Marin Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg on 31 October 1517 and started a revolution !
It started on All Saints’ Eve, 1517, when Luther publicly objected to the way preacher Johann Tetzel was selling indulgences. These were documents prepared by the church and bought by individuals either for themselves or on behalf of the dead that would release them from punishment due to their sins. As Tetzel preached, “Once the coin into the coffer clings, a soul from purgatory heavenward springs!”
Luther questioned the church’s trafficking in indulgences and called for a public debate of 95 theses he had written. Instead, his 95 Theses spread across Germany as a call to reform, and the issue quickly became not indulgences but the authority of the church: Did the pope have the right to issue indulgences?
Events quickly accelerated. At a public debate in Leipzig in 1519, when Luther declared that “a simple layman armed with the Scriptures” was superior to both pope and councils without them, he was threatened with excommunication.
Luther replied to the threat with his three most important treatises: The Address to the Christian Nobility, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, and On the Freedom of a Christian. In the first, he argued that all Christians were priests, and he urged rulers to take up the cause of church reform. In the second, he reduced the seven sacraments to two (baptism and the Lord’s Supper). In the third, he told Christians they were free from the law (especially church laws) but bound in love to their neighbors.
October 29,2017
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, When you post today on Facebook or Instagram, you’ll likely reach thousands of folks very quickly. You’ll share a great idea or thought that could change the lives of many people.
Five hundred years ago, when you wanted to share your ideas, you posted them on the Church door. Martin Luther did just that, and probably didn’t have a clue that his post would turn the Church or his life upside down much less that his post would be celebrated for years to come.
This October 29, 2017 marks the 500th year since Martin Luther made his famous post. Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Ridgewood has planned a full day of special activities to mark this anniversary. Please join us at 155 Linwood Avenue, Ridgewood.
A communion worship service will be offered at 10:45 AM. A brunch is being offered at noon (Please sign up on our website, www.bethlehemchurch.live, so we can sure to have enough food). A festival worship is offered at 1:30 PM with the collaboration of the Ars Música Chorale directed by world renowned organist James Kennerley. A reception will follow for all to meet and greet the Chorale and the Bethlehem Congregation.
You don’t have to be Lutheran to attend, nor do you need to wear your Sunday best! This is an opportunity to hear great music, exhilarating organ selections from Mr. Kennerley and getting to hear about Jesus.
More information and the brunch registration may be found at www.bethlehemchurch.live. You may also call the church office at 201-444-3600 (ext. 200) with any questions.
Come Celebrate the post that changed the world!
Sun, October 29, 2017
Time: 1:30 PM
Location: Bethlehem Lutheran Church, 155 Linwood Ave., Ridgewood, NJ 07450
Don’t celebrate. This is an occasion of sorrow and grief. Luther’s was not a reformation. It was a ruthless deformation. False ecumenism is rife and the Holy See needs to stand up for the one true faith.
Religion has historically been the main cause of war and strife.
I see from the above post that it continues to be.
Religion is great from a social standpoint but ideologically it is poison.
Only blind fools need to be led, Intelligent human beings can themselves decide right and wrong.
Peace and bliss in this realm is a nice-to-have, 9:05am. Ultimately, though, the church militant must reject worldly things and focus on what’s to come. So many souls are in dire need of saving today. The children of Fatima were shown a vision in 1917 by the Virgin Mary where souls were falling into Hell like snowflakes in a snowstorm, forever to be denied the beatific vision. The “reformation” has led so many astray. This is why Luther’s actions are to be mourned. Luther knew that outside the church there is no salvation. His guilt therefore knows no bounds.
Catholic bishops are in true groupthink mode this week, revising history, whitewashing Luther and ignoring his foul writings and deeds.
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Lay Catholics, by contrast, are having none of it.
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https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/rosary-protesters-get-kicked-out-of-cathedral
LUTHER? NOT A REFORM BUT A REVOLUTION
by Gerhard L. Müller
There is great confusion today when we talk about Luther, and it needs to be said clearly that from the point of view of dogmatic theology, from the point of view of the doctrine of the Church, it wasn’t a reform at all but rather a revolution, that is, a total change of the foundations of the Catholic Faith.
