This impious and desperate tyranny is fostered by the pope's disciples, who here drag in and pervert that saying of Christ, "He that heareth you heareth me." [Luke 10:16] With puffed cheeks they blow up this saying to a great size in support of their traditions. Though Christ spake it to the apostles when they went forth to preach the Gospel, and though it applies solely to the Gospel, they pass over the Gospel and apply it only to their fables. He says in John x: "My sheep hear my voice, but the voice of a stranger they hear not" [John 10:27]; and to this end He left us the Gospel, that His voice might be uttered by the pontiffs. But they utter their own voice, and themselves desire to be heard. Moreover, the Apostle says that he was not sent to baptise but to preach the Gospel [1 Cor. 1:17]. Therefore, no one is bound to the traditions of the pope, nor does he need to give ear to him unless he teaches the Gospel and Christ, and the pope should teach nothing but faith without any restrictions. But since Christ says, "He that heareth you heareth me," [Luke 10:16] and does not say to Peter only, "He that heareth thee"; why does not the pope also hear others? In fine, where there is true faith, there must also be the word of faith. Why then does not an unbelieving pope now and then hear a believing servant of his, who has the word of faith? It is blindness, sheer blindness, that holds the popes in its power. But others, more shameless still, arrogantly ascribe to the pope the power to make laws, on the basis of Matthew xvi, "Whatsoever thou shalt bind," [Matt. 16:19] etc., though Christ treats in this passage of binding and loosing sins, not of taking the whole Church captive and oppressing it with laws. So this tyranny treats everything with its own lying words and violently wrests and perverts the words of God. I admit indeed that Christians ought to bear this accursed tyranny just as they would bear any other violence of this world, according to Christ's word: "If one strike thee on thy right cheek, turn to him also the other." [Matt. 5:39] But this is my complaint,--that the godless pontiffs boastfully claim the right to do this, that they pretend to be seeking the Church's welfare with this Babylon of theirs, and that they foist this fiction upon all mankind. For if they did these things, and we suffered their violence, well knowing, both of us, that it was godlessness and tyranny, then we might number it among the things that tend to the mortifying of this life and the fulfilling of our baptism, and might with a good conscience glory in the inflicted injury. But now they seek to deprive us of this consciousness of our liberty, and would have us believe that what they do is well done, and must not be censured or complained of as wrongdoing. Being wolves, they masquerade as shepherds; being anti-christs, they would be honored as Christ.