has bolted the door with the bolt of His word, which no force, no skill, can break, so that however these Keys turn they cannot get into the consciences or the strong boxes of them that trust in God. Although, therefore, the subject of Confession is closely related to the discussion of the Keys, I will first speak of the Church and afterwards of its Sacraments.
[13]. The Church
Human presumption has distorted the name Church as well as the thing itself so as to make it apply to some few persons only, just as if you should say that the whole body, the entire assemblage, the entire people or congregation, meant some few. For the Church is a congregation, an assemblage, the whole people, the whole multitude gathered together. He, therefore, who says that the Church means some few is just as wrong as he who says that the people means, or is, the king; or who says that the general assembly, the assemblage or congregation, of the citizens is or means the Council. I have, therefore, often written of the Church, with the hope that men otherwise learned would be turned from the error of conceding that the Popes are the Church. But these men are partly unbelievers, partly arrogant persons. The unbelieving are so averse to the word that they study it in vain; for in their hearts they are wholly disinclined towards it. And the arrogant persons so utterly refuse to accept anything but their own teachings that you see clearly that they suffer from the disease of wishing to appear to have taught everything and to have taught it correctly. Hence the writings of some of them are so contaminated, as far as the truth is concerned, though the outward show is very fair, that you do not know but it would have been better never to have taken up the pen than to have wrapped the truth in such shameless allurements. Yet they are so pleased with themselves that, unless you walk in their footsteps and show yourself, in a way repugnant to the feelings of a Christian heart, either a shameless flatterer or a fawning coxcomb, even at the expense of the truth, they shrink from your works as a dog does from being washed. Things that are
[In his supplementary statement to the Second Zurich Disputation]
[and in his Der Hirt.]
true are to them brutally rough. They say the disease is too serious to be curable by strong remedies. Fine fellows! Did they ever see a serious disease cured by mild remedies? Slow diseases are cured by mild remedies. If the disease of the Popes were now for the first time beginning slowly to grow worse, the use of such remedies would be quite proper. But when all the members have been permeated with the disease, is it not time to administer the one and only effective remedy that can restore the original health? Slow remedies would perhaps make death slow, but vital ones will restore life and health. Not that I greatly approve those persons who make a great fuss about trifles, but who are such strangers to Christian love that they can neither endure nor do anything for God’s sake; persons who have the one most holy name of Christ upon their lips, but in bitterness, contentiousness, clamorousness, bickerings, whisperings, and meddlesomeness, outdo Envy, the Furies, and Cerberus himself. I have myself—and I say it solemnly, with God and my conscience as witnesses—winked at the hallucinations of many people, even when they were plainly at variance with the truth, but only under conditions where I hoped they would return to the right way. When they were too slow in coming to their senses, or refused to come to their senses at all, without giving their names I brought forward to the best of my humble ability what I saw in the Holy Scriptures. So obnoxious in my eyes are these contentions, hich eannot be noised abroad without offence to brothers, especially contentions in regard to things which are not vital to Christianity, that I see no more deadly poison can be given to a growing Christian than contentiousness. For are not love and contentiousness diametrically opposed? And what is the Christian life altogether but love? Therefore, when you sow the seeds of contentiousness, at the same time you banish love; for they are as unwilling to be guests in one and the same house as Christ is to associate with Belial [ef. II Cor. 6: 15]. But one who desires to speak of the Church has to make these introductory remarks, because some men persist in calling certain most shameless men the Church, though they are, in fact, straining every nerve to destroy the Church of Christ. Let them flatter and by their adulation squeeze out as much money
as possible, but let them not mix up Christ with these practices, since it is clearer than day (such a revealer of the heart is speech) that they seek not the honor of God, but mountains. of gold or the speedily vanishing smoke of vainglory. Let them, therefore, call things by their right names, and suffer Church to mean “assemblage,” and say that the Church of Christ is simply the people, the assemblage, the company of Christ, especially as they nowhere in all Holy Writ find the Chureh of Christ or of God taken to mean a few bishops, or rather mumblers. Many things are to be tolerated, as I myself not only assert, but daily put in practice; but they are to be tolerated in such fashion as to fall away by and by. Those who are jealous for Cxsar’s fame say in his praise that when he saw that he must fall in death he gathered his garments and limbs together so as to fall decently. Christ could have overwhelmed all His enemies with one word [ef. Jn. 18: 6], but to give an example of peace He tolerated the worst class of men with a tolerance of which you will nowhere find the equal recorded, and did it to abolish the Synagogue in the suitable way. So, too, these men will show themselves well-mannered when they teach that they must fall, and that therefore everything must be arranged so that they may fall with decent dignity and no crash. In this matter they should not imitate physicians, who bid you hope even when no hope is left, but, rather peacemakers, who vigorously reprove the errors of both sides in order that obduracy may be broken down with the least friction. I come back to the word “Church.” And since last year in the month of August I wrote upon this same subject in reply to that thoroughly impious and corrupt person, Jerome Emser, and since on all sides such a flood of tasks besets me that I can employ here only what little time I can steal from things not absolutely necessary, I have directed that what 1 there said about the Church be here incorporated verbatim; although we shall now hear some few things that we have just been hearing, but written for another purpose and not without result.
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