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It is not realistic to argue that [Luther’s] intention was only to fight against abuses of indulgences or the sins of the Renaissance Church. Abuses and evil actions have always existed in the Church, not only during the Renaissance, and they still exist today. We are the holy Church because of the God’s grace and the Sacraments, but all the men of the Church are sinners, they all need forgiveness, contrition, and repentance.
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This distinction is very important. And in the book written by Luther in 1520, “De captivitate Babylonica ecclesiae,” it is absolutely clear that Luther has left behind all of the principles of the Catholic Faith, Sacred Scripture, the Apostolic Tradition, the magisterium of the Pope and the Councils, and of the episcopate. In this sense, he upended the concept of the homogeneous development of Christian doctrine as explained in the Middle Ages, even denying that a sacrament is an efficacious sign of the grace contained therein. He replaced this objective efficacy of the sacraments with a subjective faith. Here, Luther abolished five sacraments, and he also denied the Eucharist: the sacrificial character of the sacrament of the Eucharist, and the real conversion of the substance of bread and wine into the substance of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, he called the sacrament of episcopal ordination, the sacrament of Orders, an invention of the Pope — whom he called the Antichrist — and not part of the Church of Jesus Christ. Instead, we say that the sacramental hierarchy, in communion with the successor of Peter, is an essential element of the Catholic Church, and not only a principle of a human organization.
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That is why we cannot accept Luther’s reform being called a reform of the Church in a Catholic sense. Catholic reform is a renewal of faith lived in grace, in the renewal of customs, of ethics, a spiritual and moral renewal of Christians; not a new foundation, not a new Church.
It is therefore unacceptable to assert that Luther’s reform “was an event of the Holy Spirit.” On the contrary, it was against the Holy Spirit. Because the Holy Spirit helps the Church to maintain her continuity through the Church’s magisterium, above all in the service of the Petrine ministry: on Peter has Jesus founded His Church (Mt 16:18), which is “the Church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15). The Holy Spirit does not contradict Himself.
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We hear so many voices speaking too enthusiastically about Luther, not knowing exactly his theology, his polemics and the disastrous effect of this movement which destroyed the unity of millions of Christians with the Catholic Church. We can evaluate positively his good will, the lucid explanation of the shared mysteries of faith but not his statements against the Catholic Faith, especially with regard to the sacraments and hierarchical-apostolic structure of the Church.
Nor is it correct to assert that Luther initially had good intentions, meaning by this that it was the rigid attitude of the Church that pushed him down the wrong road. This is not true: Luther was intent on fighting against the selling of indulgences, but the goal was not indulgences as such, but as an element of the Sacrament of Penance.
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Nor is it true that the Church refused to dialogue: Luther first had a dispute with John Eck; then the Pope sent Cardinal Gaetano as a liaison to talk to him. We can discuss the methods, but when it comes to the substance of the doctrine, it must be stated that the authority of the Church did not make mistakes. Otherwise, one must argue that, for a thousand years, the Church has taught errors regarding the faith, when we know — and this is an essential element of doctrine — that the Church can not err in the transmission of salvation in the sacraments.
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One should not confuse personal mistakes and the sins of people in the Church with errors in doctrine and the sacraments. Those who do this believe that the Church is only an organization comprised of men and deny the principle that Jesus himself founded His Church and protects her in the transmission of the faith and grace in the sacraments through the Holy Spirit. His Church is not a merely human organization: it is the body of Christ, where the infallibility of the Council and the Pope exists in precisely described ways. All of the councils speak of the infallibility of the Magisterium, in setting forth the Catholic faith. Amid today’s confusion, in many people this reality has been overturned: they believe the Pope is infallible when he speaks privately, but then when the Popes throughout history have set forth the Catholic faith, they say it is fallible.
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Of course, 500 years have passed. It’s no longer the time for polemics but for seeking reconciliation: but not at the expense of truth. One should not create confusion. While on the one hand, we must be able to grasp the effectiveness of the Holy Spirit in these other non-Catholic Christians who have good will, and who have not personally committed this sin of separation from the Church, on the other we cannot change history, and what happened 500 years ago. It’s one thing to want to have good relations with non-Catholic Christians today, in order to bring us closer to a full communion with the Catholic hierarchy and with the acceptance of the Apostolic Tradition according to Catholic doctrine. It’s quite another thing to misunderstand or falsify what happened 500 years ago and the disastrous effect it had. An effect contrary to the will of God: “… that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that thou has sent me” (Jn 17:21).
