who, willy nilly, do everything for gain or glory this class of men who handle even divine things for their own personal ends. ‘Therefore, since they see that, because they bear the mark of persons who speak only to win favor and blatantly dissemble their real opinions, it is not hard to perceive what they are inwardly, I beg them to confess with us, 7. e., with, the faithful, that man is altogether bad and that all his thoughts and actions are controlled by self-love.
[5]. Religion
I must now return to religion, which I put aside for a little while till I should speak, as far as the Lord gave to me, of those between whom religion subsists.
Of the word enough has been said, and I now come to the thing itself.
“God created man in his own image and likeness” [Gen. 1:27], and surrounded him with blessings and indescribable delights, but he foolishly suffered himself to be dragged into the direst calamity by vain hopes. As soon as that happened, he began to see in himself something unpleasing. For it is written, Gen. 3: 7: “And the eyes of them both were opened.” Good God, were they blind before? By no means, but their hearts, like their eyes, were ignorant of anything base, as long as they kept from eating of the tree of life. There was nothing to sadden them, nothing to make them ashamed. But after they ate the fatal apple, their eyes were opened; for it was plucked from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Yet what did they see first that they had not seen before? Something secret that they had not known before? The demon seemed to promise something of this kind, and the poor things no doubt hoped for something of the sort. They saw, then, that they were naked. Now, they had been naked before, but nakedness was not regarded as nakedness: sin was not imputed before the law came, Rom. 5: 13. So nakedness was not known before lack of clothing was felt; and this took place only when man turned away from his Creator, the treasure house of every good thing. From this we should learn that our minds, to whatever part of creation, to whatever design, to whatever hope they turn, find nothing but trouble, disaster, and utter
wretchedness (for this is the nakedness in question, to be exposed to all evils and deprived of the protection of God), and that comfort and rest are nowhere to be found save with God. And we see, if we look a little more closely, that such folly is native to us, so that we begin uncertain and difficult things blindly, without intelligent consideration of the end; and when that is finally reached our eyes are opened by hard experience, yet so that we see nothing but the evils into which our own recklessness has plunged us. And the human mind is always after something new, though we find an Epimetheus oftener than a Prometheus; that is, we are all wise after the event.
We are taught, in the next place, that the nakedness of Adam means nothing else than guilt and the death that is sin, of which so much was said above. For who could believe that Adam was so dull that he could not make the argument: “Suppose you are naked. God Himself created you naked. Let Him see you naked.” But it was his consciousness of wrongdoing that made him ashamed to come into the sight of God. If Adam had had a hope that he had anything left with which to coax back favor, he never would have hidden; but he saw that his case was so utterly lost that we do not read of his turning to supplication. Concluding, therefore, from his consciousness of guilt that the worst was in store for him, he hid, and gave his nakedness as an excuse for running away and delaying to appear. What else, then, are we to conclude from all this but that the case of man is so hopeless and lamentable that he dares not appear in God’s presence, and even flees from Him, dreads Him when He calls, and refuses to come into His sight? But at the same time we are taught the kindness of God, who receives back into favor this traitorous deserter to the enemy’s camp, without his humbly asking it, and though he swiftly runs away and tries to disguise himself. God calls to him, i reproaches him, and only so far turns-his happy estate into one of woe as His righteousness demands. For what did Adam deserve but death and destruction? But, as far as He could, God considered, with reference to Adam’s bold misdeed, how
[Epimetheus: Afterthought, the husband of Pandora, whom he mar-]
[ried against the advice of his brother Prometheus, Forethought.]
He might give a foretaste even in the beginning of what He would sometime do for the whole posterity of Adam; and when His righteous wrath was still hot at the recently committed crime, He judged more kindly than the guilt deserved.
