the true Church[44] and is but a human ordinance.

Therefore I would advise this Romanist to go to school another
year, and to learn what the Church or the head of the Church[44]
really means, before he drives out the poor heretics with
writings of such height, depth, breadth and length. It grieves me
to the heart that we must suffer these mad saints to tear asunder
and blaspheme the Holy Scriptures with such insolence, license,
and shamelessness, and that they make bold to deal with the
Scriptures, whereas they are not fit to care for a herd of swine.
Heretofore I have held that where something was to be proved by
the Scriptures, the Scriptures quoted must really refer to the
point at issue. I learn now that it is enough to throw many
passages together helter-skelter, whether they are fit or not. If
this is to be the way, then I can easily prove from the
Scriptures that beer is better than wine.[45]

Of the same character is his statement in both his Latin and his
German treatise[46] that Christ is the head of the Turks,
heathen, Christians, heretics, robbers, harlots and knaves. It
would be no wonder if all the stone and timber in the cloister
stared and hooted this miserable wretch to death for his horrible
blasphemy. What shall I say? Has Christ become a keeper of all
the houses of shame, a head of all the murderers, of all
heretics, of all rogues? Woe unto thee, thou miserable wretch,
that thou thus holdest up thy Lord for all the world to
blaspheme! The poor man would write about the head of
Christendom, and in utter madness imagines that "head" and "Lord"
are one and the same. Christ is, indeed, Lord of all things, of
all the good and the evil, of the angels and the devils, the
virgins and the harlots; but He is not the head, except only of
the good, believing Christians, assembled in the spirit. For a
head must be united with its body, as I showed above from St.
Paul in Ephesians iv,[47] and the members must cleave to the head
and receive from it their activity and life. For this reason
Christ cannot be the head of an evil community, although it is
subject unto Him as Lord; even as His kingdom, namely
Christendom, is not a bodily community or kingdom, yet all things
are subject unto Him, be they spiritual or bodily, of hell or of
heaven.

Thus in his first argument this reviler vilified and slandered
me; in this second argument he reviled Christ much more than me.
For even if he thinks much of his own holy