MARTIN LUTHER: DEFENDER OF CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE?
The reformer sanctioned bigamy and adultery
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By T.J. Lang
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Martin Luther is typically acclaimed by Protestants as being one of the best Theologians in Christian history. However, it is in the little known teachings of the man that we discover whether he deserves his illustrious reputation as a Reformer of the church. As an example of the teachings of Luther which are little known to the public at large, let’s explore Luther’s teachings on marriage:
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First of all, Luther was not impressed with the way that Christianity had previously handled the matter of marriage. As Hartmann Grisar notes in his book Martin Luther: His Life and Work, Luther once said, “Not one of the Fathers ever wrote anything notable or particularly good concerning the married state.”
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Marriage had been a Sacrament of the Church since the days of the Apostles. In 1520, however, Luther decided it didn’t deserve that status. He reduced it simply to a secular matter. “Of any sacrament of matrimony he refused to hear,” notes Grisar, quoting Luther: “Know, that marriage is an outward, material thing like any other secular business.”
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And Robert Herndon Fife, in The Revolt and Martin Luther, wrote that “he finds no scriptural authority for the sacrament of marriage. The heathen have a true and valid marriage, and likewise the unbelievers who dwell among Christians.”
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This denigration of Christian marriage had a severe impact in the areas where Luther’s teachings had been put into practice. Grisar comments:
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Father Staphylus, who returned to the Catholic Church, wrote, in 1562: “So long as matrimony was looked upon as a Sacrament, modesty and an honorable married life was loved and prized, but since the people have read in Luther’s books that matrimony is a human invention … his advice has been put in practice in such a way that marriage is observed more chastely and honorably in Turkey than amongst our German Evangelicals.
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Here we can see the beginning of the devaluation of marriage in Western civilization. For Luther, the individual conscience had become the ultimate authority. The individual was responsible for the interpretation of Scripture. How can any church which holds to these beliefs possibly ever hold firm and oppose the ever shifting and declining moral opinions of the society?
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In 1539 Luther officially sanctioned the bigamous marriage of Prince Phillip of Hesse, his most powerful protector. A summary of the affair is as follows: The prevailing penalty for bigamy at the time was death, and yet Luther sanctioned the immoral bigamy, which flew in the face of 1,500 years of Christian Tradition. He did it in writing and in his role as the head of his Lutheran sect. Luther then counseled everyone involved to lie about it, and when the truth came out, he doubled down, refusing to admit his role.
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In appreciation for Luther’s sanction of his bigamy, Prince Philip sent him a “cartload of Rhenish wine” and “rather more than thirty pieces of silver.” In the end, Luther refused to admit that he had done anything wrong.
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Phillip was Luther’s most important secular defender. He intimated that he would abandon the cause of the Reformation and possibly even join the papal camp if Luther wouldn’t grant him the bigamy. In the end, Luther’s only regret was regarding the severe damage that was done to his cause once the bigamy became known. Interestingly, it was Luther who claimed that someone who lied on one matter should not be trusted in any: “He who tells a single lie is assuredly not of God and everything else he says is suspect.”
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In spite of this understanding, Luther was more than willing to justify his lie and then advise that others lie. As Henry Vedder wrote in his work The Reformation in Germany, the reformer “was now adding to his moral turpitude by professing a willingness to do any needful amount of hard lying to cover up his original fault. ‘What is it,’ said he, ‘if for the good and sake of the Christian Church one should tell a good, strong lie?'”
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All of those who were advised by Luther to keep the secret did so, to their discredit. The affair was revealed when documents belonging to the mother of the “additional wife” came into the hands of secular authorities.
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It was not the Christian Church that stood to lose credibility by Luther’s actions becoming known, but rather the Lutheran church — his church.
