174 LUTHER'S CORRESPONDENCE AND Let 57?
receive it kindly/ More than one of you has been taken away.' I refer especially to him for whose sake we have toler- ated for more than a year those things in your church and your worship which conflict with our Gospel. We have yielded enough to the infirmities of our friends, and I see that this tolerance is becoming an occasion for obstinacy and mock- ery of the Gospel, and thus the necessities of the time demand that I shall at last do my duty. Therefore I first privately ad- monish your Worships in Christ to conform to the standards of the Gospel, and I require that you make it your common task to abolish all the intolerable abominations that have been tolerated hitherto, for from this time forth your Worships neither can nor ought conceal what is openly done in your church in a Christian or an unchristian way, since the Gospd has been spread abroad in so many sermons and books that boys and girls, nay, even those, almost, who have no reason, now know it ; and because of the ministry with which I have been entrusted, my conscience will not suffer me to be silent any longer. Therefore let your Worships do of your own accord what you know well enough must be done, that it may not be necessary for me to attack you publicly. Your Worships have part in this place, in its air and all tilings else, therefore you must know that we can no longer be partakers in the abominations that it is your custom to commit against the Gospel, which bids us avoid the brethren who do not consent to the sound words of our Lord.* Therefore either this public scandal must be done away, or you must go without the name of Christians. The grace of our Lord be with you. Amen.
Martin Luther.
578. CASPAR CONTARINI TO THE SIGNORY OF VENICE. Brown, X520-X526, no. 653. Vallaooud, March 7, 1523.
By the post from Flanders the Emperor has received news of a monster born in Saxony. A cow calved a calf ^ with a
>WIth tkis wbole letter ef. no. 563.
- One other canon betides Schlamau had died in Febmmry.
• I Timothy ri, 3.
- Cf, supra, no. 570. A letter of Peter Martyr d'Anghiera, dated ValladoKd,
August 9$, 1523, speaks of this and of the people's comparing it to I«ather, Petri Martyris Opus Bpittol^rum, Amsterdam, 1670, p. 459.
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