The Leipzig University professor, in his indignation, refers Luther to
the warning he himself (in his sermons on the Ten Commandments) had
given against manners of talking and acting which tempt to impurity;
he continues: “And now you set aside every feeling of shame, you speak
and write of questionable subjects in such a disgraceful fashion that
decent men, whether married or unmarried, cover their faces and fling
away your writings with execration. In order to cast dishonour upon the
brides of Christ you [in your writings], so to speak, lead unchaste men
to their couches, using words which for very shame I cannot repeat.”
He also answers his opponent’s constant objection that without
marriage, on account of the impulse of nature, people must needs be
ever falling into sin. “You forget two things, viz. that grace is
stronger than nature and that, as Augustine rightly teaches, no one
sins without free consent. You exaggerate that impulse and speak of
‘sin’ merely to exonerate your own behaviour and your doctrine. In
other matters you declare that everything is possible to him who
believes. You, like all other Catholics, were formerly convinced
that involuntary movements of the flesh are not sinful unless a man
consents to them; they are to the good a cross rather than a fault, and
frequently only come from the devil and are not imputed to them at
all.”[370]
This protest from Leipzig was reinforced in 1523 from Ingolstadt by
Dr. Johann Eck, who kept a keen eye on Luther and pursued him with a
sharp pen. In the following description of Luther his bitter opponent
complains not only of the frivolous behaviour of the apostate monk
in his former monastery which the Elector had made over to him, but
above all of the untruth and dishonesty displayed in his writings.
“More than once have I proved,” he says, “that he is a liar and hence
that he has for his father, him [the devil] of whom the Scripture
says that he is a liar and a murderer.” “The fellow exudes lies from
every pore and is inconstancy itself (_homo totus mendaciis scatens
nil constat_). His teaching too is full of deception and calumny.
What he has just advanced, he presently rejects without the least
difficulty.” “The dregs of those vices of which he is always accusing
the Christians, we rightly pour back upon his own head; let him drink
himself of the cup he has mixed.” “He heaps up a mountain of evil on
the Pope and the Church,” but with “his nun,”--this is what he adds
in a later edition in his indignation with Luther’s marriage--“he is
really worshipping Asmodeus”; and this he is not ashamed to do in the
old monastery of the Augustinians, “where once pious monks served the
Lord God, and pious foundations, now alienated from their original
purpose, proclaimed the Christian virtues to the faithful.”[371]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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