III.
Twenty-seven Articles respecting the Reformation of the Christian Estate.
Now though I am too lowly to submit articles that could serve for the reformation of these fearful evils, I will yet sing out my fool’s song, and will show, as well as my wit will allow, what might and should be done by the temporal authorities or by a General Council.
1. Princes, nobles and cities should promptly forbid their subjects to pay the annates and should even abolish them altogether. For the Pope has broken the compact, and turned the annates into robbery for the harm and shame of the German nation; he gives them to his friends; he sells them for large sums of money and founds benefices on them. Therefore he has forfeited his right to them, and deserves punishment. In this way the temporal power should protect the innocent and prevent wrongdoing, as we are taught by St. Paul (Rom. xiii.) and by St. Peter (1 Pet. ii.) and even by the canon law. (16. q. 7. de Filiis.) That is why we say to the Pope and his followers: tu ora! “thou shalt pray;” to the Emperor and his followers: tu protege! “thou shalt protect;” to the commons: tu labora! “thou shalt work;” not that each man should not pray, protect and work; for if a man fulfils his duty, that is prayer, protection and work; but every man must have his proper task.
2. Since by means of those Romish tricks commendams, coadjutors, reservations, expectations, Pope’s months, incorporations, unions, Palls, rules of chancellery, and other such knaveries, the Pope takes unlawful possession of all German foundations, to give and sell them to strangers at Rome, that profit Germany in no way; so that the incumbents are robbed of their rights, and the bishops are made mere cyphers and anointed idols; and thus besides natural justice and reason the Pope’s own canon law is violated; and things have come to such a pass, that prebends and benefits are sold at Rome to vulgar, ignorant asses and knaves, out of sheer greed, while pious learned men have no profit by their merit and skill, whereby the unfortunate German people must needs lack good, learned Prelates and suffer ruin—on account of these evils the Christian nobility should rise up against the Pope as a common enemy and destroyer of Christianity, for the sake of the salvation of the poor souls that such tyranny must ruin. They should ordain, order and decree that henceforth no benefice shall be drawn away to Rome, and that no benefice shall be claimed there in any fashion whatsoever; and after having once got these benefices out of the hands of Romish tyranny, they must be kept from them, and their lawful incumbents must be reinstated in them to administer them as best they may, within the German nation. And if a courtling came from Rome, he should receive the strict command to withdraw, or to leap into the Rhine, or whatever river be nearest, and to administer a cold bath to the Interdict, seal and letters and all. Thus those at Rome would learn, that we Germans are not to remain drunken fools for ever, but that we, too, are become Christians, and that as such, we will no longer suffer this shameful mockery of Christ’s holy name, that serves as a cloak for such knavery and destruction of souls, and that we shall respect God and the glory of God more than the power of men.
3. It should be decreed by an Imperial law, that no episcopal cloak, and no confirmation of any appointment shall for the future be obtained from Rome. The order of the most holy and renowned Nicene Council must again be restored, namely, that a bishop must be confirmed by the two nearest bishops, or by the archbishop. If the Pope cancels the decrees of these and all other councils, what is the good of councils at all? Who has given him the right thus to despise councils and to cancel them? If this is allowed, we had better abolish all bishops, archbishops and primates, and make simple rectors of all of them, so that they would have the Pope alone over them; as is indeed the case now; he deprives bishops, archbishops and primates of all the authority of their office, taking everything to himself, and leaving them only the name and the empty title; more than this: by his exemption he has withdrawn convents, abbots and prelates from the ordinary authority of the Bishops, so that there remains no order in Christendom. The necessary result of this must be, and has been, laxity in punishing, and such a liberty to do evil in all the world, that I very much fear one might call the Pope “the man of sin.” Who but the Pope is to blame for this absence of all order, of all punishment, of all government, of all discipline in Christendom? By his own arbitrary power he ties the hands of all his prelates, and takes from them their rods, while all their subjects have their hands unloosed, and obtain license by gift or purchase.