517. Loescher, I, pp. 517 ff.

[15] A Latin adage, _chorcorus inter olern_.

IV

LETTER TO POPE LEO X, ACCOMPANYING THE "RESOLUTIONS" TO THE XCV
THESES 1518

To the

Most Blessed Father,

LEO X.

Martin Luther,

Augustinian Friar,

wisheth everlasting welfare.

I have heard evil reports about myself, most blessed Father, by
which I know that certain friends have put my name in very bad
odor with you and yours, saying that I have attempted to belittle
the power of the keys and of the Supreme Pontiff. Therefore I am
accused of heresy, apostasy, and perfidy, and am called by six
hundred other names of ignominy. My ears shudder and my eyes are
astounded. But the one thing in which I put my confidence remains
unshaken--my clear and quiet conscience. Moreover, what I hear is
nothing new. With such like decorations I have been adorned in my
own country by those same honorable and truthful men, i. e., by
the men whose own conscience convicts them of wrong-doing, and
who are trying to put their own monstrous doings off on me, and
to glorify their own shame by bringing shame to me. But you will
deign, blessed Father, to hear the true case from me, though I am
but an uncouth child. [Jer. 2:6]

It is not long ago that the preaching of the Jubilee
indulgences[1] was begun in our country, and matters went so far
that the preachers of indulgences, thinking that the protection
of your name made anything permissible, ventured openly to teach
the most impious and heretical doctrines, which threatened to
make the power of the Church a scandal and a laughing-stock as if
the decretals _De abusionibus quaestorum_[2] did not apply to them.

Not content with spreading this poison of theirs by word of
mouth, they published tracts and scattered them among the people.
In these books--to say nothing of the insatiable and unheard of
avarice of which almost every letter in them vilely smells--they
laid down those same impious and heretical doctrines, and laid
them down in such wise that confessors were bound by their oath
to be faithful and insistent in urging them upon the people. I
speak the truth, and none of them can hide himself from the heat
thereof [Ps. 19:6]. The tracts are extant and they cannot disown
them. These teachings were so successfully carried on, and the
people, with their false hopes, were sucked so dry that, as the
Prophet says, "they plucked their flesh from off their bones";
[Mic. 3:2] but they themselv