To the respected and worthy NICOLAUS VON AMSDORF, Licentiate in the Holy Scriptures and Canon of Wittenberg,
My particular and affectionate friend.
Dr. MARTIN LUTHER.
The Grace and Peace of God be with you! Respected, worthy Sir and dear friend.
The time for silence is gone and the time to speak has come, as we read in Ecclesiastes (iii. 7.) I have in conformity with our resolve put together some few points concerning the Reformation of the Christian Estate, with the intent of placing the same before the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, in case it may please God to help His Church by means of the laity, inasmuch as the clergy, whom this task rather befitted, have become quite careless. I send all this to your worship, to judge and to amend where needed. I am well aware that I shall not escape the reproach of taking far too much upon me, in presuming, insignificant as I am, to address such high estates on such weighty and great subjects; as if there were no one in the world but Dr. Luther, to have a care for Christianity, and to give advice to such wise people.
Let who will blame me, I shall not offer any excuse. Perhaps I still owe God and the world another folly. This debt I have now resolved honestly to discharge, as well as may be, and to be court fool for once in my life: if I fail, I shall at any rate gain this advantage, that no one need buy me a fool’s cap or shave my poll. But it remains to be seen which shall hang the bells on the other. I must fulfil the proverb: When anything is to be done in the world, a monk must be in it, were it only as a painted figure. I suppose, it has often happened that a fool has spoken wisely, and wise men have often done foolishly, as St. Paul says: “If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise.” (1 Cor. iii. 18.)
Now, inasmuch as I am not only a fool, but also a sworn doctor of the Holy Scriptures, I am glad that I have an opportunity of fulfilling my oath, just in this fool’s way. I beg you to excuse me to the moderately wise: for I know not how to deserve the favour and grace of the supremely wise, which I have so often sought with much labour, but now for the future shall neither have nor regard.
God help us to seek not our glory, but His alone. Amen.
From Wittenberg, in the monastery of St. Augustine, on the eve of St. John the Baptist, in the year 1520.
Jesus.
Dr. MARTINUS LUTHER.
The grace and might of God be with you, Most Serene Majesty! most gracious, well beloved gentlemen!
It is not out of mere arrogance and perversity that I, a single poor man, have taken upon me to address your lordships. The distress and misery that oppress all the Christian estates, more especially in Germany, have led not only myself, but every one else, to cry aloud and to ask for help, and have now forced me too, to cry out and to ask, if God would give His Spirit to any one, to reach a hand to His wretched people. Councils have often put forward some remedy, but through the cunning of certain men it has been adroitly frustrated, and the evils have become worse; whose malice and wickedness I will now, by the help of God, expose, so that, being known, they may henceforth cease to be so obstructive and injurious. God has given us a young and noble sovereign, and by this has roused hope in many hearts: now it is right that we too should do what we can, and make good use of time and grace.
The first thing that we must do is to consider the matter with great earnestness, and, whatever we attempt, not to trust in our own strength and wisdom alone, even if the power of all the world were ours; for God will not endure that a good work should be begun, trusting to our own strength and wisdom. He destroys it; it is all useless: as we read in the xxxiii. Psalm. “There is no king saved by the multitude of an host: a mighty man is not delivered by much strength.” And I fear it is for that reason, that those beloved Princes, the Emperors Frederick, the First and the Second, and many other German Emperors were, in former times, so piteously spurned and oppressed by the Popes, though they were feared by all the world. Perchance they trusted rather in their own strength than in God; therefore they could not but fall: and how would the sanguinary tyrant Julius II. have risen so high in our own days, but, that, I fear, France, the Germans and Venice trusted to themselves? The children of Benjamin slew forty-two thousand Israelites, for this reason, that these trusted to their own strength. (Judges xx. etc.)
That it may not happen thus to us and to our noble Emperor Charles, we must remember that in this matter we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers of the darkness of this world (Eph. vi. 12), who may fill the world with war and bloodshed, but cannot themselves be overcome thereby. We must renounce all confidence in our natural strength, and take the matter in hand with humble trust in God; we must seek God’s help with earnest prayer, and have nothing before our eyes but the misery and wretchedness of Christendom, irrespective of what punishment the wicked may deserve. If we do not act thus, we may begin the game with great pomp; but when we are well in it, the spirits of evil will make such confusion, that the whole world will be immersed in blood, and yet nothing be done. Therefore let us act in the fear of God, and prudently. The greater the might of the foe, the greater is the misfortune, if we do not act in the fear of God, and with humility. As Popes and Romanists have hitherto, with the Devil’s help, thrown Kings into confusion, so will they still do, if we attempt things with our own strength and skill, without God’s help.
The Romanists have, with great adroitness, drawn three walls round themselves, with which they have hitherto protected themselves, so that no one could reform them, whereby all Christendom has fallen terribly.
Firstly, if pressed by the temporal power, they have affirmed and maintained that the temporal power has no jurisdiction over them, but on the contrary that the spiritual power is above the temporal.