Martin Luther's Large Catechism, translated by Bente and DauLuther, Martin
ReligionChristian
Martin Luther's Large Catechism, translated by Bente and Dau
Luther, Martin
Lutheran Church -- Catechisms -- English
Here, now, we consider the poor breadbasket, the necessaries of our
body and of the temporal life. It is a brief and simple word, but it
has a very wide scope. For when you mention and pray for daily bread,
you pray for everything that is necessary in order to have and enjoy
daily bread and, on the other hand, against everything which interferes
with it. Therefore you must open wide and extend your thoughts not only
to the oven or the flour-bin but to the distant field and the entire
land, which bears and brings to us daily bread and every sort of
sustenance. For if God did not cause it to grow, and bless and preserve
it in the field, we could never take bread from the oven or have any to
set upon the table.
To comprise it briefly, this petition includes everything that belongs
to our entire life in the world, because on that account alone do we
need daily bread. Now for our life it is not only necessary that our
body have food and covering and other necessaries, but also that we
spend our days in peace and quiet among the people with whom we live
and have intercourse in daily business and conversation and all sorts
of doings, in short, whatever pertains both to the domestic and to the
neighborly or civil relation and government. For where these two things
are hindered [intercepted and disturbed] that they do not prosper as
they ought, the necessaries of life also are impeded, so that
ultimately life cannot be maintained. And there is, indeed, the
greatest need to pray for temporal authority and government, as that by
which most of all God preserves to us our daily bread and all the
comforts of this life. For though we have received of God all good
things in abundance we are not able to retain any of them or use them
in security and happiness, if He did not give us a permanent and
peaceful government. For where there are dissension, strife, and war,
there the daily bread is already taken away, or at least checked.
Therefore it would be very proper to place in the coat-of-arms of
every pious prince a loaf of bread instead of a lion, or a wreath of
rue, or to stamp it upon the coin, to remind both them and their
subjects that by their office we have protection and peace, and that
without them we could not eat and retain our daily bread. Therefore
they are also worthy of all honor, that we give to them for their
office what we ought and can, as to those through whom we enjoy in
peace and quietness what we have, because otherwise we would not keep a
farthing; and that, in addition, we also pray for them that through
them God may bestow on us the more blessing and good.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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