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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