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Home  »  Respectfully Quoted  »  Martin Luther (1483–1546)

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.

 
NUMBER: 239
AUTHOR: Martin Luther (1483–1546)
QUOTATION: I would advise no one to send his child where the Holy Scriptures are not supreme. Every institution that does not unceasingly pursue the study of God’s word becomes corrupt. Because of this we can see what kind of people they become in the universities and what they are like now. Nobody is to blame for this except the pope, the bishops, and the prelates, who are all charged with training young people. The universities only ought to turn out men who are experts in the Holy Scriptures, men who can become bishops and priests, and stand in the front line against heretics, the devil, and all the world. But where do you find that? I greatly fear that the universities, unless they teach the Holy Scriptures diligently and impress them on the young students, are wide gates to hell.
ATTRIBUTION: MARTIN LUTHER,To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation Concerning the Reform of the Christian Estate, 1520,” trans. Charles M. Jacobs, rev. James Atkinson, The Christian in Society, I (Luther’s Works, ed. James Atkinson, vol. 44), p. 207 (1966).
SUBJECTS: Colleges and universities