Concerning Christian Liberty E-Book

Martin Luther

• Herausgeber: libreka classics
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 96

Beschreibung

Concerning Christian Liberty by Martin Luther libreka classics – These are classics of literary history, reissued and made available to a wide audience. Immerse yourself in well-known and popular titles!

Leseprobe

Titel: Concerning Christian Liberty

von William Shakespeare, H. G. Wells, Henry Van Dyke, Thomas Carlyle, Oscar Wilde, Joseph Conrad, Henry James, Anthony Hope, Henry Fielding, Giraldus Cambrensis, Daniel Defoe, Grammaticus Saxo, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Hugh Lofting, Agatha Christie, Sinclair Lewis, Eugène Brieux, Upton Sinclair, Booth Tarkington, Sax Rohmer, Jack London, Anna Katharine Green, Sara Jeannette Duncan, Xenophon, Alexandre Dumas père, John William Draper, Alice Christiana Thompson Meynell, Bram Stoker, Honoré de Balzac, William Congreve, Louis de Rougemont, Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, Rolf Boldrewood, François Rabelais, Lysander Spooner, B. M. Bower, Henry Rider Haggard, William Hickling Prescott, Lafcadio Hearn, Robert Herrick, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, Mary Roberts Rinehart, Charles Babbage, Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin, Frank L. Packard, George Meredith, John Merle Coulter, Irvin S. Cobb, Edwin Mims, John Tyndall, Various, Charles Darwin, Sidney Lanier, Henry Lawson, Niccolò Machiavelli, George W. Crile, Théophile Gautier, Noah Brooks, James Thomson, Zane Grey, J. M. Synge, Virginia Woolf, Conrad Aiken, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Helen Cody Wetmore, Ayn Rand, Sir Thomas Malory, Gustave Flaubert, Edmond Rostand, Charlotte Brontë, Edith Wharton, Giles Lytton Strachey, Myrtle Reed, Ernest Bramah, Jules Verne, H. L. Mencken, H. Stanley Redgrove, Victor Lefebure, Edna Lyall, John Masefield, Charles Kingsley, Robert Burns, Edgar Lee Masters, Victor [pseud.] Appleton, Ellis Parker Butler, Mary Lamb, Charles Lamb, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Kenneth Grahame, Charles Dickens, John Ruskin, John Galt, James J. Davis, Owen Wister, William Blades, Sir Hall Caine, Sir Max Beerbohm, Baron Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett Dunsany, Bret Harte, E. Phillips Oppenheim, Thomas Henry Huxley, A. B. Paterson, John N. Reynolds, Walter Dill Scott, Hans Gustav Adolf Gross, T. S. Eliot, Walt Whitman, Arthur Ransome, Jane Addams, Elizabeth, David Lindsay, Helen Bannerman, Charles A. Oliver, J. M. Barrie, Robert F. Murray, Andrew Lang, Jerome K. Jerome, Francis Thompson, Sydney Waterlow, Andrew Dickson White, Benjamin N. Cardozo, Karl Marx, Edouard Louis Emmanuel Julien Le Roy, Margaret Hill McCarter, Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace, Howard Trueman, L. M. Montgomery, Frank T. Bullen, Baron Alfred Tennyson Tennyson, Jonathan Nield, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Charles Reade, Ouida, Washington Irving, Benjamin Louis Eulalie de Bonneville, Sir Walter Scott, Stewart Edward White, Arthur Hugh Clough, Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton, C.-F. Volney, T. Troward, graf Leo Tolstoy, Christopher Morley, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Gilbert White, Percival Lowell, Frederick Marryat, Robert Graves, Thomas Holmes, Wilkie Collins, Maria Edgeworth, Katherine Mansfield, E. Nesbit, Olive Schreiner, Jeronimo Lobo, O. Henry, James Slough Zerbe, Donald Ogden Stewart, Johanna Spyri, Eleanor H. Porter, William Tatem Tilden, Sol Plaatje, Rafael Sabatini, William Makepeace Thackeray, George Gissing, Maksim Gorky, Baron Thomas Babington Macaulay Macaulay, H. G. Keene, Saki, R. B. Cunninghame Graham, Thomas Hughes, David Nunes Carvalho, Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, Carry Amelia Nation, John Fiske, Bernard Shaw, Elbridge Streeter Brooks, William Holmes McGuffey, Edward Everett Hale, Louis Ginzberg, Chester K. Steele, Christopher Marlowe, Plato, John Lord, Shakespeare, Martin Luther, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Howard Pyle, Charles Morris, Edward Carpenter, Maurice Leblanc, James Boswell, William Osler, William Ernest Henley, Theron Q. Dumont, Horatio Alger, Abraham Myerson, Joel Benton, Eden Phillpotts, Anonymous, Robert Louis Stevenson, Lloyd Osbourne, Cleland Boyd McAfee, Robert Williams Wood, H. C. Andersen, Edna Ferber, James Stephens, John Jacob Astor, Alexandre Dumas fils, Hilda Conkling, J. Storer Clouston, Julian Hawthorne, Ernest Albert Savage, Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman, Fernando de Rojas, Richard Harding Davis, Charles Whibley, Thomas Dixon, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, George MacDonald, Thomas H. Burgoyne, Belle M. Wagner, Émile Gaboriau, à Kempis Thomas, United States. Central Intelligence Agency, Herbert Darling Foster, John Chipman Farrar, Lucius Apuleius, Olive Gilbert, Sojourner Truth, Arthur Judson Brown, Burbank L. Todd, Gaston Leroux, Margaret Sanger, Jr. Martin Luther King, Mary Johnston, S. A. Reilly, G. K. Chesterton, Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, George Iles, E. W. Hornung, Edward Huntington Williams, Henry Smith Williams, Nathaniel W. Stephenson, Ellen Marriage, Homer, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, J. F. C. Hecker, John Milton, Natalie Sumner Lincoln, Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, William MacLeod Raine, Earl Derr Biggers, Helen Nicolay, Ruth Ogden, Thornton W. Burgess, Mary Murdoch Mason, Auguste Groner, John Lawson, Emma Wolf, Theodore Dreiser, Roger Ascham, John Charles McNeill, Owen Meredith, L. Adams Beck, Rudyard Kipling, Alphonse Daudet, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, Anthony Trollope, A. A. Milne, Elia Wilkinson Peattie, J. Fitzgerald Molloy, James Fenimore Cooper, Alexander Whyte, Jean-Henri Fabre, E. R. Punshon, Neltje Blanchan, Porter Lander MacClintock, William Darnall MacClintock, Ida Pfeiffer, Stanley John Weyman, Max Brand, Herman Melville, William Joseph Long, William Cotton, Dorothy Kilner, Sarah Fielding, Samuel Butler, A. C. Seward

