Irenicum, to the lovers of truth and peace heart-divisions opened in the causes and…

Our God, our Father, our Master, our Saviour, stands by looking on us. It is a most excellent passage that I find in an Epistle of Luther to the Ministers of Nuremberg. There were great divisions amongst them: he writes to them that he might pacify their spirits one towards another. Suppose (says ⟨p. 279⟩he) you saw Jesus Christ standing before you,¹ and by his very eyes speaking thus unto your hearts, What do you, O my dear children, whom I have redeemed with my blood, whom I have begotten again by my Word, to that end that you might love one another? Know that this is the note of my Disciples. Leave this business, ye wholly cast it upon me, Isle look to it, there is no danger that the Church should suffer by this, though it should be stilled, yea though it should dye, but there is a great deal of danger if you dissent amongst your selves, if you bite one another: Do not thus sadden my spirit, do not thus spoil the holy Angels of their joy in Heaven; am not I more to you, then all matters that are between you? then all your affections? then all your offences? What? can any words of a brother, can any unjust trouble penetrate your hearts, stick so fast in you as my wounds, as my blood, as all that I am to you, your Saviour Jesus Christ? Oh that we had such real apprehensions of Christ looking upon us, speaking to us!