Preface to the Complete Edition of Luther's Latin Works (1545)
by Dr. Martin Luther

Translated by Bro. Andrew Thornton, OSB
from the "Vorrede zu Band I der Opera Latina der Wittenberger Ausgabe. 1545"
in vol. 4 of _Luthers Werke in Auswahl_, ed. Otto Clemen, 6th ed., (Berlin: de Gruyter. 1967). pp. 421-428.




Dear Reader,

I have steadfastly resisted those who wanted my books published,
or perhaps I had better call them the confused products of my
nighttime study. First, I did not want the labors of the ancient
authors to be buried under my new works and the reader to be
hindered from reading them. Second, there now exists, thanks to
the grace of God, a good number of systematically arranged books,
especially the "Loci communes" of Philip, [Philip Melanchthon,
scholar of Greek and associate of Luther at Wittenberg.] from
which a theologian or bishop can get a thorough foundation [cf
Titus 1:9], so that he might be strong in preaching the doctrine
of virtue. Third, and most importantly, the Bible itself is now
available in almost every language. The disordered train of
events, however, has seen to it that my works resemble a wild,
disorganized chaos, which now even I cannot easily put into order.

For these reasons I wanted all my books to be buried in perpetual
oblivion, that thus there might be room for better books. But
other people, by their bold and unrelenting arguments, badgered me
into publishing mine. They maintained that, if I did not permit
them to be published while I was alive, people would publish them
after I was dead anyway, people ignorant of the sequence of events
and of the causes behind them. Thus instead of one confusion,
there would be many. I also had to take into account the wish and
command of our most illustrious Prince Elector Johann Frederick,
who ordered or rather forced the printers not only to print this
edition but also to get it done quickly.

Above all I beg the reader, for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ,
to read these works with discernment, or perhaps I should say with
compassion. The reader should know that I was once a monk, the
most rabid of papists, when I took up this whole affair. I was so
drunk, so submerged in the pope's doctrines, that I was ready, if
I could, to kill or help kill those who would have advocated by so
much as a single syllable withdrawing obedience to the pope.
That's how much of a Saul I was [i.e., St. Paul, who, before his
conversion, was called Saul and who was zealous in his persecution
of Christians], as many still are. I wasn't so icy cold in
defending the papacy as was Eck and those like him, who seemed to
me to defend the pope more for the sake of their bellies than
through serious commitment. To this day they seem to me to be
laughing at the pope like Epicureans. I took the matter seriously
because I had a horrible fear of the Last Day, yet still wished
from the depths of my heart to be saved.

Consequently you will find that, in my earlier writings, I most
humbly conceded many important things to the pope, things which I
later detested and now detest as being the greatest blasphemy and
abomination. Therefore, dear reader, kindly ascribe this error or,
as my calumniators call it, this contradiction to the time and to
my inexperience. At first I was alone and surely much too inept
and unlearned to be dealing with such matters. For, as God is my
witness, it was by accident and not by my own will or desire that
I got involved in all this turmoil.

When in 1517 indulgences were sold (I wanted to say promulgated)
in these regions for disgraceful profit, I was a preacher, a young
Doctor of Theology, as they say. I began to dissuade the people
from lending an ear to the shouts of the indulgence-sellers. I
told them that they had better things to do and that I was sure
that in these matters I had the pope on my side. I was relying
greatly on his trustworthiness, since in his decrees he had very
clearly condemned the excesses of the quaestors [name of a
treasury official in ancient Rome] as he called the indulgence
preachers.

Shortly thereafter I wrote two letters, one to Albert, the
archbishop of Mainz, who was getting half the money from the
indulgences (the other half was going to the pope, a fact of which
I was at the time ignorant),the other to the ordinary of the
place, Jerome, bishop of Brandenburg. I begged them to put a stop
to the shameless blasphemy of the quaestors, but they despised
this poor little brother. Therefore, finding myself despised, I
published a list of theses and, at the same time, a sermon in
German on indulgences. A little later I published the
"Explanations," in which, in deference to the pope, I maintained
that indulgences should not be condemned but that the works of
charity should be preferred to them.

What I did toppled heaven and consumed earth by fire. I am
denounced to the pope, commanded to go to Rome, and the entire
papacy rises up against me alone. These things happened in 1518
when Maximilian was holding the Diet at Augsburg, at which
Cardinal Cajetan was the legate of the pope. The most illustrious
Duke Frederick of Saxony, Prince Elector, took up my cause with
the Cardinal and asked that I not be forced to go to Rome but that
he, Cajetan, should summon me to a hearing and take care of the
matter. Shortly thereafter the Diet was adjourned.

