210 LECTURES AND ESSAYS [fo 



ment which no one can challenge. 1 The new and deeper 

 conception of the Gospel, which he had drawn from 

 Scripture, could not possibly be heresy. And on this 

 ground the earliest antagonists of the Reformation were 

 content in great measure to take their stand. They 

 conceived themselves able to meet Scripture with Scrip 

 ture. But now it became manifest that the two parties 

 had very different conceptions of Scripture proof. To 

 Luther, the Scripture, as a whole, was clear, transparent, 

 one consistent unity. His opponents treated it as a 

 collection of fragments. If Luther had a text on his 

 side, they had a text on theirs. The whole question, so 

 far as the appeal to Scripture went, reduced itself to a 

 balancing of texts or interpretations, in which everything 

 seemed involved in an uncertain flux, unless the inter 

 pretations were backed up by the authority of the Fathers 

 and the Church. And so we find Luther urging, on the 

 one hand, the eternal consistency and unchangeableness 

 of God s Word, and on the other complaining bitterly 

 of the way in which his opponents read God s Word, 

 dealing with it, as he says of Tetzel, &quot; like a sow 

 with a bag of oats,&quot; i.e. grubbing in it blindly and 

 unintelligently, seeking only what may serve their own 

 profane uses. 2 



Soon, indeed, the superior freedom and power of 

 Luther s use of Scripture became manifest even to his 

 opponents. All, he complains, who wrote against him 

 were afraid of Scripture, knowing well their own ignor 

 ance of it, and therefore using every manoeuvre to reach 

 a position in which they should not be compelled to 

 attack him with Scripture proofs, or receive the blows 

 which he, armed with Scripture, aimed at them. 3 The 



1 So, for example, in the Protestation at the end of the Wittenberg 

 Theses, the &quot; Freiheit des Sermons vom Ablass,&quot; etc. 



2 &quot; Freiheit des Sermons,&quot; etc. (Werke, ed. Irmischer, vol. 27, p. 13). 

 Cf. the answer to Emser (xii. in Irmischer, vol. 27), especially &quot; v. d. 

 bleiernen Degen Emsers,&quot; p. 243. 



3 Compare the similar complaints of Zwingli. Werke, i. 77. 



