文档介绍：CONCERNING CHRISTIAN LIBERTY
CONCERNING
CHRISTIAN LIBERTY
by Martin Luther
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CONCERNING CHRISTIAN LIBERTY
LETTER OF MARTIN LUTHER
TO POPE LEO X
Among those monstrous evils of this age with which I have now for
three years been waging war, I am sometimes compelled to look to you
and to call you to mind, most blessed father Leo. In truth, since you
alone are everywhere considered as being the cause of my engaging in
war, I cannot at any time fail to remember you; and although I have been
compelled by the causeless raging of your impious flatterers against me
to appeal from your seat to a future council--fearless of the futile decrees
of your predecessors Pius and Julius, who in their foolish tyranny
prohibited such an action--yet I have never been so alienated in feeling
from your Blessedness as not to have sought with all my might, in
diligent prayer and crying to God, all the best gifts for you and for your
see. But those who have hitherto endeavoured to terrify me with the
majesty of your name and authority, I have begun quite to despise and
triumph over. One thing I see remaining which I cannot despise, and this
has been the reason of my writing anew to your Blessedness: namely,
that I find that blame is cast on me, and that it is imputed to me as a
great offence, that in my rashness I am judged to have spared not even
your person.
Now, to confess the truth openly, I am conscious that, whenever I
have had to mention your person, I have said nothing of you but what
was honourable and good. If I had done otherwise, I could by no means
have approved my own conduct, but should have supported with all my
power the judgment of those men concerning me, nor would anything
have pleased me better, than to recant such rashness and impiety. I have
called you Daniel in Babylon; and every reader thorough