This page has been validated.
86
Balthasar Hübmaier
[1524
'sits in the seat of the scornful' (Ps. i., 1). 13. Hence it follows that the inquisitors are the greatest heretics of all, since, against the doctrine and example of Christ, they condemn heretics to fire, and before the time of harvest root up the wheat with the tares. 14. For Christ did not come to butcher, destroy and burn, but that those that live might live more abundantly (John x., 10). 15. We should pray and hope for repentance, as long as man lives in this misery. 16. A Turk or a heretic is not convinced by our act, either with the sword or with fire, but only with patience and prayer; and so we should await with patience the judgment of God. 17. If we do otherwise, God will treat our sword as stubble, and burning fire as mockery (Job. xli.). 18. So unholy and far off from evangelical doctrine is the whole order of preaching friars (of which variegated birds our Antony is one), that hitherto out of them alone the inquisitors have come. 19. If these only knew of what spirit they ought to be, they would not so shamelessly pervert God's word, nor so often cry, 'To the fire, to the fire!' (Luke ix., 54-56). 20. It is no excuse (as they chatter) that they give over the wicked to the secular power, for he who thus gives over sins more deeply (John xix., 11). 21. For each Christian has a sword against the wicked, which is the word of God (Eph. vi., 17), but not a sword against the malignant. 22. The secular power rightly and properly puts to death the criminals who injure the bodies of the defenceless (Rom. xiii., 3, 4). But he who is God's cannot injure any one, unless he first deserts the gospel. 23. Christ has shown us this clearly,
ix., 15, or John iii., 29. As it is, they are an insoluble puzzle. The reference to Job, under Article 34, is also puzzling.
