Sigismund is not a miserable caitiff because he broke his princely word, but he broke the word because he was a caitiff; he might have kept his word and would still have been a caitiff, a priest-ridden man. Luther, driven by a higher power, became unfaithful to his monastic vow: he became so for God's sake. Both broke their oath as possessed persons: Sigismund, because he wanted to appear as a _sincere_ professor of the divine _truth_, _i. e._ of the true, genuinely Catholic faith; Luther, in order to give testimony for the gospel _sincerely_ and with entire truth, with body and soul; both became perjured in order to be sincere toward the "higher truth." Only, the priests absolved the one, the other absolved himself. What else did both observe than what is contained in those apostolic words, "Thou hast not lied to men, but to God"? They lied to men, broke their oath before the world's eyes, in order not to lie to God, but to serve him. Thus they show us a way to deal with truth before men. For God's glory, and for God's sake, a--breach of oath, a lie, a prince's word broken! How would it be, now, if we changed the thing a little and wrote, A perjury and lie for--_my sake_? Would not that be pleading for every baseness? It seems so assuredly, only in this it is altogether like the "for God's sake." For was not every baseness committed for God's sake, were not all the scaffolds filled for his sake and all the _auto-da-fes_ held for his sake, was not all stupefaction introduced for his sake? and do they not to-day still for God's sake fetter the mind in tender children by religious education? Were not sacred vows broken for his sake, and do not missionaries and priests still go around every day to bring Jews, heathen, Protestants or Catholics, etc., to treason against the faith of their fathers,--for his sake? And that should be worse with the _for my sake_? What then does _on my account_ mean? There people immediately think of "filthy lucre." But he who acts from love of filthy lucre does it on his own account indeed, as there is nothing anyhow that one does not do for his own sake,--among other things, everything that is done for God's glory; yet he, for whom he seeks the lucre, is a slave of lucre, not raised above lucre; he is one who belongs to lucre, the money-bag, not to himself; he is not his own. Must not a man whom the passion of avarice rules follow the commands of this _master_? and, if a weak good-naturedness once beguiles him, does this not appear as simply an exceptional case of precisely the same sort as when pious believers are sometimes forsaken by their Lord's guidance and ensnared by the arts of the "devil"? So an avaricious man is not a self-owned man, but a servant; and he can do nothing for his own sake without at the same time doing it for his lord's sake,--precisely like the godly man.