evil for evil. He who feeds on this poison enjoys freedom in evil things and can say nothing about such a pagan order except that it is good and just.[348]
It is no wonder that people poisoned by this venomous food defile and reject the gospel of Christ as impractical. On the contrary, his law saddens and disturbs them while the poisonous law pleases them. The law of the gospel requires that they suffer blows on the cheek and that, if anyone should sue them and take their coat, they let him have their cloak as well,[349] thus adding self-injury to injury. Therefore, the people living on a diet of poison – which has been poured also into the Holy Church – corrupt Christ’s law with the saliva of garlic and insult from the wise magistrates; their civil service wisdom smells like garlic eaten after a fast – they know how wisely to defame the simplicity of the gospel of Christ, sufficient and vigorous.
Well then, to return to where we began, what do we say about the Emperor entering faith with pagan rule, statutes, and offices? It is clear that – as has then been said – this is “the poison which is poured today into the Holy Church.”[350] It was not poured in without purpose, but that all people drink it, that all countries and nations be poisoned to death with this corporeal and worldly wisdom. And this wisdom is the foundation of the power of the Emperor and his laws; and drinking this poison through his laws (the people) turn their whole mind to caring about comfort, licentious freedom, temporal goods, to obtaining these things through cunning, to increasing their profits through weal or woe, and to gaining privileges from kings or to winning these privileges back if lost. For all this they invent clever defenses and fortifications for warfare…
This law has converted Christians into pagans. And now, satiated with the poison of the worldly and physical wisdom, they despise the law of Christ. They consider it a ridiculous foolishness that only exposes their fat bellies. And so they not only scorn it as useless, but also are even ready to oppose any one who dares to parade the uncomfortable law of Christ before their noses. You would think it were arsenic!
