So it fit well with Luther’s thinking that if God were to bestow upon him—the unworthy sinner Luther—such a divine blessing, it must needs be done as he sat grunting in the “cloaca.” This was the ultimate antithesis to the gold and bejeweled splendor of papal Rome. There all was gilt, but here in Wittenberg it was all Scheisse. But the shit in its honesty as shit was very golden when compared to the pretense and artifice of Roman gold, which itself was indeed as shit when compared to the infinite worth of God’s grace. That was cheap grace, which was to say it was a truly satanic counterfeit.
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