Friday, September 24, 2010

We Are All Priests

"Because we are all priests of equal standing, no one must push himself forward and take it upon himself, without our consent and election, to do that for which we all have equal authority. ... there is no true basic difference between laymen and priests, princes and bishops, between religious and secular, except for the sake of office and work, but not for the sake of status. ... Christ does not have two different bodies, one temporal, the other spiritual.  There is but one Head and one body."

Luther, "To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation", written in 1520.

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