Quotes from Martin Luther

I have covenanted with my Lord that He should not send visions, or dreams or even angels! I am content with this gift of the Scriptures, which teaches and supplies all that is necessary both for this life and that which is to come.

faith is a free work to which no one can be forced. Heresy is a spiritual matter and cannot be prevented by constraint. Force may avail either to strengthen alike faith and heresy, or to break down integrity and turn a heretic into a hypocrite who confesses with his lips what he does not believe in his heart. Better to let men err than to drive them to lie".

There is no person on earth so bad that he does not have something about him that is praiseworthy. Why is it, then, that we leave the good out of sight and feast our eyes on the unclean things? It is as though we enjoyed only looking at — if you will pardon the expression — a man's behind.

If I go back home to Wittenberg, I'll lie down in a coffin and give the maggots a fat doctor to eat.

It did not please me, either, that the Christians and the princes were driven, urged, and irritated into attacking the Turk and making war on him, before they amended their own ways and lived like true Christians.

The Jews supposed that the Messiah would be the sovereign of the world. In reality, He was to become the Savior of the world.

We rightly confess, in our articles of belief, that there is a holy church; for it is invisible, dwelling in a place that none can attain unto, and therefore her holiness cannot be seen; for God doth so hide and cover her with infirmities, with errors, with divers forms of the cross and offences, that according to the judgment of reason, it is nowhere to be seen.

People give ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon. Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system, which of all systems is of course the very best. This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but the sacred scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, not the earth.

Learn to believe that Christ was given, not for picayune and imaginary transgressions, but for mountainous sins; not for one or two, but for all; not for sins that can be discarded, but for sins that are stubbornly ingrained.

The Law terrorizes the conscience. The Law reveals the wrath and judgment of God. The Gospel does not threaten. The Gospel announces that Christ is come to forgive the sins of the world. The Gospel conveys to us the inestimable treasures of God.

She catches hold, then of this word "nothing," and stabs at it with a multitude of words and examples, and by means of a suitable interpretation, reduces it to this, that "nothing" can mean the same as "only a little thing" or "an imperfect thing;" she expounds in other words what the Sophists have hitherto taught regarding this passage: "Apart from me you can do nothing," that is to say "nothing perfectly.

God is our Father and our God, but only in Christ Jesus.