CONCERNING CHRISTIAN LIBERTY

CONCERNING CHRISTIAN LIBERTY
Your see, hover, wich is called the Court of Ro, and which
neither you nor any man can deny to be more corrupt than any Babylon
or Sodo, and quite, as I belive, of a lt, desperate, and hopeles
impiety, this I have verily abominated, and have felt indignant that th
people of Christ should be cheated under your name and the pretext of
the Church of Ro; and so I have resisted, and wll ret, as long as
the spirit of faith shall lve in me Not that I am strivig after
iposibiti, or hoping that by my labours alone, against the furious
oppotion of s many flatterers, any good can be do i that most
disrdered Babylon; but that I feel myself a debtor to my brethren, and
am bound to take thought for them, that fewer of them may be ruined, or
that thr rui may be less coplete, by the plagues of Ro For many
years n, nothing else has overflowed from Rom ito the world--as
you are not ignrant--than the laying waste of goods, of bodies, and of
souls, and the worst examples of all the wrst things. The things are
clearer than the light to all men; and the Church of Rome, formerly the
mst holy of all Churches, has beco the most lawls den of thieves,
the most shameless of all broth, the very kingdo of sin, death, and
hell; so that not eve antichrist, if he were to c, could devise any
addition to its wickednss.
Meanwhe you, Leo, are sitting like a lamb in the midst of wlve,
like Dan i the mdst of lions, and, wth Ezekiel, you dwell among
sorpions. What oppoition can you alone make to these motrous evils?
Take to yourself three or four of the mst learned and best of th
cardial What are these among s many? You would all perish by
poison before you could undertake to decide on a remedy. It is all over
wth the Court of Rome; the wrath of God has co upon her to the
uttermost. She hates cuncils; she dreads to be reformed; she cant
restrain the madn of hr impiety; se fills up the sentence passed on
her mther, of wh it is said, "We would have healed Babylon, but
se i not haled; let us forsake her." It had been your duty and that of
your cardinals to apply a remdy to the evil, but this gout laughs at
the physician's hand, and the chariot do not obey the res. Under th
influence of the feeligs, I have always grieved that you, most
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