Meanwhile the Germans were getting tired of putting up with the
plunderings, the buying and selling, and the endless frauds of the
Roman rascals. They were waiting with bated breath for the outcome
of so important a matter, which neither bishop nor theologian had
ever before dared to touch. This mood of the populace encouraged
me, because those crafty "Romanations" with which they had filled
and fatigued the whole world were now hateful to everyone.

Poor and on foot I came to Augsburg, my expenses paid by Prince
Frederick. I had from him letters commending me to the senate and
to certain good men. I was there for three days before I
approached the Cardinal, because those good men strongly advised
me not to go to the Cardinal until I had a safe conduct pass from
the Emperor. The Cardinal had been summoning me every day through
a certain spokesman. This latter pestered me greatly, saying that
if I'd only recant, then everything would be all right. But long
the injury, long the detour back.

Finally, on the third day, the spokesman came and demanded to know
why I hadn't yet approached the Cardinal, who was waiting to
receive me most kindly. I answered that I was complying with the
advice of good men to whom I had been commended by Prince
Frederick and that they had advised me not to go to see the
Cardinal unless I had a safe conduct pass from the Emperor. I said
that they were requesting one from the imperial senate and that I
would come as soon as it had been obtained. He got very angry and
said: "Do you think Prince Frederick is going to take up arms for
your sake?" I said, "I don't want him to." He asked, "Where will
you stay?" I replied, "Under heaven." He then asked, "If you had
the pope and the cardinals in your power, what would you do?" I
said. "I'd show them every reverence and honor." Then He moved his
finger in an Italian gesture and said, "Hem." Then he went away
and never came back.

The same day the imperial senate informed the Cardinal that I had
been given a safe conduct; they warned him that he should not plan
to have anything too severe in store for me. It is said that he
answered, "Fine, but I shall act according to my duty." These
events were the beginning of this whole commotion; the rest can be
learned from what follows.

That same year, 1518, Prince Frederick had called Philip
Melanchthon here to Wittenberg to teach Greek, doubtless so that I
might have a colleague in my labors of teaching theology. His
works testify to what the Lord has accomplished through
Melanchthon, his instrument, not only in literature but also in
theology, despite the fact that Satan and all his brood are
infuriated.

The following year, in February of 1519, Emperor Maximilian died,
and by the law of the Empire Duke Frederick became vicar. Then the
fury of the tempest abated a little, and gradually
excommunication, the papal thunderbolt, came to be held in
contempt. Eck and Caraccioli brought from Rome a bull [a papal
decree] condemning me. The former conveyed it to Wittenberg, the
latter to Duke Frederick, who was at the time in Cologne, where he
and the other princes were to receive Charles, the newly elected
Emperor. Duke Frederick got very indignant at that papal rascal
and courageously told him off in no uncertain terms because in his
absence he and Eck had disturbed his dominions and those of his
brother. He gave them such a magnificent tongue lashing that they
went away from him shamed and disgraced. The prince, endowed as he
was with unbelievable natural ability, knew all about the crafty
ways of the Roman curia [the administrative apparatus of the Roman
Church]; he knew exactly how to treat them. He was a man with a
good clear nose, and he could smell more and farther than the
Romanists could either hope or fear.

Thereafter they stopped testing Frederick. Furthermore, he paid no
honor to the rose that they call "golden" [a special mark of papal
esteem] which Leo X sent him that same year; on the contrary, he
ridiculed it. Thus the Romanists were forced to give up any hope
of duping such a prince. The Gospel advanced successfully under
the protection of this prince and was propagated far and wide. His
authority influenced many; since he was a most wise and
keen-sighted prince, he could incur no suspicion, except among the
hateful, that he was out to encourage and support heresy. This did
the papacy great harm.

In the same year, 1519, there was held at Leipzig the debate to
which Eck had challenged Karlstadt and me. But by no letter of
mine could I secure a safe conduct from Duke George, and so I
entered Leipzig not as a debater but as a spectator under the safe
conduct which had been given to Karlstadt. I don't know who was
blocking my way, since I was sure that, up to that time, Duke
George had not been hostile to me.

In Leipzig Eck came to me in my lodgings. He said he had learned
that I had refused to debate. I answered, "How can I debate if I
can't secure a safe conduct from Duke George?" He answered, "I
came here to debate with you, and if I can't, then I don't want to
debate with Karlstadt either. What if I get a safe conduct for
you? Will you debate with me then?" I said, "Get it and I will."
He left, and shortly thereafter I too got a safe conduct and so
had the opportunity of debating.