Before we leave this topic I want to give certain theologians this point to consider. I beg you to give an answer, at least in the form of a probable theory—since you generally employ theories, though they are sometimes far from reasonable—to this question: Does it seem as if Adam would ever have come back of his own notion to ask for grace? You will certainly be forced to admit that on no reasonable inference does it seem likely that one who was so bent upon running away and hiding that he could scarcely be dragged out would have returned if the Lord had not followed him up in his flight. Why, then, will you not acknowledge that the acquired faith about which you talk so much is a fiction (for no man cometh to Christ, John 6: 44, unless the Father draw him), and that faith is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that hath mercy [Rom. 9:16]? Why indeed, when you see that our common parent, whose sin and death have extended to us, was so afraid of God that, yielding to the folly which kept telling him that he could hide, he took himself off in order not to be forced to hear himself upbraided for the sin of his desertion? But what need is there of lengthy discussion? Suppose God lets Adam be; he will never come back to Him from whom he has fled. Suppose He lets man be; he will never seek Him by whom he was created. For everyone is a God unto himself, as is made plain by his worship of himself. For who is there who does not worship himself and give himself the top place in some respect, while demanding of God the reason for all His acts and designs? And what is this but to exalt oneself above God and to exercise a censorship over His works? I have gone on at considerable length, but I wanted to make it plain how far man would wander from God if He from whom we flee did not stop us in our flight; and how far from the true path these theologians are when they talk more pointlessly than the heathen writers about acquired faith and freedom of the will.
Here, therefore, we see more clearly than day that religion
took its rise when God called runaway man back to Him, when otherwise he would have been a deserter forever. For he saw that his nakedness, that is, his guilt, was of such kind and degree that he despaired of a return to favor. But a merciful God pitied his persistence in flight and his bewildered soul; and, like a devoted father who indeed hates the folly or recklessness of his son yet cannot hate the son, He gently calls to him in his desolation and despair, asking him how matters stand: “Adam, where art thou?” Oh, wonderful and unspeakable graciousness of the Heavenly Father! He who places all things where they are—or they would be nowhere—asks him where he is; but He asks for the sake of the unhappy man, that He may show him the more plainly the depth of his guilt; for he did not know where in the world he was. For, frightened by his consciousness of guilt, he saw that it was all up with his home and happy hearth, saw that the words of his Lord were only too true: “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” He felt how his heart fluttered, how his mind in its distracted state fluctuated between many plans, all unpromising and illusory; and at the same time he feared the destined death was at hand every moment. The Heavenly Father, therefore, asks him where he is, that man may be mindful for ever in what position, in what condition of his affairs, he was when God gently called to him. Here, I say, is the cradle of religion, or rather loyal devotion (for this is the established relation between parents and children, between God and man). The unhappy man saw that he deserved nothing but wrath; therefore he despairs and flees from God. Now see the loyal devotion of the father to his undutiful son. He runs to him in spite of his obstinacy and overbears him amidst his rash designs. What is this but loyal devotion to the son? Loyal devotion, therefore, springs from God even to our day, but for our benefit; for what are we to suppose that God would have lacked even if Adam had immediately expired by the destined death? But pious devotion is complete only when we turn to the one who calls us away from ourselves and our designs. Unhappy, indeed, is the parent (the human parent, I mean) who pursues his son with constant kindness, only to find him constantly resisting or retreating; for his devotion to
his son is in vain. But such defeat cannot happen to God; for he whom He calls is forced to respond whether he will or not. This is shown by the prevaricating Adam, the adulterer and murderer David, the persecutor Paul. Pious devotion, therefore, or religion, is this: God reveals man to himself, that he may recognize his disobedience, treason, and wretchedness as fully as Adam did. The result is that man utterly despairs of himself, but at the same time God shows the ample store of His own bounty, so that he who had despaired of himself may see that he has with his Creator and Father an abundance of grace so sure and ready that he cannot possibly be torn away from Him on whose grace he leans. This clinging to God, therefore, with an unshaken trust in Him as the only good, as the only one who has the knowledge and the power to relieve our troubles and to turn away all evils or to turn them to His own glory and the benefit of His people, and with filial dependence upon Him as a father—this is piety, is religion. For as those who are thus minded enjoy God’s fatherly care, so they in their turn anxiously and unceasingly pore over, study, and eonsider the ways in which they can please Him and deserve well of Him. Piety, therefore, is recognized as surely present where there is an eagerness to live according to the will of God, just as, likewise, perfect devotion between parents and children requires that the son shall study to obey the father as much as the father to benefit the son. Again, true piety is born only when man not only thinks that he lacks many things, but sees that he has absolutely no means of pleasing God, whereas his Creator and Father so abounds in all things that no one in His hands can lack anything, and His bounty and love to man are so great that He can refuse no man anything.
