The papal chancery was the office which prepared and issued bulls and briefs. It adhered to certain formulas, definitions, and rules.

of Ambrose and Gregory. You call the Roman Pontiffs a Lesbian rule, although you do this with as much truth as thoughtlessness. You assert that I dignify the forms of bread and wine with the name of the flesh and blood of Christ. You cunningly present in a false light this easy, but to you insoluble, problem, which I resolve thus: since Christ evidently instituted this sacrament only once and with only one rite, it necessarily follows that, since you contend it is a sacrifice, all who ever use it make sacrifice. You bring forward as instances of asyndeton things which have no such form at all as has “These holy, unblemished sacrifices.”t You assert that I reject Ambrose’s book “On the Sacraments,” though I speak of it only in the following manner: “Not to call in question whether this book is or is not Ambrose’s,” ete. You represent me as boasting that I was the first to confute the Canon, when I was speaking only about order of procedure, as follows: “first,“l i. e., before anything else, “1 am going to bring the Canon out of the darkness of a cave into the light.” You affirm that only to the Apostles was it said, “Drink ye all of this.” You call those heretics who cling to the words of Christ alone. You somebut a little later, when defending the Canon, you say: “The where assert that the true body of Christ is torn with the teeth, Canon calls it spiritual food; and if it is spiritual food, as it certainly is, how is it torn with the teeth?” Why, I say, should

[$Emser had told how, in the pontificate of Hadrian I, a liturgical]

[controversy over these two missals had been decided by an appeal to]

[“divine judgment.” A sealed copy of each missal was placed on the altar]

[of St. Peter’s and left there over night. The next morning the leaves of]

[the missal of St. Gregory were found scattered over the church, while the]

[missal of St. Ambrose was till intact. This was taken as a sign that the]

[former was to be used throughout the whole world, the latter only in the]

[Church of St. Ambrose in Milan. The “Lesbian rule” was a leaden scale which conformed to the shape]

[of the object measured (cf. Aristotle Ethics V, x, 7). Here it means per-]

[sons who practice the “accommodation” of law or teaching to the condition]

[or circumstances of those with whom they are dealing. The Latin of the Canon is: HAEC SANCTA SACRIFICIA ILLI-]

[BATA. From the absence of a connective between the two adjectives]

[Zwingli had argued against the early composition of the Canon, since “no]

[one before the time of Gregory would ever have so spoken.” iZwingli had written simply “ante omnia.”]

I upbraid you for these things when your whole book so abounds in them that if you should take them away it would appear as naked and plumeless as fable says the jackdaw was after every bird had taken back his own feather. And now consider how it becomes you to assail with so many insulting terms a man quite unknown to you, yet to whom you are very well known. If I were to reply to you in like manner, I certainly should expect nothing but that the pious would stop their ears, and that we both, like mad dogs, would be driven off the stage with stones and hoots and hisses. Or do you hope by this means to draw me over to your side? If I were so stupid as to suppose that you were saying something worthwhile, yet the extraordinary maledictions and furious shouting with which you burst forth even upon no occasion would, by the fear they inspire, deter me from acceding to your way of thinking.

Since, then, you would have it appear that you wrote your booklet to heal my wound, and yet you inflict a thousand others, you make manifest that your determination to write was due either to petulance of tongue instead of a desire to heal, or to hope of filching some reward from pontiffs instead of a purpose to defend the truth (to which you are so blind that, according to the word of God [Deut. 28: 29], you grope at noonday). And when you affirm that for a piece of bread I can be hired to heap insults upon any one at all, though no rewards or honors bestowed either by pontiffs or by the greatest princes have ever been able to lure me from the path of truth, you are doing nothing but seizing upon that charge ahead of me, in order that it may not be uttered against you. For who will be so dull of comprehension that, when he reads your production, he will not at the very beginning see instantly that you are aiming at securing those mitred pontiffs as spec-

[Phaedrus Fabulae Aesopiae, I, 3. Cf. Horace, Epp., i, 3, 19. iFrom 1512 or 1513 until 1520 Zwingli had received an annual pension]

[from the Pope, though in 1517 he came out as a severe critic of the papacy.]

