The popular writer who is responsible for the tale of the “orgies”
also declares, there are “other admissions of Luther’s” “which will
not bear repetition.” No such admissions exist. The phrase that this
or that will not bear repetition is, however, a favourite one among
controversialists of a certain school, though very misleading; many,
no doubt, will have been quite disappointed on looking up the passages
in question in Luther’s writings to find in them nothing nearly so
bad as they had been led to expect; this, indeed, was one of the
reasons which impelled us rigidly to exclude from the present work
any reservation and to give in full even the most revolting passages.
Of one of Luther’s Theses against the theologians of Louvain we
read, for instance, in a controversial pamphlet which is not usually
particular about the propriety of its quotations, that the author does
“not dare reproduce it”; yet, albeit coarsely worded, the passage in
question really contains nothing so very dreadful, and, as for its
coarseness, it is merely such as every reader of Luther’s works is
prepared to encounter. The passage thus incriminated, which reads
comically enough in its scholastic presentation (Thesis 31), runs as
follows: “_Deinde nihil ex scripturis, sed omnia ex doctrinis hominum
ructant [Lovanienses], vomunt et cacant in ecclesiam, non suam sed Dei
viventis_.”[934] The German translation in the original edition of
1545 slightly aggravates the wording of the Thesis.[935]
Two other assertions to Luther’s disadvantage have something in
common; one represents as the starting-point of the whole movement
which he inaugurated his desire to “wed a girl”; the other makes him
declare, three years before the end of his life and as the sum-total
of his experience, that the lot of the hog is the most enviable goal
of happiness.[936] A third statement goes back to his early youth and
seeks to find the explanation of his later faults in a temptation
succumbed to when he was little more than a boy. The facts, alleged to
belong to his early history, may be taken in connection with kindred
matters and examined more carefully than was possible when relating the
details of his early development. After that we shall deal with the
story of the “hog.”
_Did Luther, as a Young Monk, say that he would push on until he could
wed a Girl?_
Such is the story, taken from a Catholic sermon preached in 1580 by
Wolfgang Agricola and long exploited in popular anti-Lutheran writings
as a proof that Luther really made such a statement. A “document,”
an “ancient deed,” nay, even a confidential “letter to his friend
Spalatin,” containing the statement have also been hinted at; all
this, however, is non-existent; all that we have is the story in the
sermon.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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