Yet I know not how it is that all who have written against him have composed nothing worth reading. If he has gone mad in writing, they are madder in their answers. And among those who wish Luther dead I see no good man. The letters of Adrian of Utrecht are full of bitterness; he favors disciples worthy of himself, vain, deceitful, ambitious and revengeful. ... I have seen Hutten's letter* complain- ing that the Pope has written to have him cast into chains; he was not to be found when I was at Cologne, it was said that with forty companions he lay in ambush for the Ro- manists on whom he has declared war. . . .
347. LUTHER TO FABIAN VON FEILITZSCH.
Enders, iii. i. Wittenberg, December i, 1520.
This is Lather's dedication to his Assertio Omnium Articulorum, Weimar, vii. 94. Feilitzsch died only a few days later, while the work was in print.
You, Fabian Feilitzsch, or rather Foelix, prove what I have often said, that laymen have a spirit of judgment and zeal, for when my Philip and I were with you at Eilenburg* you gave a splendid example of how purely, learnedly, piously and felicitously you could judge and talk of Christian affairs. Nor do I doubt that in this court you have many rivals, so that I simply rejoice to see the admirable plan and judgment of God, who with the froward shows himself froward and with the elect is elect.* For we who are the clergy, that is the chosen ones of the Lord,* who ought to be the masters of the laity, turned our backs on Christ and his gospel, in so much that he in like manner turns his back on us. And as we provoke him with that which is not God, and with the word which is not the gospel, so again he provokes us with those who are not clergy and with those who are not learned, by giving them pure knowledge of himself, and leaving us our foolish and impious doctrines. Thou art just, O Lord, and thy judgment is right."
^Supra, no. 296. This was published.
- 7. e., in November, supra, no. 335.
'Psalm xviii. 26f.
- "Nos enim, qui de clero Domini sumus."
^Revelation, xvi. 7; xix. 2.
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