Eck did this because he thought he would cover himself with glory
in debating my proposition in which I denied that the pope was the
head of the church by divine right. In this proposition Eck had a
golden opportunity of flattering the pope and of meriting his
thanks and of overwhelming me with hatred and ill-will. That is
exactly what he did throughout the whole debate, but he neither
proved his position nor refuted mine. Even Duke George said to Eck
and me at breakfast, "Whether it's by divine right or by human
right, still he's the pope." If he hadn't been influenced by the
arguments, he would never have said such a thing but would have
approved of Eck alone.

From my case you can see how hard it is to struggle free from
errors which become fixed by universal standard and changed by
time-honored custom into nature. How true the proverb is: "It's
hard to abandon customs" and "Custom is a second nature." How
right Augustine was when he said, "Custom, if it is not resisted,
becomes necessity." I had been reading and teaching the Sacred
Scriptures diligently in private and in public now for seven
years, so that I knew almost all of them by heart. Then too, I had
imbibed the beginnings of the knowledge of Christ and of faith in
him, i.e., that it is faith in Christ and not works that justifies
and saves us. Finally, I was now defending publicly that
proposition of which I'm speaking, namely, that the pope was not
the head of the church by divine right. But I still didn't see the
necessary conclusion, i.e., that the pope must be from the devil,
for what is not from God must be from the devil.

I was so absorbed, as I have said, by the example and title of the
Holy Church as well as by my own customary way of thinking, that I
conceded that the pope was head of the church by human right.
However, if that right is not supported by divine authority, then
it is a lie and comes from the devil. After all, we obey our
parents and the civil authorities, not because they themselves
command it, but because God wants us to (cf. 1 Peter). That is why
I can, with a little less hatred, put up with those who cling so
tenaciously to the papacy, especially those who haven't read the
sacred Scriptures or even the secular writings, since I myself had
read the sacred Scriptures diligently for so many years and still
clung tenaciously to the papacy.

In 1519, as I've already said, Leo X sent the Golden Rose through
Karl von Miltitz; with many arguments he urged me to be reconciled
to the pope. Miltitz had seventy apostolic briefs, and if Prince
Frederick would hand me over, as the pope was asking by sending
the Rose, he would post one of the briefs in each town and so
conduct me safely to Rome. But Miltitz betrayed to me what was
really in his heart when he said, "Martin, I thought you were some
aged theologian who used to sit next to the stove and debate with
himself, but now I see that you're still a strong young man. If I
had twenty-five thousand armed men, I don't think I could convey
you to Rome. I've been sounding out the opinions of people along
the way to see what they thought of you. For every one for the
pope there are three for you against the pope." That's ridiculous!
He had asked the women and serving girls in the inns what they
thought of the Roman See [the Latin "sedes" = "seat"]. They didn't
know what the word meant and, thinking of a household chair, they
answered, "How are we supposed to know what kind of chairs you
have at Rome? We don't know whether they're made out of wood or
stone.

Miltitz begged me, therefore, to do everything I could to make
peace, and he would do his best to see that the pope did the same.
I promised that I would most promptly do anything that I could in
good conscience do. I said that I too wanted peace and that I had
been drawn by force into these squabbles and had been forced by
circumstances to do everything I did; I was not to blame. Miltitz
had summoned the Dominican friar, Johann Tetzel, the originator of
this tragedy. With threatening words from the pope he so broke the
man, who up to that time had been the terror of all and a fearless
crier of indulgences, that he wasted away and was finally consumed
by a mental illness. When I found this out, I wrote him, before he
died, a kindly letter in which I comforted him and told him to
take heart and not to fear my memory. But perhaps his conscience
and the wrath of the pope sent him to the grave.

People thought Miltitz and his line of action were useless, but it
seems to me that if the man at Mainz [i.e., Archbishop Albrecht of
Mainz] had followed Miltitz's course from the beginning when I had
reprimanded him, and if the pope had followed it before he
condemned me without a hearing and raged with his bulls, and if
they had suppressed Tetzel's fury, the affair wouldn't have
resulted in such an uproar. It's all the fault of the man at
Mainz, who was tricked by his own cleverness with which he wanted
to suppress my doctrine and to save his money which he'd sought
through indulgences. Now they seek counsel in vain; now they make
efforts in vain. The Lord has awakened and stands to judge the
peoples [cf. Psalm 76:9 and Daniel 9:14]. Even if they were able
to kill us, they still wouldn't have what they want; in fact,
they'd have even less than they have now while we are alive and
well. Some among them, whose nose is not completely inactive, can
smell this well enough.

