These things, most sturdy Ibex (for so you like to be called), you should have refuted, not skipped over. I plead the case by means of the Scriptures, not by means of shoutings. Hence you should have shown where I had misunderstood Scripture or had done it violence, instead of giving reasons why “Communing with” has the first letter written in red ink, and other trifles of that sort. I had previously discussed such matters with learned men,t and had decided they were only trifles. But now prove even one of the above propositions erroneous and you will have accomplished something. But I hope that when you see the firm and strong foundation of Christ’s church you will recede from your former error, become its friend, and join to it all your fortunes.
The Intercession of Saints]
When you write about the intercession of saints, you are so shallow, not to say foolish, that I am convinced you absolutely failed to understand what I wrote, which is indeed of small compass, because I had pursued the subject at greater length elsewhere, but of no small dignity, because it savors only of the pure sense of the word of God. “Therefore I will for your benefit reduce it to brief form, but in such a way that what is now given briefly shall throw some light upon the earlier writings, which it is impossible to cut down.
I. God alone is good, Luke 18: 19.
II. From this one and only source one must derive whatever good is needed. For every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, James 1: 17.
In the Canon of the Mass these words begin the prayer in commemoration of the dead.
tA reference to the two Zurich disputations of the year 1523.
iThis entire section was copied into the True and False Religion. See. 268. i In his Auslegen und Gründe der Schlussreden. (Egli- Finsler, II, 157-
[230 and in his Epichiresis (Egli-Finsler, II, 574-587).]
III. The faithful are distinguished from the unfaithful by this mark: the faithful depend upon this One and Only Good, cling to Him alone, resort to Him alone, draw from Him alone; on the contrary, the unfaithful turn from the Creator to creatures, depend upon them, and hope for aid from them. Deut. 32:39: “See that I am the only one, and that there is no god except me.” Now, to be God is nothing else than to be the Highest Good. ‘To be the Highest Good is nothing else than to be “dai” [ v1], i. e, the sufficiency of every good. That this Good, then, is Himself, God shows to us by the fact that He is the author of all good, aid, assistance; that only He is the Good, that there is no god, i. e., good, and no fountain of any aid except Him. As testimony to the latter fact you have Jer. 2:13: For my people have committed two evils: they have left me, the fountain of living water, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.”
IV. The only faithful ones, then, are those who are so filled with the knowledge that they are God’s that they do not even name any father except the Almighty Father, so far are they from having hope in another. For of what avail is it to call God Father, if you are not His son and if you do not hope in Him as Father; especially since the Master forbids us to call any man father on the earth? Matt 23:9. For it is he alone who renders us secure in the hope which we have in him, Ps. 4: 8: “For thou, Lord, alone madest me to dwell in hope.” “Blessed be the man whose hope is the name of the Lord,” Ps. 40:4. And, contrariwise: “Cursed is the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord,” Jer. 17: 5. Furthermore, he departs from the Lord who seeks elsewhere than with Him for the good which he needs; unless, indeed, it is not an instance of departing when a son deserts his real father and chooses another to whom he may flee and complain about his troubles, and from whom he may receive help. But the Heavenly Father is our Father because He made us, created us, chose us to be a peculiar people, Deut. 32: 6. For is not He your Father who took possession of you and made and created you? They, then, are sons of God who have Him for a Father; and those have Him for a Father who recognize Him alone as Father, depend upon
Him, hear Him only, hope all things from Him only.
v. 1. In the next place, that one may without hesitation flee to Him for safety He has Himself everywhere declared in the plainest terms. In Gen. 15: 1 He speaks thus to Abraham: “I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward.” The same sort of thing was said to all who with Abraham were faithful: e. g., Lev. 20: 8: “I am the Lord who sanctify you”; Num. 35:84: “I am the Lord who dwell among the children of Israel”; Ps. 35:3: “I am thy salvation”; Isa. 43: 25: “I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake”; Ezek. 18: 13-32: “Why will ye die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord God. Turn yourselves and live”; Isa. 44: 21-22: “Remember these things, O Jacob and Israel, for thou art my servant,” ete. “1 have blotted out as a thick cloud thy transgressions, and as a cloud thy sins. Return to me, for I have redeemed thee”; also 55:1: “All ye that thirst, come ye to the waters,” ete. Throughout there is nothing but God’s free invitation to Himself. And in Lev. 26:40-42 He promises favor even to those who had so greatly offended that they were led away into captivity, if only they cried to Him. These few citations from the Old Testament may suffice. For what is anywhere said but that the people should hasten to the true God, should not separate their hope from Him, nor imagine that they would find safety anywhere but with the Heavenly Father, who so often did great and good things for the fathers. For to everyone God is that which he thinks is sufficient to bestow upon him his heart’s desire.
