meister, and tell him I got what he sent. Farewell to you and all of yours. Greet your deacons and tell them to ask me for the books they want Martin Luther.
791. LUTHER TO WILLIAM PRAVEST AT KIEL.
Enders, vi, 225. (Wittenberg), March 14, 1526.
Pravest, a former Austin friar of Bordesholm, since 1526 pastor at Kiel, wrote Luther February 21. He soon after returned to Cathol- icism, and published lampoons on Luther. Enders, vi, 2iof.
Grace and peace in the Lord. I know, dear brother in Christ* that several scandals are fathered on the evangelical teaching, and that all of them are imputed to me, but what can I do? All the sectaries think they are a hundred times wiser than I, and do not listen to me ; I am more at war with them than with the Pope, and they do more harm. I con- demn no ceremonies whatever save those which are repug- nant to the Gospel; all others I preserve entire in my own church. The service for baptism remains the same, except that it is celebrated in the vernacular. Nay, more, I allow such images in my church as were not broken by the fanatics before my return from the Wartburg. In like manner we celebrate mass with the wonted vestments and rites, except that we insert some German h3mins in the service and use the vernac- ular in the words of consecration; but I would by no means entirely abolish the Latin mass except under compulsion. In short, I hate none more than those who root out free and inno- cent forms and turn our liberty into bondage. If you read my books you must grant that I was never pleased with those disturbers of the peace who destroy without cause what might remain without oflfence. I am innocent of their fury and tumult. Here,- by God's grace, we have a peaceful, quiet church, a free, united temple, as it has always been except when disturbed by Carlstadt. Beware of Melchior Hoffmann,*
^Melchior Hoffmann, born at Swabian Hall in Wurttemberg in the last years of the 15th century, died about 1543, a mystic and Anabaptist. An uneducated but fervent lay-preacher, he began his career in Livonia. Driven from place to place, he came to Stockholm in 1526, and there published a commentary on Daniel XII with chiliastic ideas, setting the end of the world in 1533. In 1527 he went to Holstein. On April 8, 1529, at Plensburg, in the presence of the King of Den- mark and other dignitaries, Hoffmann and the Anabaptists maintained that all who
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