“I believe, that, even had the Pope made fornication obligatory, he would not have given rise to and furthered such great unchastity [as by celibacy].” “Who can sufficiently deplore the fury of the devil with his godless, cursed law?” The “Roman knave” wishes to rule everywhere, and the “universities, those shameless brothels, sit still and say nothing.... They, like obedient children of the Church, carry out the commands of the whoremaster. Every Christian ought to resist him at the risk of his life, even though he had a thousand heads, because we see how the poor, simple, common folk who stand in terror of his childish, shameful Bulls, do, and submit to, whatever the damned Roman rogue invents with the help of the devil.”[223]
Many of his contemporaries may well be excused for having felt that such language was the result of the Pope’s Bull; the curse of the Church had overtaken Luther, in the solitude of the Wartburg it had done its work, and now the spirit of evil and darkness had gained complete mastery.[224]
“So great,” he cries, “is God’s anger over this vale of Tafet and Hinnan that those who are most learned, and live most chastely, do more harm than those who learn nothing and live in fornication.” “O unhappy wretches that we are, who live in these latter days among so many Baalites, Bethelites and Molochites, who all appear so spiritual and Christian, and yet have swallowed up the whole world and themselves desire to be the only Church; they live and laugh in their security and freedom, instead of weeping tears of blood over the cruel murder of the children of our people.”[225]
In conclusion, he gives his open approval to the Wittenbergers, that “Mass is no longer said, that there is no more organ-playing,” and that “bleating and bellowing” has ceased in the Church, so that the Papists say: “They are all heretics and have gone crazy.”[226] It seems to him that Saxony is the happiest of lands, “because there the living truth of the Gospel has arisen”; surely the Elector Frederick must be the Prince, foretold by prophecy, who was to deliver the Holy Sepulchre; himself he compares to the “Angel at the Sepulchre,” or to Magdalene who announced the Resurrection.[227]