Valentine Ickelsamer, an Anabaptist opponent of Luther’s, reminds him in his writing in defence of Carlstadt in 1525,[326] that Holy Scripture says: “By their works you shall know them.” Even while studying at Wittenberg [a few years before] he had been obliged to appeal to this “text of Matthew septimo,” out of disgust at the riotous life people led there; “they had, however, always found a convenient method of explaining it away, or got out of the difficulty by the help of some paltry gloss.” “You also,” he says to Luther, “loudly complained that we blamed only the faults on your side. No, we do not judge, or blame any sinner as you do; but what we do say is that where Christian faith is not productive of Christian works, there the faith is neither rightly preached nor rightly accepted.”
It is true that this corrector of the public morals could only point to a pretence of works among his own party, and in weighing his evidence against Luther allowance must be made for his prejudice against him. Still, his words give some idea of the character of the protests made against the Wittenberg preachers in the prints of that time. He approves of the marriage of the clergy who had joined Luther’s party, and refuses to open his eyes to what was taking place among the Anabaptists themselves: “They” [your preachers], he says, “threaten and force the poor people by fair, or rather foul and tyrannical, means, to feed their prostitutes, for these clerical fellows judge it better to keep a light woman than a wedded wife, because they are anxious about their external appearance.... Such declare that whoever accuses them of keeping prostitutes lies like a scoundrel.... But if such are not the worst fornicators and knaves, let the fiend fly away with me. I often wonder whether the devil is ever out of temper now, for he has the whole of the preacher folk on his side; on their part there has been nothing but deception.” Were the people to seize the preachers “by the scruff of their neck” on account of their wickedness, then they would call themselves martyrs, and say that Christ had foretold their persecution; true enough the other mad priests [the Catholics] were “clearly messengers and satellites of the devil”; nevertheless he could not help being angered by Luther’s “rich, uncouth, effeminate, whoremongering mob of preachers,” who were so uncharitable in their ways and “who yet pretended to be Christians.”[327]