Luther in England Author:Martin Luther Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LUTHER AGAINST THE KING OF ENGLAND. Our Lord Jesus Christ hath struck that whole kingdom of the popish abomination with such a degree of blindness and madnes... more »s, that those innumerable Cyclops, making war now for three whole years with one Luther, cannot yet -comprehend for what I make war with them; so many books having been published in vain by me, plainly testifying that this is my only object—namely, that the divine scriptures should reign alone, as is fit and right; and human inventions and traditions be taken out of the way, as most pestilential offences: or, at least, that their venom being drawn, and their sting extracted, (that is, the power of compelling and commanding, and of ensnaring consciences being taken away,) they be tolerated as free and indifferent, like any other pest or unhappiness of the world. For they, struck with a perpetual madness, bring nothing against me but the decrees of men, the glosses of fathers, and the acts or rites of ages; those very things, forsooth, which I deny and impugn, and which they themselves also confess are faithless and have often been erroneous. I dispute of matter of right, and they answer me on matter of fact. I demand a reason ; they exhibit a work. I ask, By what power do ye these things ? they say, Because we so do and have done them. Let our will stand for reason—practice for authority —custom for right, and that in the matters of God. They have among themselves in their schools a most vicious kind of reasoning which they call " begging the question." This these miserable men learn and teach even to grey hairs, yea to the very sepulchre, with vast labour and expense. But when they come to the use of their learning, they can do nothing else except thus most viciously beg the question. Thus it comes to pass that I exc...« less