v. 1. As for the New Testament, what is it but a solid and sure confirmation of God’s grace? For how can He refuse anything who spared not His own Son but gave Him up for us all? Or how will He not with Him freely give us all things [Rom. 8:32]? Will He who gave a Son refuse heirship and grace? And such a Son as is Himself our salvation? For Jesus is, that He may be the way, the truth, and the life [Jn. 14:6]. In the days of His flesh He associated with publicans and sinners for the purpose of showing the world that He had come to find the lost sheep [ef. Lk. 15: 4-6], and to call sinners to Himself, and to turn none away. For thus He exhibits
Himself to us as He cries: “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” [Mt. 11: 28]. He, the Son of God, is an earnest of our salvation [Eph. 1:14]; for through Him we have access to God [Eph. 2: 18]. For no one comes unto the Father but by Him [Jn. 14: 6].
v. 11. Hence there is no reason for lack of faith to make for itself this excuse: “Of course, I know that all my hope rests in God; but yet I have need of advocates to commend me to that most high God.” From its own words one can easily judge what it is that thus speaks, namely, lack of faith. Since you say, “I know that all my hope rests in God,” why do you not in all adversities flee to Him? Are you not a brother of His Son [Rom. 8:29]? Will the Father who gave His Son for you turn you away? Or the Son, who suffered for you and called you brother [Jn. 20:17]? Do you want to hear something plainer than, “No one cometh unto the Father but by me” [Jn. 14:6]? Get an intelligent view of the mass of all creatures and you will be forced to confess that not one of them comes to the Father but by the Son. Nor is there any reason for your giving me the everlasting reply, “I need intereessors with the Son.” “The fact is, you are not willing to see that He Himself came down for the purpose of making clear how completely the opposite of inaccessible He is. To strengthen through Him our hope in God, could anything clearer than this be said: Whatever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you,” Jn. 16:28. “In my name,” He says, not “in Abraham’s name,” ete. “For there is one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ,” ete., I Tim. 2:5. If you dignify any other whomsoever by that name, do you not cast contumely upon the Son of God? For who can be our mediator except Him alone who is Son of God and of man? Is not this trampling upon the Son of God? For if a way of approach to God is open by means of so many different advocates (which is the common pernicious belief), then Christ died in vain; He is not the only mediator, the only way; coming to the Father will be elsewise than by the Son; deceitfully He said: “Come unto me all ye that labor,” ete. How blasphemous this is, how impious, ungrateful, and pernicious, no one can adequately describe.
v. 111. Again, the things commonly adduced in opposition are either frivolous or have been twisted out of shape by the audacity of carnal wisdom. Frivolous are those which Emser querulously vociferates: “The East as well as the West testifies to this (namely, that the saints intercede for us); there is no nation under heaven that does not credit its safe condition in great measure to the prayers of the saints, next after God.” To this I reply: “How about the North and the South, the Troglodytes and the Galactophagists?” I plead by Holy Writ, but he yelps to us about East and West. A little later on he bunches together the tutelary gods (as they are called) of nearly all the German cathedral churches, and in the most wretched fashion fishes for favor for his booklet, saying: “Those churches will never be so ungrateful as to believe that the prayers and suffrages of the saints have no power with God, for from them they have received many great benefits.” Herein the first place, he fails to understand that of God are the benefits which he ascribes to the creature. This Peter and John teach clearly, Acts 3:12, by their indignation at the people’s ascribing to them the power that healed the lame man, and by their testimony that the power was Jesus Christ’s. And Christ also Himself plainly teaches this, saying [Mk. 16: 17]: “In my name shall they cast out demons.” He said not “in their name,” but “in my name,” ὁ. e., “by my power.” Secondly, Emser does not see that, if we listen to him when he argues on this wise: “Many have experienced the aid of St. Nicholas in storms at sea, therefore Nicholas should be invoked as a son of Jupiter and a tutelary god”—he does not see, I say, that the logical conclusion is this: Apollo and Aesculapius have restored many to health; Castor and Pollux have saved many more from shipwreck than has any Nicholas, if we believe their worshippers: therefore they are to be invoked as Jupiters and helping gods. After this manner Symmachus once plaintively cried out in defence of his gods—and far more forcibly and learnedly than this apologist of ours—urging the Romans not to desert the gods whose aid they had experienced
[Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, who in 384 presented to Valentinian II]
[a petition pleading for the restoration of the statue and altar of Victory.]