Meanwhile in that same year, 1519, I had begun interpreting the
Psalms once again. I felt confident that I was now more
experienced, since I had dealt in university courses with St.
Paul's Letters to the Romans, to the Galatians, and the Letter to
the Hebrews. I had conceived a burning desire to understand what
Paul meant in his Letter to the Romans, but thus far there had
stood in my way, not the cold blood around my heart, but that one
word which is in chapter one: "The justice of God is revealed in
it." I hated that word, "justice of God," which, by the use and
custom of all my teachers, I had been taught to understand
philosophically as referring to formal or active justice, as they
call it, i.e., that justice by which God is just and by which he
punishes sinners and the unjust.

But I, blameless monk that I was, felt that before God I was a
sinner with an extremely troubled conscience. I couldn't be sure
that God was appeased by my satisfaction. I did not love, no,
rather I hated the just God who punishes sinners. In silence, if I
did not blaspheme, then certainly I grumbled vehemently and got
angry at God. I said, "Isn't it enough that we miserable sinners,
lost for all eternity because of original sin, are oppressed by
every kind of calamity through the Ten Commandments? Why does God
heap sorrow upon sorrow through the Gospel and through the Gospel
threaten us with his justice and his wrath?" This was how I was
raging with wild and disturbed conscience. I constantly badgered
St. Paul about that spot in Romans 1 and anxiously wanted to know
what he meant.

I meditated night and day on those words until at last, by the
mercy of God, I paid attention to their context: "The justice of
God is revealed in it, as it is written: 'The just person lives by
faith.'" I began to understand that in this verse the justice of
God is that by which the just person lives by a gift of God, that
is by faith. I began to understand that this verse means that the
justice of God is revealed through the Gospel, but it is a passive
justice, i.e. that by which the merciful God justifies us by
faith, as it is written: "The just person lives by faith." All at
once I felt that I had been born again and entered into paradise
itself through open gates. Immediately I saw the whole of
Scripture in a different light. I ran through the Scriptures from
memory and found that other terms had analogous meanings, e.g.,
the work of God, that is, what God works in us; the power of God,
by which he makes us powerful; the wisdom of God, by which he
makes us wise; the strength of God, the salvation of God, the
glory of God.

I exalted this sweetest word of mine, "the justice of God," with
as much love as before I had hated it with hate. This phrase of
Paul was for me the very gate of paradise. Afterward I read
Augustine's "On the Spirit and the Letter," in which I found what
I had not dared hope for. I discovered that he too interpreted
"the justice of God" in a similar way, namely, as that with which
God clothes us when he justifies us. Although Augustine had said
it imperfectly and did not explain in detail how God imputes
justice to us, still it pleased me that he taught the justice of
God by which we are justified.

Better armed now with these thoughts, I began for the second time
to interpret the Psalms. The work would have grown into a large
commentary, but I was summoned the following year to Worms for the
Diet convened by Emperor Charles V and so had once again to leave
the work I had begun.

I am telling you all this, dear reader, so that, if you are going
to read my little works, you should remember that I am one of
those, as I said above, who, as Augustine writes of himself, makes
progress by writing and teaching. I am not one of those who out of
nothing suddenly become perfect (although in fact they are
nothing), who don't work, who aren't tempted, who have no
experience, but who, with one look into the Scriptures, exhaust
their whole spirit.

Up to that point, 1520-21, the indulgence affair was still going
on. There followed the affairs dealing with the sacraments and
with the Anabaptists, about which I will write prefaces in other
volumes, if I live to do so.

Good-bye in the Lord, dear reader, and pray that the word may
increase against Satan, because he is powerful and evil. And now
he has become extremely vicious and savage because he knows that
he has only a short time and that the kingdom of his pope is
endangered. May God strengthen in us what he has accomplished. May
he prosper his work which he has begun in us for his glory [cf.
Phillipians 1:6 and Psalm 68:29]. Amen.

Translator's Note:  The terms "just, justice, justify" in the following reading are
synonymous with the terms "righteous, righteousness, make
righteous." Both sets of English words are common translations of
the Latin "justus" and related words. A similar situation exists
with the word "faith"; it is synonymous with "belief." Both words
can be used to translate Latin "fides." Thus, "We are justified by
faith" translates the same original Latin sentence as does "We are
made righteous by belief."
_________________________________________________________________

This translation was made by Bro. Andrew Thornton, OSB, for the
Saint Anselm College Humanities Program. It is distributed by
Project Wittenberg with the permission of the author. 

(c)1983 by Saint Anselm Abbey. This translation may be used freely
with proper attribution. You may distribute, copy or print this
text, providing you retain the author and copyright statements. 
Please direct any comments or suggestions about Project Wittenberg
texts to: 

Rev. Robert E. Smith
Walther Library
Concordia Theological Seminary

E-mail: smithre@mail.ctsfw.edu 

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