United States or Cameroon ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"My good fellow," he said, "it is my business to know everything that is worth knowing in my trade. There are very few noble houses in France that can hope to hold any secrets from me. You may take my word for it that is how matters stand." Staupitz and his five swordsmen sat silent and puzzled, leaving the ball of conversation to be tossed between Cocardasse, Passepoil, and Æsop.
"I don't believe in secret thrusts," he said, decisively. The Gascon moved a little away from Staupitz and a little nearer to Æsop, whom he looked at fixedly. The hunchback sustained his gaze with his habitual air of cold indifference. Cocardasse spoke: "You will, if you ever face Louis de Nevers. Now, Passepoil, here, and I, we are, I believe, held in general repute as pretty good swordsmen "
But from that time forward everything moved toward general regeneration by means of that marrow doctrine of the Gospel: Salvation by loving faith in the merit and mediation of Jesus alone. Staupitz counseled the young monk to study the Scriptures well and whatever could aid him in their right understanding, and gave orders to the monastery not to interfere with his studies.
Encouraged by what he conceived to be the sympathy of his comrades, Pepe renewed the attack. "Come, Staupitz, come," he questioned, "are not those swords long enough and sharp enough to scare the devil?" Staupitz struck the table again. "No, no, my children," he said, "not for this job.
Staupitz, the vicar of his order, had really gratified him in permitting him to go to Rome as the traveling companion of another monk. Luther had expressed the wish to make a general confession at Rome. With this thought on his mind he started out, and he treated the whole journey as a pilgrimage.
He remembered that too sharp an edge gets only full of notches, and that, as he had already been told by Staupitz, God first shuts the eyes of those He wishes to plague. To begin a war now would be dangerous even to their enemies; the beginning would lead to no progress, the war to no victory. To Melancthon he spoke, using a coarse German proverb, about a man who 'died of threatening.
From both of these, though many had already declaimed against him as a heretic, he met with a most friendly and obliging reception. His relations, moreover, at Heidelberg with his fellow-members of the Order, and, above all, with Staupitz, remained unclouded.
Sharp conflicts and controversies were not to his taste; but mildly and discreetly he sought to plant, in his own field of work, and to leave what he had planted in God's name to grow up. It was during his visits to Erfurt that Staupitz came in contact with the gifted, thoughtful, and melancholy young monk.
I remember how Doctor Staupitz used to say to me: "I have promised God a thousand times that I would become a better man, but I never kept my promise. From now on I am not going to make any more vows. Experience has taught me that I cannot keep them. Unless God is merciful to me for Christ's sake and grants unto me a blessed departure, I shall not be able to stand before Him."
He also, as Luther reported to Staupitz, wished that Luther had some other place to be in, but he advised him against going away so hastily to France. His own wish and counsel, however, he refrained as yet from making known. Luther declared that at all events, if a ban of excommunication were to come from Rome, he would not remain longer at Wittenberg.
Word Of The Day