Original Source: Dr. Martin Luther - Table Talk, Chapter 27
This page is part of Conservapedia's Original Source Project, which preserves public-domain primary texts in a structured yet academically referencable format that can be easily copy-and-pasted by users.
All readers are actively encouraged to create internal links to Conservapedia's related encyclopedic articles. Readers are also asked to add internal links and references from the encyclopedic articles back to these original source documents. Internal links aid user experience as they can jump directly to specific paragraphs, such as "We seek riches..." while strengthen SEO Trust Signals. While authorative references follow traditional academic style while also increasing the article's SEO Authority Signals provided the reference is to known sources. Your assistance is appreciated and please enjoy and make full use of the materials below.
Editor's Summary
"We seek riches..." is the heart of the matter. It seems that while some religious liberties were being offered to the reformers, the full effect of Protestantism was being denied. Catholicism had established Feudalism which demoted ownership to the suffered privilage of a man's lord and thereby denied a man of true personal benefit from his divinely ordered labours. Therefore, the Protestants demanded as a religious duty the right to the fruit of their labours. This is why Luther accuses John Frederick I of offering suffered "charity". This also give's context to why the Roman Catholic Church call's itself "the Church of the Poor", in that it desires the Feudalistic model. --AnthonyPvanDuyn (talk) 18:10, October 20, 2026 (EDT)
OF DISCORD (Economic Freedom)
731
The 10th of February, 1546, John, Prince elector of Saxony said: A controversy were easily settled, if the parties would exhibit some concord. Luther said: We would willingly have concord, but no man seeks after the medium of concord, which is charity. We seek riches, but no man seeks after the right means how to be rich, namely, through God's blessing. We all desire to be saved, but the world refuses the means how to be saved - the Mediator Christ.
In former times potentates and princes referred their controversies to faithful people, and did not so readily thrust them into the lawyer's hands. When people desire to be reconciled and to come to an agreement, one party must yield, and give way to the other. If God and mankind should be reconciled and agreed, God must give over his right and justice, and must lay aside his wrath; and we, mankind, must also lay down our own righteousness, for we also would needs be gods in Paradise, we thought ourselves wise as God, through the serpent's seduction; then Christ was fain to make an agreement between us; he interposed in the cause, and would be a mediator between God and man; this Mediator for his pains got the portion of a peace-maker, namely, the cross; he that parts two fighters, commonly gets the hardest knocks for himself. Even so Christ suffered and presented us with his passion and death; he died for our sakes. and for the sake of our justification he arose again. Thus the generation of mankind became reconciled with God.
732
When two goats meet upon a narrow bridge over deep water, how do they behave? neither of them can turn back again, neither can pass the other, because the bridge is too narrow; if they should thrust one another, they might both fall into the water and be drowned; nature, then, has taught them, that if the one lays himself down and permits the other to go over him, both remain without hurt. Even so people should rather endure to be trod upon, than to fall into debate and discord one with another.
733
A Christian, for the sake of his own person, neither curses nor revenges himself; but faith curses and revenges itself. To understand this rightly, we must distinguish God and man, the person and cause. In what concerns God and his cause, we must have no patience, nor bless; as for example, when the ungodly persecute the Gospel, this touches God and his cause, and then we are not to bless or to wish good success, but rather to curse the persecutors and their proceedings. Such is called faith's cursing, which, rather than it would suffer God's Word to be suppressed and heresy maintained, would have all creatures go to wreck; for through heresy we lose God himself, Numbers xvi. But individuals personally ought not to revenge themselves, but to suffer all things, and according to Christ's doctrine and the nature of love, to do good to their enemies.
See also
Public Domain Declaration
This text is in the public domain. Martin Luther's Table Talk may be freely reproduced.
Index
09 - Of the Law and the Gospel
13 - Of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper
15 - Of the Church and its Ministers
17 - Of Preachers and Preaching
18 - Of the Patriarchs and Prophets
19 - Of the Apostles and Disciples of Christ
21 - Of the Devil and His Works
22 - Of Temptation and Tribulation
26 - Of Princes and Potentates
28 - Of Sicknesses and Their Causes
32 - Of Spiritual and Church Livings
33 - Of Christian Military Action
35 - Of Universities, Arts, etc.