their souls may be saved, as my patron St. Jerome, appropri- ately advised should be done against Vigilantius.^
Indeed I know not what more I could have done or the Pope could have desired at the beginning, as all the enemies of the faith are convinced. First of all, I procured an im- perial decree* for the execution of the papal judgment, which was published and with the effectual aid of which that which I have just written you was done against Luther's books. It is true that in many places it was done with great difficulty on account of the disturbing violence of the Lutherans, yet it was done everywhere with salutary and holy intentions, not from hatred or revenge, as the Lutherans do, but, so help me God, only to defend our faith. . . . Wherefore I hope, and surely believe, that the little boat of Peter, which has con- quered the Syrtes of the Photinian* heresy, the Nestorian Charybdis and the Arian Symplegades, in short the assaults of all errors, will also easily overcome the Lutheran floods, and that Luther and all his aiders and abettors will soon suffer the merited punishment. . . .
402. MELANCHTHON TO JOHN HESS AT BRESLAU. Corpus reformatorum, i. 284. (WrrxENBERG), February 20, 1521.
I do not see the cause of your writing so little to us at this time unless you think that you ought not on account of the Pope. If this is true, Hess, where is your Christian courage? Where is your old strength of soul? How can you, who know that Luther stands for piety and truth, yet hesitate ? Schleupner has left Leipsic in fear for a safe place ; if his example has won you away from us I shall be doubly angry with him. But I hardly know whether other reasons invited him to Leipsic. Martin still lives and flourishes in spite of the rage and roars of Leo, whom people have be- lieved omnipotent hitherto.
No one here approves the bull of Eck except those who
^On this see Jerome's polemic against Vii^ilantitis, translated in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed. P. Schaff and H. Wace. Series ii., vol. ▼!., p. 4i7ff.
sAleander means the one he got in the Netherlands in September, though this was only good in the hereditary dominions of Charles.
'So called from Photinus, Bishop of Sirmium, condemned for his doctrine of Christ's person at Antioch, 345.
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