Selections from the Table Talk of Martin LutherLuther, Martin
ReligionChristian
Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther
Luther, Martin
Table-talk
When the Pope and Emperor, said Luther, cited me to appear at Worms, Anno
Domini 1521, at the Imperial Assembly, they pressed and earnestly advised
me to refer the determining of my cause to his Imperial Majesty; but I
answered the three spiritual Electors, Maintz, Tryer, and Cologne, and
said, “I will rather surrender up to his Majesty his letters of
safe-conduct which he hath given me than to put this cause to the
determining of any human creature whatsoever.” Whereupon my master, the
Prince Elector of Saxony, said also unto them, “Truly no man could offer
more.” But as they still insisted and urged me touching that point, I
said, I did not dare to presume, without great danger of running myself
into God’s wrath, and of the loss of my soul’s health, to refer this
Cause, which is none of mine, but God’s Cause, to the censure of earthly
counsel; for the same, before all ages, hath been had in consultation,
hath been determined, censured, concluded, and confirmed by the great
Council in Heaven, to be and remain the infallible, most certain and true
Word of the High Majesty of God; and therefore altogether needless, yea,
most presumptuous now it were, either to receive or to deliver it to the
determination and censure of human and natural sense, wit, and wisdom,
which is subject to nothing more than to error, especially in and
concerning God’s Word and divine matters. And I told them flat and
plain, I would rather expose myself to endure all the torments that this
world, flesh, and the devil were able to devise and prepare than to give
my consent thereunto.
_That in former Times it was dangerous studying the Holy Scriptures_.
In times past, as also in part of our time, said Luther, it was dangerous
studying, when divinity and all good arts were contemned; and when fine,
expert, and prompt wits were plagued with sophistry. Aristotle, the
Heathen, was held in such repute and honour, that whoso undervalued or
contradicted him was held, at Cologne, for the greatest heretic; whereas
they themselves understood not Aristotle. The Sophists did much more
darken Aristotle than illustrate him; like as that Friar did, who wasted
two whole hours in a sermon about Christ’s Passion, and concerning this
question: _Utrùm quantitas realiter distincta sit à substantia_—whether
the quantity in itself were divided from the substance? He showed this
example, and said, “My head might well creep through, but the bigness of
my head could not;” insomuch that, like an idiot, he divided the head
from the bigness thereof. A silly grammarian might easily have solved
the same, and said, The bigness of the head, that is, the big or great
head.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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