De convenientia institutorum Romanae Ecclesiae cum Evangelica libertate

1. Above we showed at length that the things which seemed to Lutherans to overturn evangelical liberty are in fact wholly consistent with it. It remains for us briefly to examine those things which destroy this liberty and overthrow it utterly.

Since, then, we have defined the foremost and most notable Christian liberty as that which draws a person away from slavery to sin, we shall say first that whatever casts a person into slavery to sin detracts from evangelical liberty.

Someone may ask, however: Is a Christian stained by any crime whatsoever thereby deprived of evangelical liberty and dragged into wretched servitude, because the Lord declared that “whoever commits sin is a slave of sin”? I do not think the Lord meant that as soon as someone commits a crime, he is consigned to perpetual slavery to sin. Rather, a person becomes sin’s slave only when he persists in his crime and makes no effort¹ to free himself from the guilt of sin. For, as is said by² Gregory,³ “A sin that is not promptly wiped away by repentance draws a person on to another by its own weight.” Anyone entangled in some vice⁴ who seeks no means to tear himself away from it⁵ by any device⁶ is, as sin’s captive and with a mind disposed to evil, very readily led into similar crimes.⁷ Therefore anyone who, with stubborn mind⁸ and hardened heart, attacks the most holy Roman See, the common Mother of all Christians, with curses, and tries to cast the Supreme Roman Pontiff himself⁹—the Father,¹⁰ Shepherd, and Governor of us all—from his throne, is surely fighting against Christian liberty¹¹ and has become the slave of a most heinous crime, a most contemptible bondman. Does he not undergo the utmost slavery to sin who strives in every way he can to brand our Mother, holy in every respect, and likewise our most holy Father with stains, even by accursed lies? “For whoever curses his father or mother shall surely be put to death,” says the Lord.¹²

Moreover, if the best and greatest God curses the person who uncovers his mother’s shame, what do we think will befall the one who invents false and fabricated accusations against this Mother? Was not Ham cursed by his own father for the crime he committed against his parent? What, then, do you Lutherans think will happen to you, who are not ashamed to invent countless slanders against your Father, the Roman Pontiff, and seem not merely to make him an object of ridicule yourselves, but also to incite your brothers to mock him and turn up their noses at him? You gather all your venom first for detraction from the Pontiff, then pour it out against the Roman Church, to your own harm no less than to that of others. This is surely what drives you away from evangelical liberty and brings you into the most wretched slavery to sin. Since you scorn obedience to your Father and Shepherd, indeed trample his decrees,¹³ and arm Christ’s faithful against his destruction, you must serve your most savage enemy. Thus, while you strive to vindicate others as free—according to your opinion, or, more accurately, your foolishness and inventions—you yourselves fall unawares and unwittingly not only into servitude but into a life of misery and calamity.

3. Furthermore, do you not tear Christian liberty up from its foundations when you condemn the decrees of all the Fathers and all the Councils, and publicly proclaim that their laws and sanctions must be abolished? What? Do you not turn the Christian people away from the statutes of the most holy prelates, in order to entangle them in your own ways and your most filthy inventions? By stripping the Roman Pontiff, who holds Christ’s place on earth, and those holy Fathers, who continually keep Christ before their mind’s eyes, of the power to make laws, you claim everyone for perpetual slavery to yourselves and the devil.¹⁴ Thus, through your ruined labor and deceitful zeal, Christian liberty lies prostrate and is trampled underfoot. What we read in Matthew, chapter 9,¹⁵ fits your abominable conduct perfectly: “If new wine,” says our Lord, “is put into old wineskins, the skins burst and the wine is spilled.” That is: if the commands of the perfect life are imposed on imperfect people, they are surely scorned, rejected, and trampled underfoot; and through that very contempt imperfect people fall into worse and graver crimes.¹⁶

Do you not also remember that it is written in the Book of Proverbs:¹⁷ “By me kings reign, and lawgivers decree what is just”? Paul, too, writing to the Romans, chapter 13,¹⁸ says: “Every human authority is from God, and whoever resists authority resists God’s ordinance.” What, then,¹⁹ Lutherans? If you resist God’s ordinance, are you so blind and bereft of sight that you do not perceive yourselves being plunged into slavery to sin and into the devil’s hands? If you are seized by a desire for evangelical liberty,²⁰ you must obey the pontifical power; you must obey²¹ the authority of the Church; you must obey²² the decrees of the holy Councils. You must also admit that this above all belongs to evangelical liberty: that laws be enacted at the will of the Supreme Pontiffs for the benefit and advantage of the Christian people.

