Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1870 edition. Excerpt: ...of the Reformation himself. With all his partiality for the child of his own labors, Luther is forced to admit, that it were no wonder if his beloved Germany 'were sunk in the earth, or utterly overthrown by the Turks and Tartars, by reason of the hellish and damnable forgetfulness and contempt of God's grace which the people manifest; nay, that the wonder is, that the earth does not refuse to bear them, and the sun to shine upon them any longer.' He doubts 'whether it should any longer be called a world, and not rather an abyss of all evils, wherewith those sodomites afflict his soul and his eyes both day and night.' 'Every thing is reversed, ' he laments, 'the world grows every day the worse for this teaching; and the misery of it is, that men are nowadays more covetous, more hard-hearted, more corrupt, more licentious, and more wicked, than of old under the Papacy.' 'Our evangelicals, ' he avows, 'are now sevenfold more wicked than they were before. In proportion as we hear the gospel, we steal, lie, cheat, gorge, swill, and commit every crime. If one devil has been driven out of us, seven worse ones have taken their place, to judge from the conduct of princes, lords, nobles, burgesses, and peasants, their utterly shameless acts, and their disregard of God and of his menaces.' 'Under the Papacy, men were charitable and gave freely; but now, under the gospel, all almsgiving is at an end, every one fleeces his neighbor, and each seeks to have all for himself. And the longer the gospel is preached, the deeper do men sink in avarice, pride, and ostentation.' So utterly, too, does he despair of the improvement of this generation of his disciples, that he 'often wishes that these filthy swine-bellies were back again under the tyranny of the.