And this can be so abundantly confirmed by the testimony of Scripture that all its teaching, in the Old Testament as well as in the New, and all the pious really sing no other song than that we have nothing, God lacks nothing, by Him nothing is denied. For with the Lord is mercy in exceeding abundance. “With him is the fountain of life” [Ps. 36:9]. “The earth is his and the fulness thereof” [Ps. 24:1]. “Salvation is his, and
[relegunt: The verb echoes the noun “religion” of the preceding]
[sentence, but the English has no means of reproducing the effect.]
that so ready that he manifests his blessing, i. e., his bounty and kindness, freely to his people” [Ps. 3:8].
From this it can easily be inferred what further demands true religion makes; and, conversely, it can be quite easily perceived what false religion is. True religion, or piety, is that which clings to the one and only God. Those, therefore, who are pious listen to their one Lord, who so tears them away from the flesh and unites them to Himself that they desire to hear His voice only, and with soul aflame with love ery, Song of Solomon 2: 14, “Sweet is thy voice in my ears”; and, “How sweet are thy words unto my taste, yea sweeter than honey to my mouth” [Ps. 119:103]. True piety demands, therefore, that one should hang upon the lips of the Lord and not hear or accept the word of any but the bridegroom. In order to set this faithfulness well before our eyes, the Lord often compares it in the Scriptures to a faithful marriage and, like a constant husband, warns us against adultery and fornication, emphasizing just this one point, that as in marriage faithfulness is required above all else (indeed marriage is nothing but faithfulness given and received), so piety is not piety unless you trust with all your heart the Lord who is the spouse of the soul, fix your eyes on Him only, and lend your ear to none but Him. Therefore He commands, Num. 15: 38-39, “that in the four corners of their garments they put ribbons of blue, that when they see them they may remember all the commandments of the Lord, and not follow their own thoughts and eyes, going awhoring after divers things.” And Paul makes holy boast, 11 Cor. 11: 2, that he had presented the Corinthians as a chaste and untouched virgin to Christ alone, so that they might hear Him alone, admire Him alone, love Him alone, follow Him alone. And in Ephesians 5: 32, he declares that marriage is a great mystery, for it betokens the union of Christ and the Church. By all this I simply wish to show that true piety demands the same faithfulness and purity towards God 88 are demanded in marriage (I use “same” in a comparative sense and not to denote equivalence). Yet in marriage she is not faithful who listens to another, follows another, obeys another. So also the soul is not truly pious that listens to another than God, follows another than its own spouse. It is
evident, then, that those only are truly pious who hang upon the utterances of God alone. How necessary this is to true piety the words of the Lord himself will make clear.
