“Stop your complaining, stop your doctoring; this tumult has arisen and is direct from above, and it will not cease till it makes all the adversaries of the Word like the mud on the streets. But it is sad to have to remind a theologian like you of these things, as if you were a pupil instead of one who ought to be teaching others.”

“How is it then that your theologians drivel like people in their second childhood.”

“Now, you can stand it when your body emits a stench before you realize it, or when it festers and becomes pussy and completely pollutes your skin. You make allowances for all this. In fact, this only increases your concern and love for your body; you wait on it and wash it, and you endure and help in every way you can. Why not do the same with the spouse whom God has given you, who is an even greater treasure and whom you have even more reason to love?”

“Daily there have to be many troubles and trials in every house, city, and country. No station in life is free of suffering and pain, both from your own, like your wife or children or household help or subjects, and from the outside, from your neighbors and all sorts of accidental trouble.”

“She catches hold, then of this word "nothing," and stabs at it with a multitude of words and examples, and by means of a suitable interpretation, reduces it to this, that "nothing" can mean the same as "only a little thing" or "an imperfect thing;" she expounds in other words what the Sophists have hitherto taught regarding this passage: "Apart from me you can do nothing," that is to say "nothing perfectly.”

“These words of yours, devoid of Christ, devoid of Spirit, are colder than ice itself, so that they tarnish the beauty of your eloquence. Perhaps they were dragged out of you, poor fellow, by fear of the pontiffs and tyrants, lest you should seem altogether an atheist!”

“Thus, dear friends, I have said it clearly enough, and I believe you ought to understand it and not make liberty a law...”