e this my error, or as my opponents
venomously call it, this inconsistency of mine,[4] to the time,
and to my ignorance and inexperience. At the beginning I was
quite alone and without any helpers, and moreover, to tell the
truth, unskilled in all these things, and far too unlearned to
discuss such high and weighty matters. For it was without any
intention, purpose, or will of mine that I fell, quite
unexpectedly, into this wrangling and contention. This I take
God, the Searcher of hearts, to witness.

I tell these things to the end that, if thou shalt read my books,
thou mayest know and remember that I am one of those who, as St.
Augustine says of himself, have grown by writing and by teaching
others, and not one of those who, starting with nothing, have in
a trice become the most exalted and most learned doctors. We
find, alas! many of these self-grown doctors; who in truth are
nothing, do nothing and accomplish nothing, are moreover untried
and inexperienced, and yet, after a single took at the
Scriptures, think themselves able wholly to exhaust its spirit.

Farewell, dear reader, in the Lord. Pray that the Word may be
further spread abroad, and may be strong against the miserable
devil. For he is mighty and wicked, and just now is raving
everywhere and raging cruelly, like one who well knows and feels
that his time is short, and that the kingdom of his Vicar, the
Antichrist in Rome,[5] is sore beset. But may the God of all
grace and mercy strengthen and complete in us the work He has
begun, to His honor and to the comfort of His little flock. Amen.

FOOTNOTES

[1] From the Preface to the Complete Works (1545). Text
according to the Berlin Edition of the Buchwald and others,
Vol. I, pp. xi ff.

[2] Evidently a play on the Latin _frigidus_, often used in
the sense of "trivial" or "silly"; so Luther refers to the
"_frigida decreta Paperum_" in his Propositions for the
Leipzipg Disputation (1519).

[3] i. e. Frivolous mockers at holy things.

[4] See Prefatory Note to the _Fourteen of Consolation_,
below, p.109.

[5] Long before this Luther had repeatedly expressed the
conviction that the Pope was the Antichrist foretold in 2
Thess. 2:3 f., and Rev. 13 and 17.

THE DISPUTATION OF DOCTOR MARTIN LUTHER
ON THE POWER AND EFFICACY OF INDULGENCES
(THE NINETY-FIVE THESES)
1517
TOGETHER WITH THREE LETTERS EXPLANATORY OF THE THESES

INTRODUCTION

"A Disputation of the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences" [1