4. But now I would appeal to you, Luther. Tell me: does someone not depart from Christian liberty, good morals, and the integrity of the faith when, at his own will, he withdraws from the custom of the universal Church and urges, admonishes, and drives others to tear themselves away from its institutions?

Hear what Augustine writes to Casulanus:²³ “The custom of God’s people and the institutions of our forebears must be held as law; and just as transgressors of divine laws must be restrained, so too must despisers of ecclesiastical customs.” What? Do not your followers recoil from the Church’s practices?²⁴ Do you not introduce laws alien to the Catholic Church?²⁵ Who appointed you a legislator—or rather, a destroyer²⁶ and overthrower of all just laws? How can you²⁷ claim confidence in your authority to do this? Were you chosen by the Christian people to prostitute its laws, statutes, and decrees? Produce the documents of this election. If you claim that you²⁸ were chosen by Christ, the best and greatest, through your own presumption, what proof do you offer us? Even if you swore to it, should we believe your bare assertion? We know, as Chrysostom says,²⁹ that “divine justice does not know how to give crimes its protection.” If you have appointed yourself leader,³⁰ governor, and ruler of the Christian people, remember the Apostolic saying:³¹ “No one takes this honor upon himself, but only one who is called by God, as Aaron was.”

5. I fear indeed that what happened to Antiochus may also befall you, to your ruin. Those who commit like crimes must be punished with like penalties. Luther, have you not committed crimes like Antiochus’s? He compelled the Jewish people, who lived under God’s special protection, to turn away “from the laws of their fathers and of God,”³² as we read in the Second Book of Maccabees.³³ He ordered the Temple in Jerusalem to be defiled and called the temple of Olympian Jupiter; he filled it with debauchery and feasting; and finally he abolished the Sabbaths and the solemn rites of the fathers. Have you not transferred the Christian people from its ancestral laws to your own impious and sacrilegious traditions? Have you not stained, profaned, and defiled Christ’s Temple, that is, the Christian Church?³⁴ Have you not filled this most holy Temple with debauchery and feasting? Have you not abolished the Christian Sabbaths and solemn rites? Just as it is written of Antiochus³⁵ that “the wicked man prayed to the Lord, from whom he would receive no mercy,” so repentance is useless to you. If Christian liberty delights you so greatly, seek the true liberty of Christians—the liberty, I mean, that frees from sin, not one bound up with slavery to sin. Do not defect from Christ’s law; do not cast aside our ancient customs; do not change your ancient faith. Rather, follow Jerome,³⁶ no less holy than learned, who writes to Pammachius and Oceanus³⁷: “I, an old man, will hold the faith in which I was reborn.”³⁸

6. Let him³⁹ who preaches another faith, other customs, or another law⁴⁰ to you—most Christian German people, as you have always been held to be—be anathema among you, I say, and be denied fire and water; indeed, let him either be consumed by fire or drowned in water. Do you not remember the warning of our Savior, who said:⁴¹ “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble would be better off with a millstone hung around his neck and drowned in the depths of the sea”? Do you not think that this wicked Luther is a stumbling block to you,⁴² as he tries to cast you into the devil’s hands, defiles your sacred virgins, casts down the vows of religious, and finally with incredible audacity strives with all his might⁴³ to turn the wrath and fury of Almighty God to your harm? Do you think that liberty is evangelical⁴⁴ if it makes you perpetual enemies of the divine Majesty? You, who have been accustomed to worship Christ, the best and greatest, above all nations, must not seek such a liberty. Seek instead the liberty that opens a way for you to live well, to hold the true faith, to obey the Roman See, and to enjoy God’s favor.

Let Luther keep for himself whatever faith, liberty, and license he wishes.⁴⁵ We shall venerate and honor the most holy Roman See,⁴⁶ and we consider that to be evangelical liberty which the Roman Pontiffs, the ancient Fathers, and the holy Councils have celebrated.

NOTE

What appears in chapter 9, first line, copied from the Paris exemplar, is: “There is also another thing which heretics …” According to the Venetian exemplar the reading should be restored as: “There is also another thing among heretics …” Of the Venetian edition exemplars, one of which we said in the Preface was in Rome at the National Library, another was found during the course of preparing this edition at the Casanatense Library of the Dominican Friars.