Selections from the Table Talk of Martin LutherLuther, Martin
ReligionChristian
Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther
Luther, Martin
Table-talk
A man could not speak more simply and childishly than Christ spake, and
yet he confounded therewith all the wisdom of the worldly-wise. To speak
in such a manner, said Luther, is not _in sublimi_, _sed humili genere_:
if I should teach a child, I would teach him in this sort: “He that loves
me, will keep my Word.” Here we see that Christ saith not, Abstain from
flesh, from marrying, from housekeeping, etc., as the Papists teach, for
that were even to invite the devil and all his fellows to a feast.
_That true and upright Christians are ready to suffer Death and all
manner of Torments for the Gospel’s sake_, _but Hypocrites do shun the
Cross_.
Not long since, said Luther, I invited to my table, at Wittemberg, an
Hungarian Divine, named Matthias de Vai, who told me that, as he came
first to be a Preacher in Hungary, he chanced to fall out with a
Papistical Priest. Now, he was complained of by that Priest to a Friar
that was brother to the Vaivoda, or Governor of Buda, and they were both
summoned to appear before him. The one much accusing the other, insomuch
that the Friar could not reconcile nor take up the controversy between
them, at last, and after long debate, the Friar said, “I know a way soon
to discover the truth of this cause,” and commanded that two barrels of
gunpowder should be set in the midst of the market-place at Buda, and
said unto the parties, “He that will maintain his Doctrine to be right,
and the true Word of God, let him sit upon one of these barrels, and I
will give fire unto it, and he that remaineth living and unburned, his
Doctrine is right.” Then Matthias de Vai leaped presently upon one of
the barrels and sat himself down thereon; but the Papist Priest would not
up to the other barrel, but slunk away. Then the Friar said, “Now I see
and know that the Faith and Doctrine of Matthias de Vai is the right, and
that our Papistical Religion is false.” And thereupon he punished and
fined the Papist, with his assistants, for wronging De Vai, in four
thousand Hungarian ducats, and compelled him for a certain time to
maintain one hundred soldiers at his own charge; but he licensed Matthias
de Vai openly to preach the Gospel. The Friar himself, recanting his
religion, was converted and became a Protestant; whereupon Luther said,
Never yet would any Papist burn for religion, but our people go with joy
to the fire, as heretofore hath been well seen on the holy Martyrs.
_By what God preserveth his Word_.
God will keep his Word, said Luther, through the writing-pen upon earth;
the Divines are the heads or quills of the pens, but the Lawyers are the
stumps. If, now, the world will not keep the heads and quills—that is,
if they will not hear the Divines—then they must keep the stumps—that is,
they must hear the Lawyers, who will teach them manners.
_That in Causes of Religion we must not judge according to human Wisdom_,
_but according to God’s Word_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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