Dogmatic-Polemical Writings.
A. Against the Papists.
In his writing “Against the Papacy at Rome, instituted by the Devil,” he, after having just spoken in holy wrath against the enemies of God, breaks out into the words:
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“Ah, my dear brother in Christ, hold it too well for me, where I speak so rudely here or elsewhere of the tiresome, cursed, enormous monstrosity of Rome. He who knows my thoughts must say that I do him far, far, far too little, and cannot with any words nor thoughts attain to the shameful, desperate blasphemy that he commits with the Word and name of Christ, our dear Lord and Savior, laughs afterwards into his fist, as if he had finely mocked the fool of Christ and his Christians, who believe such of his glosses, and yet he pretends great pomp, as if he were Christ's Vicarius (Vicar) and wanted to make all the world blessed with his holiness.” (Erl. ed. 26, 179.)
Incidentally, Luther's opponents themselves gave rise to some expressions. If, for example, the notorious [Jerome] Emser not only had his family coat of arms, a jumping and thrusting goat, placed in front of his writings, but also the words: “Beware, the goat thrusts you,” what could be more obvious than that Luther, in his writings against Emser, referred to him as the “goat of Leipzig”? Hence Luther wrote:
“My greeting to the goat of Leipzig. If I had called you a goat, my Emser, you would certainly have written a book or two about it, and showered me with all kinds of lies, blasphemies and words of shame, as is your way. Now you yourself, with coarse letters, so that everyone knows, call yourself a goat, and threaten no more than to push, and say: ‘Beware, the goat pushes you’; then I may well, I hope, also receive you with your favor and grace as a goat; although it would have been unnecessary for you to write it on paper; it is nevertheless well seen in your whole being that you are a goat; in addition, that you could not do more than push, your little books and speech are superfluous.” (p. 1250.)
About the work that the editors have done in publishing this volume, it says in the Foreword:
“This work has cost the one who has taken care of it, Prof. Hoppe, a lot of time and effort. Most of the writings mentioned were originally written in Latin, and the old translations were in great need of correction. The latter have therefore also been exactly revised according to the original and almost all of them have been replaced by new translations. The latter also applies to Luther's well-known writing De servo arbitrio, ‘That Free Will is Nothing.’.... Since Justus Jonas” (in his translation) “has not only occasionally missed the sense of the Latin expression, but has delivered more a free paraphrase than a translation, and has throughout added his own ingredient to Luther's words, it finally seemed more advantageous to give this so important writing of Luther into the hands of the readers in a literal translation. And that is what has been done here. The historical introduction, which gives an account of the origin of the writings printed in this volume and thus at the same time contains an important piece of Reformation history, is likewise a completely new work, in which, in addition to the old material, the more recent research has also been utilized.”
So this volume is strongly recommended to all our readers. It costs $4.50. G. [Martin Guenther]
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