The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

had the audacity to desert the Vulgate for the original. These alterations
removed nearly all the fourteen hundred heresies at a sweep. But this was
not enough. As the people looked at the "outrageous" pictures, not merely
in spite of Duke George's prohibition, but with that zest with which human
nature always invests forbidden things, it was determined not merely to
have pictures, but the happy idea, which none but men nobly careless of
their reputation for consistency would have harbored for a moment, was
fallen on--the plan of having the very same ones. Duke George paid
Cranach forty rix thalers for copies of them, and thus secured for himself
the great satisfaction of seeing the book he had denounced going forth in
substance, and the pictures which he had specially assaulted, scattered
everywhere by his own ducal authority. In his preface, Emser has
anticipated a style of thinking which has crept into our Protestant
Churches. He says: "Let the layman only attend to having a holy life,
rather than trouble himself about the Scriptures, which are only meant for
the learned." We have had a good deal of nonsense ventilated in our
churches in this country very much in the same vein. It means about this:
Be pious, be in earnest; never mind having ideas or doctrines--they only
create divisions; be zealous about something, whether it be right or wrong.
You may read your Bibles, but be careful not to form an opinion as to
their meaning, or if you do, attach no importance to it if any one does not
agree with you. The English moralist was thought to go very far when he
said, "He can't be wrong whose life is in the right;" but we have something
beyond him and Emser; it is in effect: "He can't be wrong whose
sensations are of the right kind," and who gives himself up blindly to the
right guidance, and takes the right newspaper.
Luther's New Testament, with Luther's pictures, thus adopted, and
with its margin crowded with Papistical notes, which were meant, as far as
possible, to furnish the antidote to the text, went forth to the world. The
preparation was made for a second edition of it. Duke George furnished for
it a preface, in which, after exposing the enormities of Martin Luther, he
characterized Emser as his dearly beloved, the