ISBN 978-3-7429-1850-5

Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Es ist ohne vorherige schriftliche Erlaubnis nicht gestattet, dieses Werk im Ganzen oder in Teilen zu vervielfältigen oder zu veröffentlichen.

CONCERNING CHRISTIAN LIBERTY

by Martin Luther

Contents

LETTER OF MARTIN LUTHER TO POPE LEO X.

CONCERNING CHRISTIAN LIBERTY

LETTER OF MARTIN LUTHER TO POPE LEO X.

Among those monstrous evils of this age with which I have now for three years been waging war, I am sometimes compelled to look to you and to call you to mind, most blessed father Leo. In truth, since you alone are everywhere considered as being the cause of my engaging in war, I cannot at any time fail to remember you; and although I have been compelled by the causeless raging of your impious flatterers against me to appeal from your seat to a future council—fearless of the futile decrees of your predecessors Pius and Julius, who in their foolish tyranny prohibited such an action—yet I have never been so alienated in feeling from your Blessedness as not to have sought with all my might, in diligent prayer and crying to God, all the best gifts for you and for your see. But those who have hitherto endeavoured to terrify me with the majesty of your name and authority, I have begun quite to despise and triumph over. One thing I see remaining which I cannot despise, and this has been the reason of my writing anew to your Blessedness: namely, that I find that blame is cast on me, and that it is imputed to me as a great offence, that in my rashness I am judged to have spared not even your person.

