sively. And if I call what they are doing by its name, I only do my duty and what I cannot refrain from doing because I believe in God and in the Christian teaching. If they call the exposure of their imposture 'blasphemy,' that only shows the strength of their deception, and should increase the efforts to destroy this deception, made by those who believe in God and in Christ's teaching, and who see that this deception hides the true God from men's sight.
They should say of Christ—who drove bulls and sheep and dealers from the temple—that he blasphemed. Were he to come now, and see what is done in his name in church, he would surely, with yet greater and most just anger, throw out all these horrible altar-cloths,[1] lances, crosses, and cups and candles and icons and all the things wherewith the priests—carrying on their sorcery—hide God and his truth from mankind.
So that is what is true and what is untrue in the Synod's Edict about me. I certainly do not believe in what they say they believe in. But I believe in much they wish to persuade people that I disbelieve in.
I believe in this: I believe in God, whom I understand as Spirit, as Love, as the Source of all. I believe that he is in me and I in him. I believe that the will of God is most clearly and intelligibly expressed in the teaching of the man Jesus, whom to consider as God, and pray to, I esteem the greatest blasphemy. I believe that man's true welfare lies in fulfilling God's will, and his will is that men should love one another, and should consequently do to others as they wish others to do to them—of which it is said in the Gospels that in this is the law and the prophets. I believe, therefore, that the meaning of the life of every man is to be found only in increasing the love that is in him;
- ↑ The altar-cloths referred to are those containing fragments of holy relics, on which alone mass can be celebrated. The 'lances' are diminutive ones with which the priest cuts bits out of the holy bread, in remembrance of the lance that pierced Christ's side.
