212 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1580.
do so, he ought to do his utmost to prevent them, as St. Paul and Barnabas would not suffer themselves to be worshiped as gods by the men at Lystra, saying, ‘ We also are men of like passions with you’ (Acts 14:14 seq.). But our flatterers have brought things to such a pitch, that they have set up an idol for us, until no one regards God with such fear, or honors him with such reverence, as they do the Pope. This they can suffer, but not that the Pope’s glory should be diminished a single hair’s-breadth. Now, if they were Christians, and preferred God’s honor to their own, the Pope would never be willing to have God’s honor despised, and his own exalted; nor would he allow any to honor him, until he found that God’s honor was again exalted above his own.
“ΤῸ is of a piece with this revolting pride, that the Pope is not satisfied with riding on horseback or in a carriage, but, though he be hale and strong, is carried by men like an idol in unheard-of pomp. I ask you, how does this Lucifer-like pride agree with the example of Christ, who went on foot, as did also all his apostles? Where has there been a king who lived in such worldly pomp as he does, who professes to be the head of all whose duty it is to despise and flee from all worldly pomp—I mean, of all Christians? Not that this need concern us for his own sake, but that we have good reason to fear God’s wrath, if we flatter such pride, and do not show our discontent. It is enough that the Pope should be so mad and foolish, but it is too much that we should sanction and approve it.”’
After enumerating all the abuses to which the Pope and his canon law give sanction, and which he upholds with his usurped authority, Luther addresses him in this impassioned style: —
** Dost thou hear this, O Pope! not the most holy, but the most sinful ? Would that God would hurl thy chair headlong from heaven, and cast it down into the abyss of hell! Who gave you the power to exalt yourself above God? to break and to loose what he has commanded? to teach Christians, more especially Gérmans, who are of noble nature, and are famed in all histories for uprightness and truth, to be false, unfaithful, perjured, treacherous, and wicked ? God has commanded to keep faith and observe oaths even with enemies: you dare to cancel his command, laying it down in your heretical, antichristian decretals, that you have power to do so; and through your mouth and your pen Satan lies as he never lied before, teaching you to twist and pervert the Scriptures according to your own arbitrary will. O Lord Christ ! look down upon this, let thy day of judgment come and destroy the Devil’s lair at Rome. Behold him of whom St. Paul spoke (2 Thess. 2: 3, 4), that he should exalt himself above thee, and sit in thy Church, showing himself as God — the man of sin and the child of damnation. . . . The Pope treads God’s commandments under foot, and exalts his own: if this is not Antichrist, I do not know what it is.’’
Janssen (II. 100) calls Luther’s ‘“‘ Address to the German Nobility’’ “‘ das eigentliche Kriegsmanifest der Lutherisch-Huttenschen Revolutionspartei,”
§ 45. BABYLONIAN CAPTIVITY OF THE CHURCH. 213
and “ ein Signal zum gewaltsamen Angriff.”” But the book nowhere counsels war; and in the letter to Link he says expressly: ‘‘ nec hoc a me agitur, ut seditionem moveam, sed ut concilio generali libertatem asseram”’ (De Wette, I. 479). Janssen quotes (p. 103) a very vehement passage from Luther’s contemporaneous postscript to a book of Prierias which he republished (De juridica et irrefragabili veritate Romane Ecclesie Romanique Pontificis), expressing a wish that the Emperor, kings, and princes would make a bloody end to Pope and cardinals and the whole rabble of the Romish Sodom. But this extreme and isolated passage is set aside by his repeated declarations against carnal warfare, and was provoked by the astounding assertions of Prierias, the master of the papal palace, that the Pope was the infallible judge of all controversies, the head of all spiritual, the father of all secular princes, the head of the Church and of the whole universe (caput totius orbis universi). Against such blasphemy Luther breaks out in these words: “‘ Mihi vero videtur, si sic pergat furor Romanistarum, nullum reliquum esse remedium, quam ut imperator, reges et principes vi et armis accincti aggrediantur has pestes orbis terrarum, remque non jam verbis, sed ferro decernant. ... Si fures furca, si latrones gladio, si hwreticos igne plectimus, cur non magis hos magistros perditionis, hos cardinales, hos papas et totam istam romane Sodome colluviem, que ecclesiam Dei sine fine corrumpit, omnibus armis impetimus, et manus nostras in sanguine eorum lavamus ? tanquam a communi et omnium periculosissimo incendio nos nostrosque liberaturi.”? Erl. ed., Opera Latina, II. 107. He means a national resistance under the guidance of the Emperor and rightful rulers.