Dilucida explicatio sanae doctrinae de vera participatione carnis & sanguinis Christi in sacra coena, ad discutiendas Heshusii nebulas

CHRISTI IN COENA.

furthermore of the Church of God which moves about in the world? When we know it, and it fights with us in prayers and is animated by our example, will its votes count for nothing with us? May this theater be mine, with whose approval I am content, even if the whole world displays me, I shall never fail in spirit: it is far from me to envy those insipid shouters if they enjoy their little crumb of glory in a dark corner for a short time. What is plausible to the world or hateful is not hidden from me, but to me nothing is of more value than to follow the standard prescribed by the Master. And I do not doubt that this sincerity will eventually be more pleasing to the pious and the sound than a flexible and soft method of teaching that wears the mask of empty fear. I beseech you, acknowledge what you owe to God and the Church, and pay it as soon as possible. And I do not insist on this part, as if I trust that I will be relieved by exonerating a portion of the envy onto you. Rather, if it were permitted, whatever burden already lies upon you, I would be prepared, for the sake of my love and respect for you, to take it upon my own shoulders. But it is for you to weigh this, so that I do not come as a monitor unless you have liberated all the pious who look to you from doubt, and you would hardly ever be in a position to pay. Add also that, unless this wild and evening crowing of the cock a reference to Peter's denial, urging Melanchthon to speak up wakes you, all will rightly call you sluggish. But regarding the promise, he calls me, and had given me cause for this in these words: "I HEAR now the ἀλεκτρυόνα rooster on the bank of the sacred river is forging a great σπλιτευτικὸν defamatory/invective volume against me: if it is published, I have decided to respond simply and without ambiguity: and I judge that I owe the labor to God and the Church." Nor in this old age do I fear exile and other dangers. This indeed is both ingenuous and manly: but in other letters