art, be a man at
Rome, or here, or elsewhere. It is a nauseating lie,[26] and
Christ is made a liar when it is said that the Church[25], is in
Rome, or is bound to Rome--or even that the head and the
authority are there by divine right.

Moreover, in Matthew xxiv. He foretold the gross deception which
now rules under the name of the Roman Church, when He says: "Many
false prophets and false Christs shall come in My name, saying: I
am Christ; and shall deceive many, and show great signs, that if
possible they shall deceive the very elect. Wherefore, if they
shall say unto you: Behold, in the secret chambers is Christ,
believe it not; behold, He is in the desert, go not forth.
Behold, I have told you before." [Matt. 24:24-26] Is this not a
cruel error, when the unity of the Christian Church[25],
separated by Christ Himself from all material and temporal cities
and places, and transferred to spiritual realms, is included by
these preachers of dreams in material communities,[27] which must
of necessity be bound to localities and places. How is it
possible, or whose reason can grasp it, that spiritual unity and
material unity should be one and the same? There are those among
Christians who are in the external assembly and unity, who yet by
their sins exclude themselves from the inner, spiritual unity.

Therefore, whosoever maintains that an external assembly or an
outward unity makes a Church,[25] sets forth arbitrarily what is
merely his own opinion, and whoever endeavors to prove it by the
Scriptures, brings divine truth to the support of his lies, and
makes God a false witness, just as does this miserable Romanist,
who explains everything that is written concerning the Church[28]
as meaning the outward show of Roman power; and yet he cannot
deny that the large majority of these people, particularly in
Rome itself, because of unbelief and evil lives, is not in the
spiritual unity, i. e., the true Church.[28] For if to be in the
external Roman unity made men true Christians, there would be no
sinners among them, neither would they need faith nor the grace
of God to make them Christians; this external unity would be
enough.

[Sidenote: What Makes a Christian]

From this we conclude, and the conclusion is inevitable, that
just as being in the Roman unity does not make one a Christian,
so being outside of that unity does not make one a heretic or
unchristian. I should like to hear who would dispute this. For
that which