Where God’s Word is loved, there dwelleth God.
Upon these words of Christ, “If a man loveth me, he will keep my Word, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him,” I say thus, said Luther: Heaven and earth, the castles and palaces of all Emperors, Kings, and Princes, are no way sufficient to make a dwelling-place for God; yet, in a silly human creature that keepeth his Word he will dwell. Isaiah calleth heaven his “seat,” and earth his “footstool,” but not his dwelling; therefore, when we long to seek after God, we shall be sure to find him with them that hear and keep his Word, as Christ saith, “He that keepeth my Word, I will come and dwell with him.”
A man could not speak more simply and childishly than Christ spake, and yet he confounded therewith all the wisdom of the worldly-wise. To speak in such a manner, said Luther, is not in sublimi, sed humili genere: if I should teach a child, I would teach him in this sort: “He that loves me, will keep my Word.” Here we see that Christ saith not, Abstain from flesh, from marrying, from housekeeping, etc., as the Papists teach, for that were even to invite the devil and all his fellows to a feast.
That true and upright Christians are ready to suffer Death and all manner of Torments for the Gospel’s sake, but Hypocrites do shun the Cross.
Not long since, said Luther, I invited to my table, at Wittemberg, an Hungarian Divine, named Matthias de Vai, who told me that, as he came first to be a Preacher in Hungary, he chanced to fall out with a Papistical Priest. Now, he was complained of by that Priest to a Friar that was brother to the Vaivoda, or Governor of Buda, and they were both summoned to appear before him. The one much accusing the other, insomuch that the Friar could not reconcile nor take up the controversy between them, at last, and after long debate, the Friar said, “I know a way soon to discover the truth of this cause,” and commanded that two barrels of gunpowder should be set in the midst of the market-place at Buda, and said unto the parties, “He that will maintain his Doctrine to be right, and the true Word of God, let him sit upon one of these barrels, and I will give fire unto it, and he that remaineth living and unburned, his Doctrine is right.” Then Matthias de Vai leaped presently upon one of the barrels and sat himself down thereon; but the Papist Priest would not up to the other barrel, but slunk away. Then the Friar said, “Now I see and know that the Faith and Doctrine of Matthias de Vai is the right, and that our Papistical Religion is false.” And thereupon he punished and fined the Papist, with his assistants, for wronging De Vai, in four thousand Hungarian ducats, and compelled him for a certain time to maintain one hundred soldiers at his own charge; but he licensed Matthias de Vai openly to preach the Gospel. The Friar himself, recanting his religion, was converted and became a Protestant; whereupon Luther said, Never yet would any Papist burn for religion, but our people go with joy to the fire, as heretofore hath been well seen on the holy Martyrs.
By what God preserveth his Word.
God will keep his Word, said Luther, through the writing-pen upon earth; the Divines are the heads or quills of the pens, but the Lawyers are the stumps. If, now, the world will not keep the heads and quills—that is, if they will not hear the Divines—then they must keep the stumps—that is, they must hear the Lawyers, who will teach them manners.
That in Causes of Religion we must not judge according to human Wisdom, but according to God’s Word.
When the Pope and Emperor, said Luther, cited me to appear at Worms, Anno Domini 1521, at the Imperial Assembly, they pressed and earnestly advised me to refer the determining of my cause to his Imperial Majesty; but I answered the three spiritual Electors, Maintz, Tryer, and Cologne, and said, “I will rather surrender up to his Majesty his letters of safe-conduct which he hath given me than to put this cause to the determining of any human creature whatsoever.” Whereupon my master, the Prince Elector of Saxony, said also unto them, “Truly no man could offer more.” But as they still insisted and urged me touching that point, I said, I did not dare to presume, without great danger of running myself into God’s wrath, and of the loss of my soul’s health, to refer this Cause, which is none of mine, but God’s Cause, to the censure of earthly counsel; for the same, before all ages, hath been had in consultation, hath been determined, censured, concluded, and confirmed by the great Council in Heaven, to be and remain the infallible, most certain and true Word of the High Majesty of God; and therefore altogether needless, yea, most presumptuous now it were, either to receive or to deliver it to the determination and censure of human and natural sense, wit, and wisdom, which is subject to nothing more than to error, especially in and concerning God’s Word and divine matters. And I told them flat and plain, I would rather expose myself to endure all the torments that this world, flesh, and the devil were able to devise and prepare than to give my consent thereunto.