if we appeal to Mary and the other saints before we appeal to Jesus himself, are we not effectively denying the Incarnation itself? Are we not saying that God incarnate never really came into this filthy world to be among us and to love us and suffer for us? For Luther, any appeal to Mary and the saints instead of to Jesus himself became a satanic twisting of the holiest and highest truth in the universe. It was therefore anti-Christ, and he knew that to expose it as such was the most important thing imaginable. In the end, he came to believe that the very devil had taken over the holy church
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