Concerning Christian Liberty | Page 7

my feelings, men whom I saw to be very far from
equal to myself--I, I say, not only gladly yielded, but even accepted it with joy and
gratitude, as the greatest kindness and benefit, if you should think it right to satisfy my
hopes.
Thus I come, most blessed Father, and in all abasement beseech you to put to your hand,
if it is possible, and impose a curb to those flatterers who are enemies of peace, while
they pretend peace. But there is no reason, most blessed Father, why any one should
assume that I am to utter a recantation, unless he prefers to involve the case in still greater
confusion. Moreover, I cannot bear with laws for the interpretation of the word of God,
since the word of God, which teaches liberty in all other things, ought not to be bound.
Saving these two things, there is nothing which I am not able, and most heartily willing,
to do or to suffer. I hate contention; I will challenge no one; in return I wish not to be
challenged; but, being challenged, I will not be dumb in the cause of Christ my Master.
For your Blessedness will be able by one short and easy word to call these controversies
before you and suppress them, and to impose silence and peace on both sides--a word
which I have ever longed to hear.
Therefore, Leo, my Father, beware of listening to those sirens who make you out to be
not simply a man, but partly a god, so that you can command and require whatever you
will. It will not happen so, nor will you prevail. You are the servant of servants, and more
than any other man, in a most pitiable and perilous position. Let not those men deceive
you who pretend that you are lord of the world; who will not allow any one to be a
Christian without your authority; who babble of your having power over heaven, hell,
and purgatory. These men are your enemies and are seeking your soul to destroy it, as
Isaiah says, "My people, they that call thee blessed are themselves deceiving thee." They
are in error who raise you above councils and the universal Church; they are in error who
attribute to you alone the right of interpreting Scripture. All these men are seeking to set
up their own impieties in the Church under your name, and alas! Satan has gained much
through them in the time of your predecessors.
In brief, trust not in any who exalt you, but in those who humiliate you. For this is the
judgment of God: "He hath cast down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the
humble." See how unlike Christ was to His successors, though all will have it that they
are His vicars. I fear that in truth very many of them have been in too serious a sense His
vicars, for a vicar represents a prince who is absent. Now if a pontiff rules while Christ is
absent and does not dwell in his heart, what else is he but a vicar of Christ? And then
what is that Church but a multitude without Christ? What indeed is such a vicar but
antichrist and an idol? How much more rightly did the Apostles speak, who call
themselves servants of a present Christ, not the vicars of an absent one!
Perhaps I am shamelessly bold in seeming to teach so great a head, by whom all men
ought to be taught, and from whom, as those plagues of yours boast, the thrones of judges
receive their sentence; but I imitate St. Bernard in his book concerning Considerations
addressed to Eugenius, a book which ought to be known by heart by every pontiff. I do
this, not from any desire to teach, but as a duty, from that simple and faithful solicitude
which teaches us to be anxious for all that is safe for our neighbours, and does not allow
considerations of worthiness or unworthiness to be entertained, being intent only on the

dangers or advantage of others. For since I know that your Blessedness is driven and
tossed by the waves at Rome, so that the depths of the sea press on you with infinite
perils, and that you are labouring under such a condition of misery that you need even the
least help from any the least brother, I do not seem to myself to be acting unsuitably if I
forget your majesty till I shall have fulfilled the office of charity. I will not flatter in so
serious and perilous a matter; and if in this you do not see that I am your friend and most
thoroughly your subject, there is One to see and judge.
In fine,