how many ways one may consent to the open sin of another, for he consents who co-operates, who defends, who gives counsel, and sanctions, and also who neglects to threaten and rebuke.
Now, in regard to the interdict with which, on account of the sin of a single man, or of a number, the clergy vex Christ's common people—plebs.[1] For by the three censures, excommunication, suspension and interdict, for their own exaltation they keep the laity at their feet, increase their avarice, protect wickedness and prepare the way for antichrist. And all three censures they heap up on the ground of [as a punishment for] disobedience in this way, that every one that does not obey them and yield to their will, him they excommunicate or suspend from office, and when he continues to resist their will, they place the interdict over the people, interdicting the exercise of divine services, the display of the sacrament, burial—and these things they interdict to men altogether righteous, that they may carry out their will by the deliberate imposition of such burdens.
But this is an evident sign that these censures proceed from antichrist; and these they call in their legal proceeding fulminations when they are directed against those who preach Christ's law and who show up the wickedness of the clergy. A second sign is that these censures are multiplied on account of disobedience done to themselves rather than on account of disobedience done to God and, therefore, rather on account of the injury done to themselves than for the injury done to our God. For in this way the old enemy, skilled in wickedness, proceeds, by exalting obedience to antichrist above obedience to Christ, and so he usurps, for disobedience to himself, that excommunication which Christ instituted for disobedience to God.
- ↑ Luther, in his Address to the German Nobility, called for the abolition of the interdict altogether on the ground that it is a greater sin to silence God's Word and service than if we were to kill twenty popes at once, not to speak of a single priest.
