ble to assure me
five years ago that there was nothing in the Sacrament but bread and
wine, he would have done me the greatest service. I then endured such a
severe temptation and so struggled and writhed, that I would willingly
have been delivered, for I plainly saw that by it I could have dealt
the heaviest blow against the Papacy; but I am fast and cannot get out.
The text is too powerful here and will not suffer itself to be wrested
of its meaning by words." The thing, which had especially awakened his
dislike to the Zwinglian view, and which he does not here tell us, was
the circumstance, that, before Zwingli had yet expressed himself
publicly in regard to the Lord's Supper, Doctor Carlstadt had come out
in Saxony with a still bolder interpretation, by which he attempted to
break up the connection of Christ's own words of institution in such a
way, that half of them lost all their meaning. In a violent work, that
met with approval in many places, he then spread abroad this
interpretation. This Carlstadt was to Luther a glowingly-hated stone of
offence, which everywhere laid in his way. Whilst Luther was in the
Wartburg, he had headed the furious image-stormers in Wittemberg. He
now made his home in Orlamuend, where he supplanted the preacher,
disregarded all the ordinances of the Elector, and excited the people
to such a degree, that when Luther went into the country, at the
command of the Prince, to restore order, he was pelted with dirt and
stones, and pursued with the cry: "Drive off, in the name of a thousand
devils, and break your neck!" Deprived of his situation, after such
doings, Carlstadt went to Strassburg, and then to Switzerland.
Meanwhile, his writings were forbidden by the Council at Strassburg.
Zwingli, on the other hand, declared this to be unjust, because
Carlstadt's writings contained neither godless nor fanatical errors.
Henceforth Luther began to transfer his hatred against Carlstadt more
and more to Zwingli, although the latter, in his work, "On true and
false Religion," only excused Carlstadt's interpretation, but in no
wise approved, rather assailed it; and when [OE]colampadius also issued
his treatise on the Lord's Supper, Luther came out openly in the most
passionate letters against the Swiss Reformers. "For myself," says
he, in one of them, "I confess, that I do not think Zwingli a Christian
with all his doctrines, for he holds and teaches no part of the
Christian faith rightly, and has bec