A Response to Luther Book 2 Page and line numbers correspond to The Complete Works of St. Thomas More (Yale University Press), volume 5. Side-glosses are given as footnotes. A complete concordance to this work can be found at www.thomasmorestudies.org/publications.html#Concordance . N.B. This English translation of the Latin is reproduced, with permission, from volume 5 of The Complete Works of St. Thomas More: Responsio ad Lutherum (Yale University Press, 1969), edited by John H. Headley, translated by Sister Scholastica Mandeville. Copyright © 1969 by Yale University. All rights reserved. The Second Book of the Most Learned William Ross Against the Calumnies of Luther He refutes the trifling arguments with which 325 Luther answers the king’s passing remarks on indulgences. Chapter 1. Although the king, as his own book shows, had no other intention in discussing indulgences and the papacy than to reprove the senseless 5 caprice of Luther, who, although he had talked nonsense on both these points, chose to rage madly rather than return to his senses; 1 and although the king had touched on these points in passing, having in mind no inten- tion but that of treating the sacraments, 10 nevertheless, those very comments which he made in passing so prostrated Luther that he has not found anything more weighty to answer than silly ridicule, which will recoil on his own ridiculous head. Let us come now to particular points of 15 our Henry, and let us see how success- fully he fits his initial premises to his conclusions. 2 And later: First, the royal defender seized on indulgences, which I had declared to be impostures of Roman wickedness. 3 20 He defends these as follows: “If indul- gences are impostures, then not only the preceding pontiffs but even Leo X himself, whom Luther however praises exceedingly, will be impostors.” What royal and Thomistic shrewdness! 25 And a little later: And so the Thomistic king answers me nothing when I condemn indulgences besides this statement: “Indulgences are not impostures because Leo is a good man; therefore it must be so, it cannot be otherwise.” 30 At this point, reader, there is no need to answer, but to submit the very words of the king; when you will read them and discover that they have been perverted by this scoundrel, and that you will not find the expression, “It must be so, it cannot be otherwise,” anywhere in the king’s work, but that it has been fabricated by Luther as 35 1 In these footnotes are given translations of the side-glosses that appeared in More’s Latin text. The first is: It is clear that the man has proceeded with unsteady footing 2 Luther’s words 3 Rather, there is great wickedness in you frequently as it has been foolishly, so that he might have a statement 327 about his own position which he might be thought to ridicule wittily, then indeed it must be so and it cannot be otherwise that if some- one should say Luther is a biped you would be ready to answer that he is more foolish than a quadruped; it must be so, it cannot be 5 otherwise. The prince, therefore, says the following. “As every living being is recognized chiefly by its face, 4 so also from this first proposition it becomes clear what a festering and rotten heart he has whose mouth, full of bitterness, overflows with such diseased matter. 10 For what he once argued about indulgences seems to many persons to detract not only from the power of the pontiff but also from the good hope and holy consolation of the faithful, and very forcefully to encourage men that, relying on the riches of their own penitence, they should contemn the treasury of the church 15 and the spontaneous goodness of God. 5 And yet all that he then wrote was received more favorably on the grounds that he was merely debating, not declaring most of the points. He was continually seeking to be taught and promising to comply with the person who taught him something 20 better. How sincerely this promise was written by the sanctimonious fellow who ascribes all his objections to the spirit which shuns false- hood, can easily be detected by the fact that as soon as he was wholesomely admonished by anyone he immediately returned a malediction for the benefaction, raging madly with revilings and 25 reproaches. It is worthwhile to see to what degree of madness these have finally carried him. He admitted earlier that indulgences had power at least insofar as they absolved both from guilt and from whatever penalties the church had established or one’s own priest had enjoined on each one. But now he has progressed so far, not in learn- 30 ing as he says but in ill will, that, contradicting himself, he condemns indulgences completely. And he says that they are nothing but mere impostures and have no power at all except to squander men’s money and their faith in God. 6 On this point everyone sees how he rants not only 35 wickedly but also madly. For if, as Luther says, indulgences have no efficacy at all but are mere impostures, then it is necessary that we consider as impostors not only the present pontiff, Leo X, whose innocent and blameless 4 The king’s words 5 How wide a window Luther has opened to crimes 6 How this steward looks out for the money of men. Leo the pontiff life and most holy conduct from the time of his youth have been quite 329 well known throughout the whole world, as Luther himself admits in an epistle to the pontiff, but also all the Roman pontiffs through so many past ages who, as Luther himself recalls, used to grant in- dulgences:7 one, a year’s remission, another 5 three years’; some used to remit the pen- nance of several lents, some a definite por- tion of the total penance, say a third or a half; others, finally, granted full remission both of the punishment and of the guilt. If what Luther says is true, then all these men were im- 10 posters. 8 But how much more reason is there to believe that this single friarlet is a sick sheep than that so many pontiffs were once faithless shepherds.” And a little later: “When he goes so far as to deny that indulgences have any power 15 on earth, it would be useless for me to dispute with him on how much power they have in purgatory. Besides, what use will it be to discuss the means of being delivered from purgatory with one who almost wholly does away with purgatory? Since he cannot endure that the pontiff release 20 anyone from that place, he takes on him- self the great work of leaving no one there. 9 What point is there in fighting with him who fights with himself? What shall I achieve by arguments if I try to persuade him to grant what he has before denied, since he himself now denies what he had before granted? 25 “But however much the indulgences of the pontiff may be disputed, the words of Christ necessarily remain unshaken, by which He com- mitted to Peter the keys of the church when He said: ‘Whatever you shall bind on earth, shall be bound also in heaven; and whatever you shall loose on earth, shall be loosed also in heaven.’ Likewise: ‘Whose 30 sins you shall forgive they shall be forgiven; and whose sins you shall retain they shall be retained.’ If it is indisputable that by these words any priest has the power to absolve men from mortal sins and to take away an eternity of punishment, will it not seem absurd to everyone that the chief of all priests should have no right over temporal 35 punishment? “But perhaps someone will say: ‘Luther will not admit that any priest binds or looses anything 10 or that the supreme 7 Therefore he is either there a base flatterer or here a liar 8 Or does this conclusion not hold, honored brother? 9 Perhaps he has that power from the same place he has his doctrine 10 To Luther, the pontiff is inferior to a common priest pontiff has more power than any bishop, indeed than any priest at 331 all.’ But what do I care what the fellow admits or what he does not admit, since he admitted not long ago many of the truths of which he now admits nothing, and since he alone now rejects all the practices which the whole church has admitted for so many ages. For, to say 5 nothing of the other things which this new Momus censures, surely if the pontiffs sinned who granted indulgences, then the whole con- gregation of the faith was not free from sin, since they accepted them for so long a time with such thorough agreement. 11 I have no 10 doubt that we should accede to their judgment and to the custom observed by the saints rather than to Luther alone, who condemns the whole church so madly.” See, reader, how adroitly Luther has caught the king, since the king has proved both by the gospel and by reason that the successor 15 of Peter can remit the punishment of purgatory; since the king more- over says that not only Leo X, whom Luther himself praises, but all the past pontiffs have been impostors if indulgences are nothing other than impostures, and that the whole Christian people for so many ages have been liable to blame, and that he himself is ready with 20 better reason to believe that Luther alone is either stupid or impious than that all the pontiffs have been deceivers or that the whole people has been deceived for so many ages.