Great Throughts Treasury

"For the kingdom is not being prepared, but has been prepared, while the sons of the Kingdom are being prepared, not preparing the Kingdom; that is to say, the Kingdom merits the sons, not the songs the Kingdom. So all hell merits and prepares its children rather than they it."

"From you, my dear Erasmus, let me obtain this request, that just as I bear with your ignorance in these matters, so you in turn will bear with my lack of eloquence."

"For to love means to hate oneself and to condemn oneself, according to Christ's saying in John 12:25: He that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal."

"God does not need your good works, but your neighbor does."

"Forgiveness is God's command."

"God made man out of nothing, and as long as we are nothing, He can make something out of us."

"God has set the type of marriage everywhere throughout the creation. - Every creature seeks its perfection in another. - The very heavens and earth picture it to us."

"God uses lust to impel men to marry, ambition to office, avarice to earning, and fear to faith. God led me like an old blind goat."

"God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars."

"God will not let any violence go unpunished, but He Himself will take vengeance on our enemies and will send home to them what they have deserved by the way they have treated us. As He Himself says (Deut. 23:55): Vengeance is Mine, I will repay. On the basis of this, St. Paul admonishes the Christians (Rom. 12:19): Never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God. These words are not only instruction but also consolation, as if He were to say: Do not take it upon yourselves to avenge yourselves on one another or to speak curses and maledictions. The person that does you harm or injury is interfering with the office of God and sinning against God as gravely as this man has sinned against you. Therefore, keep your fist to yourself. Leave it to the charge of His wrath and punishing, for He will not let it remain unavenged, and His punishment is more severe than you would like. This man has not assailed you but God Himself, and has already fallen into His wrath. He will not escape this. No one ever has. So why get angry with him when the anger of God, immensely greater and more severe than the anger and punishment of the whole world, has already come upon him and has already avenged itself more thoroughly than you ever could? Besides, he has not injured you one tenth as much as he has injured God. When you see him lying under the severe condemnation, why so many curses and threats of vengeance? Rather you should take pity on his plight, and pray for him to be rescued from it and to reform."

"God's friendship is a bigger comfort than that of the whole world."

"Good works are the seals and proofs of faith; for even as a letter must have a seal to strengthen the same, even so faith must have good works."

"Grant that I may not pray alone with the mouth; help me that I may pray from the depths of my heart."

"Great God, what do I see and hear! The end of things created! The judge of mankind doth appear on clouds of glory seated! The trumpet sounds; the graves restore, the dead which they contained before; prepare, my soul, to meet Him!"

"God's love gives in such a way that it flows from a Father's heart, the well-spring of all good. The heart of the giver makes the gift dear and precious; as among ourselves we say of even a trifling gift, "It comes from a hand we love," and look not so much at the gift as at the heart."

"Great people and champions are special gifts of God, whom He gives and preserves; they do their work, and achieve great actions, not with vain imaginations, or cold and sleepy cogitations, but by motion of God."

"Grace is given to heal the spiritually sick, not to decorate spiritual heroes."

"Good works do not make a good man, but a good man does good works; evil works do not make a wicked man, but a wicked man does evil works."

"Great thieves go Scott-free, as the Pope and his crew."

"He who believes God, recognizes Him as true and faithful, and himself as a liar; for he mistrusts his own thinking as false, and trusts the Word of God as being true, though it absolutely contradicts his own reasoning."

"Here again Diatribe confidently brings in a gloss to suit herself, just as if Scripture were under her complete control. As for considering the prophet's meaning and intention, what need was there for a man of such authority to do that? All we need is: Erasmus says so, therefore it is so."

"Hence, when we ask anything of God and He begins to hear us, He so often goes counter to our petitions that we imagine He is more angry with us now than before we prayed, and that He intends not to grant us our requests at all. All this God does, because it is His way first to destroy and annihilate what is in us before He gives us His gifts; for so we read in I Samuel 2:6: The Lord killeth, and maketh alive: he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up. Through this most gracious counsel He makes us fit for His gifts and works. Only then are we qualified for His works and counsels when our own plans have been demolished and our own works are destroyed and we have become purely passive in our relation to Him."

