ld
have it appear that they are dealing with me in the Scriptures.
Tell me, my dear Romanists, all of you melted together into one
heap, where is there so much as one letter in the Scriptures
concerning this love of which you dream? If your vile brew of
Leipzig[75] could speak, it would easily overcome such
feather-brains, and speak better than you do of love.

But let us follow this matter further. If there must needs be
some sort of love in the papacy, what becomes of it when a pope
does not love Christ at all, and seeks in it only his own gain
and honor? And there have been many such, yea, almost all since
the beginning of the papacy. You have not escaped me yet--you
must confess that the papacy has not always existed, it has often
perished, because it was ofttimes without love. But if it had
been established by divine right, in these words of Christ, it
would not have perished. Twist and turn as you will, these words
will not yield a papacy; or else the papacy must cease in
Christendom whenever the pope is without love. Now you have said
yourself that the person may be evil, but the office remains;
again you admit, and must admit, that the office is nothing if
the person be evil--or you must let "feeding the sheep" be
something else than the papacy. And this is true; let us see what
you can bring against it.

[Sidenote: A Shepherd's Love]

But let every one beware of the poisoned tongues and
devil-glosses which can invent a love of such description.
Christ speaks of the highest, strongest, best love of which man
is capable. He will not be loved with a false, divided love; here
there must be whole-hearted and pure love, or none at all. And
the meaning of Christ is that in St. Peter's person He is
instructing all preachers how they must be equipped; as if He
would say: "See, Peter, if you shall preach My word, and thereby
feed My sheep, there shall rise against you the powers of hell,
devil, world, and all that therein is, and you must be willing to
venture body, life, goods, honor, friends, and everything which
you have; and this you will not do if you do not love Me and
cleave close to Me. And if you should begin to preach, and the
sheep were being fed in the pastures, and the wolves would break
in, and you would then flee as a hireling, and not venture your
life, but leave the sheep without care, to the wolves [John 10:12
ff.], it would have been better that you had never begun to
preach and feed the sheep."