with those of the spiritual power, as I have there shown.][273]

I think too that I have pitched my song in a high key, have made many propositions which will be thought impossible and have attacked many things too sharply. But what am I to do? I am in duty bound to speak. If I were able, these are the things I should wish to do. I prefer the wrath of the world to the wrath of God; they can do no more than take my life[274]. Many times heretofore I have made overtures of peace to my opponents; but as I now see, God has through them compelled me to open my mouth wider and wider and give them enough to say, bark, shout and write, since they have nothing else to do. Ah well, I know another little song about Rome and about them if I their ears itch for it I will sing them that song too, and pitch the notes to the top of the scale. Understandest thou, dear Rome, what I mean?

I have many times offered my writings for investigation and judgment, but it has been of no use. To be sure, I know that if my cause is just, it must be condemned on earth, and approved only by Christ in heaven; or all the Scriptures show that the cause of Christians and of Christendom must be judged by God alone. Such a cause has never yet been approved by men on earth, but the opposition has always been too great and strong. It is my greatest care and fear that my cause may remain uncondemned, by which I should know or certain that it was not yet pleasing to God.

Therefore let them boldly go to work,--pope, bishop, priest, monk and scholar! They are the right people to persecute the truth, as they have ever done.

God give us all a Christian mind, and especially to the Christian nobility of the German nation a right spiritual courage to do the best that can be done for the poor Church. Amen.

Wittenberg, 1520.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Unserm furnchmen nach. See Introduction, p. 57.

[2] An ironical comparison of the monks' cowl and tonsure with the headgear of the jester.

[3] i. e., Which one turns out to be the real fool.

[4] The proverb ran, Monachus semper praesens, "a monk is always there." See Wander, Deutsches Sprichworterlexicon, under Monch, No. 130.

[5] Evidently a reference to the Gravamina of the German Nation; see Gebhardt, Die Grav. der Deutschen Nation, Breslau, 1895.

[6] Councils of the Church, especially those of Constance (1414-18), and of Basel (1431-39).

[7] Charles V. was elected Emperor in 1519, when but twenty years of age. Hutten expresses his "hopes of good" from Charles in Vadiscus (Bocking, IV, 156).

[8] Frederick Barbarossa (1152-1100).

[9] Frederick II (1212-1250), grandson of Barbarossa and last of the great Hohenstaufen Emperors. He died under excommunication.

[10] Pope Julius II (1503-1513). Notorious among the popes for his unscrupulous pursuit of political power, he was continually involved in war with one and another of the European powers over the possession of territories in Italy.

[11] Luther's recollection of the figures was faulty.

[12] The term "Romanist" is applied by Luther to the champions of the extreme form of papal supremacy. C. Vol. I, p. 343 f.

[13] i. e., The three rods for the punishment of an evil pope.

[14] Spuknisse, literally "ghosts." The gist of the sentence is, "the Romanists have frightened the world with ghost-stories."

[15] Olegotze--"an image anointed with holy oil to make it sacred"; in modern German, "a blockhead."

[16] Lay-baptism in view of imminent death is a practice as old as the Christian Church. The right of the laity to administer baptism in such cases was expressly recognized by the Council of Elvira, in the year 306, and the decree of that Council became a part of the law of the Church. The right of the laity to give absolution in such cases rests on the principle that in the absence of the appointed official of the Church any Christian can do for any other Christian the things that are absolutely necessary or salvation, for "necessity knows no law." Cf. Vol. I, p. 30, note 2.

[17] The canon law, called by Luther throughout this treatise and elsewhere, the "spiritual law," is a general name for the decrees of councils ("canons" in the strict sense) and decisions of the popes ("decretals," "constitutions," etc.), promulgated by authority of the popes, and collected in the so-called Corpus juris canonici. It comprised the whole body of Church law, and embodied in legal forms the mediaeval theory of papal absolutism, which accounts for the bitterness with which Luther speaks of it, especially in this treatise. The Corpus includes the following collections of canons and decretals: The Decretum of Gratian (1142), the Liber Extra (1234), the Liber Sextus (1298), the Constitutiones Clementinae (1318 or 1317), and the two books of Extravagantes ,--the Extravagantes of John XXII, and the Extravagantes communes. The last pope whose decrees are included is Sixtus IV (died 1484). See Catholic Encyclop.,IV, pp. 391 ff.

[18] Augustine, the master-theologian of the Ancient Church, bishop of Hippo in Africa from 395-430.

[19] Ambrose, bishop of Milan from 374-397, had not yet been baptised at the time of his election to the episcopate, which was forced upon him by the unanimous voice of the people of the city.

[20] Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, 247-258, is said to have consented to accept the office only when the congregation surrounded his house and besought him to yield to their entreaties.

[21] Was ausz der Tauff krochen ist.

[22] The character indelebilis, or "indelible mark," received authoritative statement in the bull Exultate Deo (1439). Eugenius IV, summing up the Decrees of the Council of Florence, says: "Among these sacraments there are three--baptism, confirmation, and orders--which indelibly impress upon the soul a character, i. e., a certain spiritual mark which distinguishes them from the rest" (Mirbt, Quellen, 2d ed., No. 150). The Council of Trent in its XXIII. Session, July 15, 1563 (Mirbt, No. 312), defined the correct Roman teaching as follows: "Since in the sacrament of orders, as in baptism and confirmation, a character is impressed which cannot be destroyed or taken away, the Holy Synod justly condemns the opinion of those who assert that the priests of the New Testament have only temporary power, and that those once rightly ordained can again be made laymen, if they do not exercise the ministry of the Word of God."

[23] i. e., They are all Christians, among whom there can be no essential difference.

[24] The sharp distinction which the Roman Church drew between clergy and laity found practical application in the contention that the clergy should be exempt from the jurisdiction of the civil courts, This is the so-called privilegium fori, "benefit of clergy." It was further claimed that the government of the clergy and the administration of Church property must be entirely in the hands of the Church authorities, and that no lay rulers might either make or enforce laws which in any way affected the Church. See Lea, Studies in Church History, 169-219 and Prot. Realencyk., VI, 594.

[25] It was the contention of the Church authorities that priests charged with infraction of the laws of the state should first be tried in the ecclesiastical courts. If found guilty, they were degraded from the priesthood and handed over to the state authorities for punishment. Formula for degradation in the canon law, C. 2 in VI, de poen. (V, 9). See Prot. Realencyk., VI, 589.

[26] The interdict is the prohibition of the administration of the sacraments and of the other rites of the Church within the territory upon which the interdict is laid (Realencyk., IX, 208 f.). Its use was not uncommon in the Middle Ages, and during the time that the power of the popes was at its height it proved an effective means of bringing refractory rulers to terms. A famous instance is the interdict laid upon the Kingdom of England by Innocent III in 1208. Interdicts of more limited local extent were quite frequent. The use of the interdict as punishment for trifling infractions of church law was a subject of complaint at the diets of Worms (1521) and Nurnberg (1524). See A. Wrede, Deutsche Reichstagsakten unter Kaiser Karl V., II, pp. 685 f, III, 665.