Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1521-1530.djvu/54

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have come to Imow the Lamb that taketh away the sin of the world. From Him no sin will tear us, even though we commit fornication and murder a thousand times a day. Is it so small a purchase-price, think you, that was paid for our sins with so great a Lamb? Pray mightily, for you are a mighty sinner.

502. LUTHER TO SPALATIN. Enders, iii, 215. (Wabtbusg), August 6, 1521.

Greeting. From my host* I have received the dialogues and the two signatures of Carlstadt's ' work. Good God, will our Wittcnbergers give wives even to the monks? But they will not thrust a wife on me. The author of the dialogues is lacking in talent and in learning. I wish that Carlstadt's writings, too, were more lucid, for they contain a great power of learning and talent. It is not my intention that everything I am sending shall be printed. I should wish that Philip's Apology' be deferred until the presses are idle, unless you think otherwise. The same should be done with the Psalm Exsurgat, for there are plenty of things that are necessary and urgent.

Pray tell me if my Magnificat is not yet finished. I am sur- prised that the One hundred and nineteenth Psalm has been lost, for I am certain that I put it at the end of the Sermon on Confession, so that part of it was written on the same sheet with the last part of that tract, and now the Sermon on Con- fession also must be incomplete. The rest of it I sent with the other package. . . . My constipation will be permanent, I see, and must always be relieved by remedies. . . . Wonderful stomach I Farewell, and pray for me; beware, also, lest you too take a wife and incur tribulation of the flesh.^

Martin Luther.

  • Hmns Ton Berleptch, the warden of the Wartburg.

'His Latin treatise on celibacy. Cf. Enders, iii, 210; Barge, i, 276^. Even now the Germans often seiid out the pages of a work before all is printed, in bundlea of, say, 80 pages iach.

  • /.#., Lather's translation of Melanchthon's Apology Against the Theologians of

Paris. Vide Enders, iii, 190.

  • The Archbishop of Mayence had summoned Bemhardi (vide supra, no. 489)

to appear before him to answer for his marriage.

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