Of Princes and Potentates We Christians have a great advantage in war against our enemies, that of faith in prayer, whereas the infidels know nothing of faith or prayer.
Not long since king Ferdinand came into a monastery where I was, and going over it was attracted by these letters, written in large characters on a wall: "M.N.M.G.M.M.M.M"
After reflecting for some time on their meaning, he turned to his secretary, and asked him what he thought they signified: the secretary replied: "No, truly," said the king. "Well, then," returned the secretary, I expound the letters thus: M.N. Mentitur Nausea (the archbishop of Vienna); M.G. Mentitur Gallus (the court preacher); M.M.M.M. Mentiuntur Majores
(the Franciscans); Minores, (the Carmelites); Minotaurii (monks of the Alps); all are liars."
The king hit his lips, and passed on. `Twas a very ingenious explanation of Mr. Secretary's.
Princes, nowadays, have no order in the administration of their household. Four imperial towns spend more in luxuries and junkettings in one day, than Solomon spent, throughout all his kingdom, in a month. They are poor creatures, these princes, well entitled to our compassion.
God deals with great potentates, kings, and princes, even as children with playing cards.
While they have good cards, they hold them in their hands; when they had bad, they get weary of them, and throw them under the chair; just so does God with great potentates; while they are governing well, he holds them for good; but so soon as they exceed, and govern ill, he throws them down from their seat, and there he lets them lie.
Of Discord OF DISCORD DCCXXXI.
The 10th of February, 1546, John, Prince elector of Saxony said: A controversy were easily settled, if the parties would exhibit some concord. Luther said: We would willingly have concord, but no man seeks after the medium of concord, which is charity. We seek riches, but no man seeks after the right means how to be rich, namely, through God's blessing. We all desire to be saved, but the world refuses the means how to be saved—the Mediator Christ.
In former times potentates and princes referred their controversies to faithful people, and did not so readily thrust them into the lawyer's hands. When people desire to be reconciled and to come to an agreement, one party must yield, and give way to the other. If God and mankind should be reconciled and agreed, God must give over his right and justice, and must lay aside his wrath; and we, mankind, must also lay down our own righteousness, for we also would needs be gods in Paradise; we thought ourselves wise as God, through the serpent's seduction; then Christ was fain to make an agreement between us; he interposed in the cause, and would be a mediator between God and man; this Mediator for his pains got the portion of a peace-maker, namely, the cross; he that parts two fighters, commonly gets the hardest knocks for himself. Even so Christ suffered and presented us with his passion and death; he died for our sakes. and for the sake of our justification he arose again. Thus the generation of mankind became reconciled with God.
When two goats meet upon a narrow bridge over deep water, how do they behave? neither of them can turn back again, neither can pass the other, because the bridge is too narrow; if they should thrust one another, they might both fall into the water and be drowned; nature, then, has taught them, that if the one lays himself down and permits the other to go over him, both remain without hurt. Even so people should rather endure to be trod upon, than to fall into debate and discord one with another.
A Christian, for the sake of his own person, neither curses nor revenges himself; but faith curses and revenges itself. To understand this rightly, we must distinguish God and man, the person and cause. In what concerns God and his cause, we must have no patience, nor bless; as for example, when the ungodly persecute the Gospel, this touches God and his cause, and then we are not to bless or to wish good success, but rather to curse the persecutors and their proceedings. Such is called faith's cursing, which, rather than it would suffer God's
Word to be suppressed and heresy maintained, would have all creatures go to wreck; for through heresy we lose God himself, Numbers xvi. But individuals personally ought not to Of Discord revenge themselves, but to suffer all things, and according to Christ's doctrine and the nature of love, to do good to their enemies.
On Sickness, and of the Causes Thereof ON SICKNESSES, AND OF THE CAUSES THEREOF DCCXXXIV.
When young children cry lustily, they grow well and rapidly, for through crying, the members and veins are stretched out, which have no other exercise.
A question was put to Luther: How these two sentences in Scripture might be reconciled together; first, concerning the sick of the palsy, where Christ says: "Son be of good cheer, thy sins be forgiven thee." Where Christ intimates that sin was the cause of the palsy, and of every sickness. Second, touching him that was born blind, where John says: "That neither he nor his parents had sinned." Luther answered: In these words Christ testifies that the blind had not sinned, and sin is not the cause of blindness, for only active sins, which one commits personally, are the cause of sicknesses and plagues, not original sin; therefore the sins which the sick of the palsy himself committed were the cause of the palsy, whereas original sin was not the cause of the blindness of him that was born blind, or all people must be born blind, or be sick of the palsy.
Experience has proved the toad to be endowed with valuable qualities. If you run a stick through three toads, and, after having dried them in the sun, apply them to any pestilent tumor, they draw out all the poison, and the malady will disappear.
The cramp is the lightest sickness, and I believe the falling sickness a piece of the cramp, the one in the head, the other in the feet and legs; when the person feeling either moves quickly, or runs, it vanishes.
Sleep is a most useful and most salutary operation of nature. Scarcely any minor annoyance angers me more than the being suddenly awakened out of a pleasant slumber. I understand that in Italy they torture poor people by depriving them of sleep. `Tis a torture that cannot long be endured.
The physicians in sickness consider only of what natural causes the malady preceeds, and this they cure, or not, with their physic. But they see not that often the devil casts a sickness upon one without any natural causes. A higher physic must be required to resist the devil's diseases; namely, faith and prayer, which physic may be fetched out of God's