320 LUTHER'S CORRESPONDENCE AND Let 2^
ness, unless you also know when and how to administer them. An ancient error cannot be thus impetuously rooted out, but must be treated patiently. The axioms which you sent about penitence,^ may please learned men, but they arc a plague to unlearned ears, for they almost extinguish a good part of piety among common people, who have neither the genius nor the judgment to receive at once the rare paradoxes of our most learned Luther. Indeed, they are often a puzzle even to men who are tolerably well educated. Nor are you ig- norant that even if the good man wrote in Latin for the sake of eliciting the truth, and not in the language of the Rhine and the Danube, yet the printers, mindful of their own gain, would immediately translate everything into the vernacular and publish thousands of copies, so that no one, no matter how illiterate, should be ignorant of the Lutheran tumult Such men are like spider-webs, who catch whatever is perni- cious in Luther's doctrine. For how many people are there, Vadian, who with true judgment can weigh antecedent and consequent, which, I think, is of special importance in this matter? I write this not with disaffection, for I greatly wish that all men were truly Lutheran, that is, learnedly pious and piously learned. . . .
256. LUTHER TO SPALATIN. Enders, ii. 401. (Wittenberg), May 13, I5aa
Greeting. I am very glad that I determined to answer Alveld in the name of my brother.* For the man is so far beyond my capacity that I should not be able to answer his folly worthily. I have never seen, heard of, nor read a book so silly and stupid in every syllable; in fact, I lack language with which to describe it. To-day I finished the notes to give my brother for him to put into shape. The work will soon be done. Likewise I hope my sermon on good works will soon be done.
We will pray for the elector ; only do not begin to trust in our prayers, but rather in the goodness of God who promises
^Probably the Sermo de Penitentia, Weimar, i. 3x7. Possibly however, both this and the reference to the Scheda disputationis are to the Nintty-fn* Thetts. >Lonicerus, supra, no. 254.
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