Now, to confess the truth openly, I am conscious that, whenever I have had to mention your person, I have said nothing of you but what was honourable and good. If I had done otherwise, I could by no means have approved my own conduct, but should have supported with all my power the judgment of those men concerning me, nor would anything have pleased me better, than to recant such rashness and impiety. I have called you Daniel in Babylon; and every reader thoroughly knows with what distinguished zeal I defended your conspicuous innocence against Silvester, who tried to stain it. Indeed, the published opinion of so many great men and the repute of your blameless life are too widely famed and too much reverenced throughout the world to be assailable by any man, of however great name, or by any arts. I am not so foolish as to attack one whom everybody praises; nay, it has been and always will be my desire not to attack even those whom public repute disgraces. I am not delighted at the faults of any man, since I am very conscious myself of the great beam in my own eye, nor can I be the first to cast a stone at the adulteress.

I have indeed inveighed sharply against impious doctrines, and I have not been slack to censure my adversaries on account, not of their bad morals, but of their impiety. And for this I am so far from being sorry that I have brought my mind to despise the judgments of men and to persevere in this vehement zeal, according to the example of Christ, who, in His zeal, calls His adversaries a generation of vipers, blind, hypocrites, and children of the devil. Paul, too, charges the sorcerer with being a child of the devil, full of all subtlety and all malice; and defames certain persons as evil workers, dogs, and deceivers. In the opinion of those delicate-eared persons, nothing could be more bitter or intemperate than Paul's language. What can be more bitter than the words of the prophets? The ears of our generation have been made so delicate by the senseless multitude of flatterers that, as soon as we perceive that anything of ours is not approved of, we cry out that we are being bitterly assailed; and when we can repel the truth by no other pretence, we escape by attributing bitterness, impatience, intemperance, to our adversaries. What would be the use of salt if it were not pungent, or of the edge of the sword if it did not slay? Accursed is the man who does the work of the Lord deceitfully.

Wherefore, most excellent Leo, I beseech you to accept my vindication, made in this letter, and to persuade yourself that I have never thought any evil concerning your person; further, that I am one who desires that eternal blessing may fall to your lot, and that I have no dispute with any man concerning morals, but only concerning the word of truth. In all other things I will yield to any one, but I neither can nor will forsake and deny the word. He who thinks otherwise of me, or has taken in my words in another sense, does not think rightly, and has not taken in the truth.

Your see, however, which is called the Court of Rome, and which neither you nor any man can deny to be more corrupt than any Babylon or Sodom, and quite, as I believe, of a lost, desperate, and hopeless impiety, this I have verily abominated, and have felt indignant that the people of Christ should be cheated under your name and the pretext of the Church of Rome; and so I have resisted, and will resist, as long as the spirit of faith shall live in me. Not that I am striving after impossibilities, or hoping that by my labours alone, against the furious opposition of so many flatterers, any good can be done in that most disordered Babylon; but that I feel myself a debtor to my brethren, and am bound to take thought for them, that fewer of them may be ruined, or that their ruin may be less complete, by the plagues of Rome. For many years now, nothing else has overflowed from Rome into the world—as you are not ignorant—than the laying waste of goods, of bodies, and of souls, and the worst examples of all the worst things. These things are clearer than the light to all men; and the Church of Rome, formerly the most holy of all Churches, has become the most lawless den of thieves, the most shameless of all brothels, the very kingdom of sin, death, and hell; so that not even antichrist, if he were to come, could devise any addition to its wickedness.