I
LUTHER'S PREFACE TO THE FIRST PART OF HIS GERMAN WORKS[1]
EDITION OF 1539
I would gladly have seen all my books forgotten and destroyed; if only for the reason that I am afraid of the example.[2] For I see what benefit it has brought to the churches, that men have begun to collect many books and great libraries, outside and alongside of the Holy Scriptures; and have begun especially to scramble together, without any distinction, all sorts of "Fathers," "Councils," and "Doctors." Not only has good time been wasted, and the study of the Scriptures neglected; but the pure understanding of the divine Word is lost, until at last the Bible has come to lie forgotten in the dust under the bench.
Although it is both useful and necessary that the writings of some of the Fathers and the decrees of some of the Councils should be preserved as witnesses and records, nevertheless, I think, est modus in rebus,[3] and it is no pity that the books of many of the Fathers and Councils have, by God's grace, been lost. If they had all remained, one could scarce go in or out for books, and we should still have nothing better than we find in the Holy Scriptures.
Then, too, it was our intention and our hope, when we began to put the Bible into German, that there would be
- ↑ Text as given in the Berlin Edition of Buchwald and others, Vol. I, pp. ix ff.
- ↑ i. e. The example set by preserving and collecting them.
- ↑ "There is moderation in all things."
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