Hence he begins by overthrowing, with incredible determination, everything that might be advanced against him and in favour of the Mass in general by the “doctrine and discipline of the Church, the teaching of the Fathers, immemorial custom and usage,” commandments of men and theological faculties, Saints, Fathers, or, in fine, the “Pope and his Gomorrhas.” The utter unrestraint of his language here and there is only matched by the extravagance of his ideas and interpretation of the Bible.
All men are priests, he declares; as to Mass priests there should be none. “I defy the idols and pomps of this world, the Pope and his parsons. You fine priestlings, can you point out to us in all the gospels and epistles a single bit of proof that you are or were intended to act as priests for other Christians?”[219] Whoever dares to adduce the well-known passages in the Bible to the contrary he looks on as a “rude, unlettered donkey.” Why? Because he would not otherwise defend the “smeared and shorn priesthood.” “O worthy patron of the shaven, oily little gods,” he says to him with mocking commiseration.[220] We are the persecuted party, we, who, whilst acknowledging Christ’s presence in the Sacrament, will have nothing to do with the sacrificial character of the Supper. For whoever holds fast simply to Christ’s institution is scolded as a heretic by the Pope. “There they sit, the unlettered, godless hippopotami, on costly, royal thrones, Pope, Cardinal, bishop, monk and parson with their schools of Paris and Louvain, and their dear sisters Sodom and Gomorrah.” As soon as they see the poor, small, despised crew [the opponents of the Mass] they wax wroth, “frown, turn up their noses, hold up their hands in horror, and cry: ‘The heretics do not observe the usage and form of the Roman Church’”; but they themselves are “unlearned dunces and donkeys.”[221]
The author, whose very pen seems steeped in ire, goes off at a tangent to speak of the Pope and of celibacy.
He is never tired of explaining “that the abominable and horrid priesthood of the Papists came into the world from the devil”; “the Pope is a true apostle of his master the hellish fiend, according to whose will he lives and reigns”; he has dropped into the holy kingdom of the priesthood common to all like the “devil’s hog he is, and with his snout” has befouled, yea, destroyed it; with his celibacy he has raised up a priesthood which is “a brew of all abominations.”[222] The devil himself does not suffice to make Luther’s language strong enough for his liking, and he is driven to his imagination for other ugly pictures.