"He who loves not Wine, Women and Song remains a fool his whole life long."

"Here again you confuse and mix everything up in your usual way."

"He who receives a sacrament does not perform a good work; he receives a benefit. In the mass we give Christ nothing; we only receive from Him."

"Here I stand, I can do no other, God help me. Amen!"

"Here where we are concerned not with the dogma of Scripture and the Corycian cavern only, but in very truth with the awful secrets of the Divine Majesty (namely, why he works in the way we have said), here you smash bolts and bars and rush in all but blaspheming, as indignant as possible with God because you are not allowed to see the meaning and purpose of such a judgment of his."

"Heretics cannot themselves appear good unless they depict the Church as evil, false, and mendacious. They alone wish to be esteemed as the good, but the Church must be made to appear evil in every respect."

"Hereby we may understand that God, of His special grace, maketh the teachers of the gospel subject to the Cross, and to all kinds of afflicitons, for the salvation of themselves and of the people; for otherwise they could by no means beat down this beast which is called vain-glory."

"Holiness consisteth not in a cowl or in a garment of gray. - When God purifies the heart by faith, the market is sacred as well as the sanctuary; neither remaineth there any work or place which is profane."

"How can a reason which hates God be called sound?"

"Holy Christendom has, in my judgment, no better teacher after the apostles than St. Augustine."

"I always loved music; whoso has skill in this art, is of a good temperament, fitted for all things. We must teach music in schools. A schoolmaster ought to have skill in music, or I would not regard him; neither should we ordain young men as preachers, unless they have been well exercised in music."

"Human reason is like a drunken man on horseback; set it up on one side, and it tumbles over on the other."

"How is it then that your theologians drivel like people in their second childhood."

"I am entirely of the opinion that the papacy is the Antichrist. But if anyone wants to add the Turk, then the Pope is the spirit of the Antichrist, and the Turk is the flesh of the Antichrist. They help each other in their murderous work. The latter slaughters bodily and by the sword, the former spiritually and by doctrine."

"I am more afraid of my own heart than of the pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great pope, self."

"I am afraid that the schools will prove the very gates of hell, unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures and engraving them in the heart of the youth."

"I am persuaded that without knowledge of literature pure theology cannot at all endure. . . . When letters have declined and lain prostrate, theology, too, has wretchedly fallen and lain prostrate. . . . It is my desire that there shall be as many poets and rhetoricians as possible, because I see that by these studies as by no other means, people are wonderfully fitted for the grasping of sacred truth and for handling it skillfully and happily."

"I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God. Amen."

"I am of a different mind ten times in the course of a day. But I resist the devil, and often it is with a fart that I chase him away. When he tempts me with silly sins I say, 'Devil, yesterday I broke wind too. Have you written it down on your list?"

"I cannot believe that my illness is natural. I suspect Satan, and therefore I am the more inclined to take it lightly."

"I cannot choose but adhere to the word of God, which has possession of my conscience; nor can I possibly, nor will I even make any recantation, since it is neither safe nor honest to act contrary to conscience! Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God! Amen."

"I cannot forbid a person to marry several wives, for it does not contradict Scripture."

"I cannot see why she lengthens her list nor thinks we are short of weapons with which to run her through."

"I do not admit that my doctrine can be judged by anyone."

"I compare it with a lie, which like to a snowball, the longer it is rolled the greater it becomes."

"I frankly confess that even if it were possible I should not wish to have free choice given to me, or to have anything left in my own hands by which I might strive for salvation."

"I have held many things in my hands, and have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God's hands, that I still possess."

"I felt that I had been born anew and that the gates of heaven had been opened. The whole of Scripture gained a new meaning. And from that point on the phrase, 'the justice of God' no longer filled me with hatred, but rather became unspeakable sweet by virtue of a great love."