To Justus Jonas letter 7 - Martin Luther

TO JUSTUS JONAS

Luther thinks peace will ensue through the Diet. July 9, 1530.

Grace and peace in Christ! We have received many letters from you, dear Jonas, and this is our sixth after our long silence. Your letters are a great pleasure to us. Things are now being put on a proper basis, and we expect a satisfactory conclusion, while the enemy dreads the opposite. There can never be entire unanimity in doctrine. For how can one reconcile Christ and Balial? Perhaps the marriage of the priests and the Sacrament in both kinds may be left an open question, but this is after all only a “perhaps.” Still, I hope that the religious question may be deferred, and meantime a worldwide peace be established. If by Christ’s blessing this be achieved, then much has been accomplished at this Diet. First, and greatest of all, Christ has been publicly proclaimed through our glorious Confession, so that the great ones of the earth cannot boast that we have fled and were afraid to confess our faith. Only I grudge you the privilege of being present at the reading of this grand Confession. For it has been my lot, even as it was that of our great warriors at Vienna last year; they had no share in defending it against the Turks, so none of the honour of the victory was theirs. Nevertheless I am well pleased that my Vienna has been defended by others. How can we hope for good from the Emperor, as he is surrounded by numberless devils? Christ lives, and does not sit at the Emperor’s, but at God’s right hand, else we would have been lost long ago. Would that Philip, when his faith fails, could share this, my belief. But perhaps it is Augsburg alone which is disputing about there being a right hand of God, so that we may be forced to believe that Christ has, through the Sacramentarians, been cast down from God’s right hand, and that the Papists have given another rendering of David’s psalm. If this be

so, we know nothing of it at Coburg. So, dear Jonas, tell me if this be the case, for then I shall seek another Christ, and compose another psalm whose every line will not mock me. But a truce to this blasphemous jesting. May you believe that Christ is Lord of Lords and King of Kings. If He have lost the title in Augsburg, He has lost it neither in heaven nor on earth. Amen.

From the wilderness. MARTIN LUTHER .