In Deut. 4:1-2, God says: “Now, O Israel, hear the commandments and judgments which I teach thee; that doing them thou mayest live, and entering in mayest possess the land whieh the Lord God of your fathers will give you. Ye shall not add to the word that I speak to you, neither shall ye take away from it. Keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you.” And in Deut. 12:32: “What I eommand thee, that only do thou to the Lord: neither add anything, nor diminish.” Faithfulness, or piety, therefore, demands, first, that we learn from God in what way we can please Him, in what manner serve Him. Next, it demands that we shall add nothing to what we have learned from Him, and take away nothing. For they that add accuse God of lack of wisdom and set themselves above God, as if they, clever creatures, indeed! could make good by their wisdom the things that He, they think, promulgated without due consideration. And they that take away make God out cruel, as if from violenee He gave commands that they know how to soften in accordance with their own gentleness and humanity. The latter passage quoted above is a weighty one, for upon it depends i everything that pertains to the truth or falseness of religion; but, whatever its exact weight, it has force enough and to spare for establishing true religion and confounding false. For “the word of the Lord endureth forever,” Isa. 40:8. “Whence it is easier for heaven and earth to perish or pass away than one tittle of the word of the Lord,” Luke 16:17. The whole vast universe and the endless host of created things can remove [cf. Mt. 5:18] from the words of God or change not a single tittle, i. e., absolutely nothing. Any one, it is true, can easily alter or remove a tittle; but nothing (which is what tittle signifies), nothing (which is what we understand the Lord’s words to mean) will perish so as not to come to pass. Those who are faithful, therefore, grasp at the word of the Lord, as a shipwrecked man grasps at a plank. For what is there other than God’s word alone with which the conscience can comfort itself? For man liveth “by every word that proceedeth out of the
mouth of God,” Deut. 8: 3; Matt. 4: 4. But what sort of man? The man of faith. For what has the unbeliever to do with the word of God? To him the heavenly wisdom is foolishness, and he laughs at you if you trust in God. The pious man, therefore, is the only one who is fed, refreshed, and comforted by the word of God. Conversely, it follows that the pious man cannot feed on any other word than the divine. For as he trusts in God alone, so he is made sure by His word alone; and as he is made sure by God’s word alone, so he accepts the word of none but God. Thus again not only from Scripture, but also from the nature of faith itself it becomes manifest that the word of no created being can be accepted in place of the word of God, because the conscience is not given peace and rest by the word of a created being. Nothing, therefore, of ours is to be added to the word of God, and nothing taken from His word by rashness of ours. To this some one might here object: “Yet many have found rest even in the word of man, and still do find it; for today the consciences of many are firmly per- suaded that they will attain salvation if the Roman Pontiff absolve them, grant them indulgences, enroll them in heaven; if nuns and monks tell beads for them, and do masses, hours, and other things for them.” To this objection I answer that all such are either fools or hypocrites, for it must be the result of folly and ignorance if one thinks one’s self what one is not. He, therefore, who measures his piety by the fact that he has faith in the contrivances of the Roman Pontiff has had no taste of what is God’s, nor has it passed the edge of his lips how sweet is the Lord and how blessed he that trusteth in Him [cf. Ps. 34:8]. But if he is not foolish or ignorant he cannot escape the charge of hypocrisy. For there are a good many who make much of the Roman Pontiff and of frigid ceremonies, because they see that in some respect they will be losers if anything is taken from his dominion; and so they, the sly dogs, take early precaution against what is still afar off. The statement is sound, that the pious heart finds rest in no word
[On April 12, 1525, the Council of Two Hundred abolished the Mass]
[in Zurich. The seven canonical hours, i. e., stated times for the offices of prayer]
[and devotion; viz. matins, prime, terce, sext, nones, vespers, and complin.]
but God’s, and can accept the word of none but God. And this is so unanimously agreed to by the suffrages of all the pious that it needs no testimony beyond this one short and clear sentence: “My soul refused to be comforted; I remembered Godand was delighted,” Psalm 77:3-4. The conscience of the prophet had nowhere found hope, nowhere rest; but after he recovered the memory of God, at once peace and joy came to him.
But I will hasten on to the testimony of the New Testament, by which I shall show that it is sacrilegious to add anything to the words of God or to take anything away. Thus again it wil be manifest that only that is uncontaminated piety which rests upon the words of God solely and alone.
In Matt. 15: 9 Christ quotes the testimony of Isaiah 29: 13, as He is in the habit of drawing His fulminations against the Jews from the Old Testament, though rarely naming the passage: “In vain do they worship me, teaching doctrines and commandments of men.” If, then, that worship, that piety or religion, is vain which proceeds from human invention or law, solid and true surely is that religion, on the other hand, which is guided by the word of God alone, and looks to and hears this only.
