The Pope usurpeth and taketh to himself the power to expound and to construe the Scriptures according to his pleasure.  What he saith, must stand and be spoken as from heaven.  Therefore let us love and preciously value the divine word, that thereby we may be able to resist the Devil and his swarm.

As often as I use in prayer the 16th verse of the 71st Psalm, (in our Prayer-book version), my thoughts especially revert to the subject of the right appreciation of the Scriptures, and in what sense the Bible may be called the word of God, and how and under what conditions the unity of the Spirit is translucent through the letter, which, read as the letter merely, is the word of this and that pious but fallible and imperfect man.  Alas for the superstition, where the words themselves are made to be the Spirit!  O might I live but to utter all my meditations on this most concerning point!

Ib. p. 12.

Bullinger said once in my hearing (said Luther) that he was earnest against the Anabaptists, as contemners of God’s word, and also against those which attributed too much to the literal word, for (said he) such do sin against God and his almighty power; as the Jews did in naming the ark, God.  But, (said he) whoso holdeth a mean between both, the same is taught what is the right use of the word and sacraments.

Whereupon (said Luther) I answered him and said; Bullinger, you err, you know neither yourself, nor what you hold; I mark well your tricks and fallacies:  Zuinglius and OEcolampadius likewise proceeded too far in the ungodly meaning:  but when Brentius withstood them, they then lessened their opinions, alleging, they did not reject the literal word, but only condemned certain gross abuses.  By this your error you cut in sunder and separate the word and the spirit, &c.

In my present state of mind, and with what light I now enjoy,—­(may God increase it, and cleanse it from the dark mist into the ‘lumen siccum’ of sincere knowledge!)—­I cannot persuade myself that this vehemence of our dear man of God against Bullinger, Zuinglius and OEcolampadius on this point could have had other origin, than his misconception of what they intended.  But Luther spoke often (I like him and love him all the better therefor,) in his moods and according to the mood.  Was not that a different mood, in which he called St. James’s Epistle a ’Jack-Straw poppet’; and even in this work selects one verse as the best in the whole letter,—­evidently meaning, the only verse of any great value?  Besides he accustomed himself to use the term, ‘the word,’ in a very wide sense when the narrower would have cramped him.  When he was on the point of rejecting the Apocalypse, then ‘the word’ meant the spirit of the Scriptures collectively.

Ib. p. 21.