Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther by Martin Luther
page 33 of 129 (25%)
page 33 of 129 (25%)
|
for religion, but our people go with joy to the fire, as heretofore
hath been well seen on the holy Martyrs. By what God preserveth his Word. God will keep his Word, said Luther, through the writing-pen upon earth; the Divines are the heads or quills of the pens, but the Lawyers are the stumps. If, now, the world will not keep the heads and quills-that is, if they will not hear the Divines-then they must keep the stumps-that is, they must hear the Lawyers, who will teach them manners. That in Causes of Religion we must not judge according to human Wisdom, but according to God's Word. When the Pope and Emperor, said Luther, cited me to appear at Worms, Anno Domini 1521, at the Imperial Assembly, they pressed and earnestly advised me to refer the determining of my cause to his Imperial Majesty; but I answered the three spiritual Electors, Maintz, Tryer, and Cologne, and said, "I will rather surrender up to his Majesty his letters of safe-conduct which he hath given me than to put this cause to the determining of any human creature whatsoever." Whereupon my master, the Prince Elector of Saxony, said also unto them, "Truly no man could offer more." But as they still insisted and urged me touching that point, I said, I did not dare to presume, without great danger of running myself into God's wrath, and of the loss of my soul's health, to refer this Cause, which is none of mine, but God's Cause, to the censure of earthly |
|