[312] Wer weiss ob mich Gott dazu berufen und erwaehlt hat. Fundamental principle of the articles condemned by the papal bull. (L. Op. (L.) xvii, p. 338.) [313] "Ich sage nicht dass Ich ein Prophet sey." (L. Op. (L.) xvii. p. 338.) "It is said also," continues he, "that I advance novelties, and that it is impossible to believe that all other doctors have for so long a period been mistaken. [Sidenote: THE BIBLE PARAMOUNT.] "No, I do not preach novelties. But I say that all Christian doctrines have disappeared, even among those who ought to have preserved them; I mean bishops and the learned. I doubt not, however, that the truth has remained in some hearts, should it even have been in infants in the cradle.[314] Poor peasants, mere babes, now understand Jesus Christ better than the pope, the bishops, and the doctors. [314] "Und sollten's eitel Kinder in der Wiege seyn." (Ibid, p. 339.) "I am accused of rejecting the holy doctors of the Church. I reject them not: but since all those doctors try to prove their writings by Holy Scripture, it must be clearer and more certain than they are. Who thinks of proving an obscure discourse by one still more obscure? Thus, then, necessity constrains us to recur to the Bible, as all the doctors do, and to ask it to decide upon their writings; for the Bible is lord and master. "But it is said men in power persecute him. And is it not clear from Scripture that persecutors are usually in the wrong, and the persecuted in the right; that the majority are always in favour of falsehood, and the minority in favour of truth? The truth has, at all times, caused clamour."[315] [315] Wahrheit hat alle, seit rumört (Ibid., p. 140.) Luther afterwards reviews the propositions condemned in the bull as heretical, and demonstrates their truth, by proofs drawn from Holy Scripture. With what force, in particular, does he now maintain the doctrine of grace! "What," says he, "will nature be able, before and without grace, to hate sin, avoid it, and repent of it; while that, even since grace is come, this nature loves sin, seeks it, desires it, and ceases not to combat grace, and to be irritated against it; a fact for which all the saints continually do groan!... It is as if it were said that a large tree, which I am unable to bend by exerting my utmost strength, bends of itself on my letting it go; or that a torrent, which walls and dykes cannot arrest, is arrested the instant I leave it to itself.... No, it is not by considering sin and its consequences that we attain to repentance, but by contemplating Jesus Christ, his wounds, and boundless love.[316] The knowledge of sin must result from repentance, and not repentance from the knowledge of sin. Knowledge is the fruit, repentance is the tree. With us the fruit grows upon the tree, but it would seem that, in the states of the holy father, the tree grows upon the fruit."