[In a letter (dated August 20, 1521) to the Senate of Zurich, Francis Zink,]

[papal chaplain at Einsiedeln, testified that Zwingli had “never been moved]

[a finger’s breadth from the Gospel by the favour of the Pope, emperor, or]

[noble.” See S. M. Jackson, Huldreich Zwingli, pp. 114-116. TEmser’s Defensio began with a dedication to high ecclesiasties.]

364 The Works of Huldreich Zwingli tators of the fight? And when you leap forward to the battle, you shout more loudly than Stentor, that the eyes of all may be fixed upon you alone; but, because the gout restrains you, you move forward not even a hand’s breadth; and when an onset should be made, then you quit, though you never quit shouting. And this is your manner of fighting!

Finally, just as if you had laid at their feet the spolia opima taken from me, you make them hopeful of recovering dominion, and you do it so boastfully and vaingloriously that nothing seems to fit your case better than the unctuous remark, “So Pyrrhus, too, was wont to do.” From this it is clear that you strive for the favor of those men in order that you may obtain something from them—a feature assuredly absent from my booklet, as I shall prove to your own satisfaction. As, then, certain friends advise against my undertaking any reply to such great vanity, while others urge me to it, I have decided to do something for both (for who can satisfy all?) in the following manner. Whatever has little pertinence I will pass over with deaf ear; for why should I dispute with you again as to just where or when the Canon arose? For I see that you do not know that in some passages writers use “canon” for the order and rule of any rite whatsoever; but when you read them you thought they were speaking of the Canon of your party. Or why should I apologize for saying certain things too humorously and facetiously, as you think? Everyone knows that he who is refuting an argument employs both jest and earnest in such manner that they avail in effecting conquest. And though you labor greatly over these more trifling matters (for what could you do, seeing that where there was need you could do.nothing?), I shall be influenced not at all by them, but shall treat those points which you have passed by, that it may be manifest to all who have the slightest acquaintance with Holy Writ that you skipped them on purpose, either because you could not comprehend them or because you despaired of rebutting them. Such are: The Church, Intercession of the Saints, Merit, Whether the Eucharist is an oblation, Whether or not there is a purgatory. If in these matters I made any

[In Terence Eunuchus, 783, Captain Thraso thus justifies posting]

[himself in the rear of his forces.]

error, you should have reported and proved it, not by your outeries, but from the celestial fountains of the word. However, I shall treat these subjects rather briefly, in aphoristic style as it were, so that you may the more clearly see through everything. When you see them, do not at once ery out: “O Heaven, O Earth, O Horrors!” (thereby you will show us nothing but an old woman’s helplessness); but wherever you find me in error, have recourse to the armory of Holy Writ, and with the sword brought thence expunge whatever mars the most fair order of divine truth, and in its place put that of which there is need. Once you have done that, you will have gained a brother [Mt. 18:15], and I shall be everlastingly indebted to you; otherwise it is no use for you to write a thousand books, for no matter what amount of human teaching you adduce, you will only be spitting into the sky; for it will all fall back upon you. For “in vain do they worship me” (says He who is above the heavens and beyond the range of these weapons) “teaching the doctrines and precepts of men” [Mt. 15:9]. I shall not be influenced at all by such things, just as not even now should I have uttered a syllable in reply, had not some, as has been said, thought it worth while not to pass by in silence so unprofitable a booklet.

Therefore surrender your mind as a captive to the obedience of God, not of men or of the Fathers or of the flesh. For the mere antiquity of any saying of the Fathers that you present will find for it some credit among the ignorant. Furthermore, the same reasoning applies to an opinion of theirs as to one of our own times. For what matters it whether today or fifteen hundred years ago you spoke earnestly, but without the authority of the word of God? So approach the Sacred Word that you may there find what you ought to think, not with the purpose of compelling the Sacred Word, even in spite of its protest, to agree with that which you first think in your own heart. If you attain to this, all that pride in disputing will perish, and you will see what ill-furnished minds both the pontiffs and their champions have.

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