In John 8: 47 Christ says: “He that is of God heareth the words of God: for this cause ye hear them not, because ye are not of God.” It follows, then, that they that are born of God hear His word; and, conversely, they that hear not are not born of God. But those that are born of God and not of the will of man, John 1:13, are born in this way: not of their own notion and choice have they selected as their God Him who is really God, but by His power in whom they trust it has come to pass that they recognize that they are the sons of God. For He says: “They are born, not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” “Those, then, who are born of God hear His word only of whom they are born. This is the differenee between the sons of God and the sons of the flesh, that those who are sons of God know or mind the things that are of God; those who are sons of the flesh mind the things of the flesh, Rom. 8:5. Furthermore, whatsoever proceedeth not
[Sc. David.]
out of the mouth of God is not received by the sons of God, for the Spirit dwelling within them shows them all things and tells them whether what they hear is of the flesh or of the Spirit. Hence it comes about also that “he that is spiritual judgeth all things,” recognizes all things, “yet he himself is judged of no man,” I Cor. 2:15; for it is not flesh or blood that judges, but Spirit. I am speaking, indeed, of those only who are Christ’s and who have His Spirit, Rom. 8:9. Those, therefore, who have the Spirit of Christ have not their own, that is, the spirit of flesh and blood and man. But they that have the Spirit of Christ receive the word of none but God, for Christ, God Himself, cannot receive or endure any word but His own; for man cannot be God unto God, but God can be that to man; and unless God is that, man is nothing but a beast. Whoever, therefore, receives the word of man receives the word of the flesh and of a beast. It is dreadful, then, for him who is Christ’s to receive any word but God’s.
The same teaching is given in John 10: 4f, but clothed in the charming parable of the shepherd and the sheep: “The sheep follow their own shepherd; for they know his voice. And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him; for they know not the voice of strangers.” The sheep follow the voice of God, their true and eternal Shepherd and Bishop, I Peter 2:25. For they know His voice and what it is like; but a stranger they do not hear, nor follow, for they know not the voice of strangers. However, you will say: “But how do they flee from strangers, if they know not the voice of strangers? For if they do not know it, they will easily follow a stranger, taking him for the true shepherd.” I answer: “They do not know, they do not respect, they do not take to themselves the voice of strangers. For the Lord says somewhere [cf. Mt. 7: 23] that He does not know certain persons, and yet nothing can be hid from him. He uses “not know” for “disregard, turn away from, scorn.” So also in this passage it is said of loyal sheep that they know, that is, take to themselves, respect, follow, the voice of their shepherd only, and flee from, abhor, refuse to follow, any stranger’s voice.”
John 15: 4 teaches the same thing: “As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; so neither
can ye, except ye abide in me.” We shall never undertake, therefore, anything right and worthy of God, unless we are in the vine, that is, God; for unless we derive our sap and strength from Him, we shall become withered and be cast into the fire. But he abides not in God who draws from himself the sap from which to bring forth fruit. For the things that are of us are carnal, and the things that are carnal and of us are enmity against God, Rom. 8:7. In God alone, therefore, abideth the truly pious heart, hears His word alone, trusts in Him alone. Moreover, God alone is good [cf. Mk. 10: 18], as was made plain above in the study of Him. Therefore good is not to be looked for or even hoped for from any other source than God alone. But we are such strangers to all good that Christ bids us deny ourselves if we would enter into life [cf. Mt. 16:24]. And this was said not io one or two, but to all collectively and individually. Nothing right and good is, then, to be hoped for from any other source than God. He alone is to be listened to from whom alone proceeds all the good there is anywhere. The same thing can be made clear by an illustration. As soon as Adam, to come back to our beginnings, wanted of his own effort to know, it was suddenly all over with him. But if he had turned his attention to those things only which the Lord had enjoined, instead of following his own counsels, man would not be in the position of a son of wrath. From his example, therefore, we can see more clearly than day that the truly pious man ought to shrink away from his own counsels as from sure and immediate destruction. God alone, therefore, is to be listened to, to Him alone is glory to be attributed by all pious souls. For not even the wise man ought to glory in his own wisdom, Jeremiah 9:23. But if anything right and worthy of God were brought about by our wisdom, surely we might fairly glory. As it is, since God, who is not unfair, forbids glorying, certainly all human wisdom is to be considered of no account. On God alone, therefore, and on His word must we lean.
It is, therefore, as was said at the beginning of this inquiry, very easy to distinguish false religion from true. It is false ” religion or piety when trust is put in any other than God. They, then, who trust in any created thing whatsoever are not truly
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