believe this teaching will see whether their reasons will endure the
test when the hour of death arrives], in which God will call them to
account as to why they have dissolved marriages, and why they have
tortured [flogged and impaled] and killed priests [regardless of the
cries, wails, and tears of so many widows and orphans]. For do not
doubt but that, as the blood of dead Abel cried out, Gen. 4, 10, so
the blood of many good men against whom they have unjustly raged,
will also cry out. And God will avenge this cruelty; there you will
discover how empty are these reasons of the adversaries, and you will
perceive that in God's judgment no calumnies against God's Word
remain standing, as Isaiah says, 40, 6: All flesh is grass, and all
the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field [that their
arguments are straw and hay, and God a consuming fire, before whom
nothing but God's Word can abide, 1 Pet. 1, 24].

Whatever may happen, our princes will be able to console themselves
with the consciousness of right counsels, because even though the
priests would have done wrong in contracting marriages, yet this
disruption of marriages, these proscriptions, and this cruelty are
manifestly contrary to the will and Word of God. Neither does
novelty or dissent delight our princes, but especially in a matter
that is not doubtful more regard had to be paid to the Word of God
than to all other things.




Part 29