[See Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. 28.]
at home and abroad. To serve this purpose carnal wisdom has dared to torture all the passages of Scripture that contain the word “saint,” “intercession,” and the like. In my Conclusions and my Confutation of the Canon of the Mass 1 have restored a large number of them to freedom; therefore, dismissing these, I will now rescue from the hands of our friend Emser only two, upon which he seems most to rely. “I lifted up mine eyes to the hills,” he says, “from whence will come my help” [Ps. 121: 1]; and forthwith he cites the testimony of Cassiodorust and of Bede,f who hold the view that the hills are the saints, ete. But the poor fellow does not look to see what immediately follows. “My help cometh from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” What warrant is there in Holy Writ for the Cassi and Duri to make saints out of hills? A half-blind person can see that all the prophet is so firmly intent upon is to make himself acceptable to God, because he expects his help to come from no other source but Him who made heaven and earth. The other passage is: Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” ete. [Exod. 23:13], where at first he did not notice that “ὦ God, remember Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to whom thou swarest” and “Abraham, intercede for us” are by no means equivalent, since the former is said to God, that He may deign to bless the children of Israel for the sake of the fathers, whereas the latter would be said to Abraham, though it is found nowhere in Holy Writ. But, since contention always has a defence to present and cannot be silent, he roars out: “Since we see that the people of Israel cried to the Lord in the name of their fathers, surely we also may do the same.” To this I will reply briefly in the words of Peter, Acts 4: 12: “And in none other is there salvation” (he is speaking of Christ); “neither is there any other name under heaven given to men wherein we must be saved.” And so, Emser, do this: pray to the good and great God to give you a sound mind, wherewith you may learn that, as from the beginning of the world those have been cast out 1In his Expositio in psalterium.
iIn his De psalmorum libro exegesis.
$Cassi et Duri: a play on the name Cassiodorus: the Vains and the Rudes. The way was prepared for this by using above the plurals “Cas-siodoros et Bedas.”
among the faithless who sought for help elsewhere than with the one and only God, Rom. 1:25 (for God willed that we should not go limping between the two sides, as He testified through Elijah [I Kings 18:21]), so today also those are deservedly counted among the faithless who call for aid upon others than the one and only God. His name in Greek is from θέειν [to run], because He causes all things to move, and runs to aid all things. For He is a God at hand, not a God afar off [Jer. 23:23]; who, even before thou callest, says: “Lo! here am I.” When you have once learned this, you will become as great an influence among God’s simple folk—leading them to found all their thought and hope on God, whereby they may become worshippers of the true God—as you have been a publie crier, calling them from God to creatures, in which task you have been a real apostate, or more probably an unbeliever. When this has come to pass, I shall at length rejoice that the Lord has enrolled you in the ranks of the faithful. For as long as you cling to creatures, you have not yet laid hold upon that peerless Spouse which in the Song of Solomon [3:4] the soul rejoices to have laid hold on, saying: “I held him and would not let him go.” Imitate holy men and saints just as far as they are imitators of Christ, according to Paul’s word [cf. I Cor. 11: 1]. And meantime firmly believe that where two or three with one accord ask something upon earth from the Lord, they will obtain it [Mt. 18: 19]. And when you speak of the prayers of saints, or of their loving care, take care to think of the sainted dead, i. e., of those who are already citizens of heaven, just as you would of those who are still sojourners and exiles here. For anything more consult my Conclusions and my Confutation of the Canon; and permit me now to take in sail on this subject, that I may shortly come to an end.
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