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The bigamy of Prince Philip is one of the better known of Luthers errors, no doubt because it caused such a stir at the time and resulted in a substantial portion of his followers deserting him. Unlike the standard Legend of Luther, the sanctioning of bigamy for Philip was not an isolated incident. Steven Ozment, in his work Protestants, The Birth of a Revolution, noted:
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Because of the importance attached to companionship in marriage, the reformers tolerated bigamous attachments, particularly among powerful rulers, whose protection they needed and whose reckless behavior they could not curb anyway. They also endorsed for the first time in Western Christendom genuine divorce and remarriage. … Luther personally preferred secret bigamy to divorce and remarriage, when a marriage had irretrievably broken down. He sanctioned such an arrangement for women with impotent husbands as early as 1521.
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Richard Marius, one of Luther’s best biographers, explains in A Christian Between God and Death even more troubling notions on marriage by the reformer:
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Some of Luther’s thoughts on marriage were radical. Suppose a man is impotent, says Luther, and unable to have sexual intercourse with his wife. He might give his wife her freedom to marry another. But at the very least he should grant her the liberty to have sexual intercourse with somebody else. … Marriage is not an institution where the husband owns the wife as though she were a slave. She has rights, including sexual rights. If the husband loves her, he should be willing to let someone else meet her sexual needs if he cannot do so himself.
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According to Luther, traditional Christian morality is trumped by the sexual desire of the individual — thus the beginning of religiously sanctioned sexual immorality.
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Another example of Luther’s odd interpretations of Scripture has to do with his changes to the traditional impediments to marriage. In 1522, Luther decided that the accepted traditional impediments to marriage were not scriptural, and thus must be revised.
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“[W]ith a good conscience before God I may marry the child of my brother or sister, or my stepmother’s sister,” he once declared. Since the Church had rejected Luther’s radical teachings, in his mind, anything the Catholic Church taught and had taught for centuries was suspect.
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“He recognized as valid only those impediments of consanguinity and affinity as set forth in Leviticus 18:6–18. This position made it possible for Luther to accept such previously forbidden marriages as those between first cousins, step-relations, and the siblings of deceased spouses and fiancées,” Ozment wrote. “According to Luther, ‘one may take as (one’s) spouse whomsoever (one) pleases.”
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Of course, this had unintended consequences. Ozment notes:
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In 1537, Nuremburg Protestant leaders Andreas Osiander and Lazarus Spengler reported disruptions in their city brought on by the new Protestant domestic reforms. According to Osiander, people in Nuremburg were marrying not only within relationships long forbidden by the church — as Lutheran teaching permitted them to do — but many “false saints” ignored traditional kinship barriers to sex and marriage altogether, threatening Nuremburg with the spectacle of “incestuous whoring and adultery” among the closest family members. Spengler reports rumors from outside the city that Nuremburgers “marry each other like dogs, with(out) discretion … judgment, and differentiation among the degrees of relationship between them.” Faced with such license and criticism, the city fathers had little choice but to re-impose traditional marriage practices.
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Clearly the Reformation, and especially the teachings of Luther, even in the first few decades after his revolt, had a destructive effect on the institution of marriage.
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Even more shocking is Luther’s recommendation that wives who refuse to perform their “conjugal duty” should be put to death by the state. Referencing 1 Corinthians 7:4–5, Luther stated:
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When one resists the other and refuses the conjugal duty she is robbing the other of the body she had bestowed upon him. This is really contrary to marriage, and dissolves the marriage. For this reason the civil government must compel the wife, or put her to death. If the government fails to act, the husband must reason that his wife has been stolen away and slain by robbers; he must seek another.
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Luther, as always, justifies his recommendations and actions by quoting Holy Scripture, providing an interpretation he personally developed and which was informed by his malformed conscience. In this case he provides an interpretation virtually no Christian church would support.
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Protestants are quick to point out that it was Catholic abuses of that which caused the Reformation. They tend to know little if anything, however, about the various un-Christian teachings and practices of the men who founded their own Protestant sects.
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At the Diet of Worms, Luther was declared an outlaw of the empire. The final draft of the charges against Luther sum up how he was viewed by the secular and religious leaders still faithful to the Church:
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He has sullied marriage, disparaged confession, and denied the Body and Blood of our Lord. He makes the sacraments depend on the faith of the recipient. He is pagan in his denial of free will. This devil in the habit of a monk has brought together ancient errors into one stinking puddle and has invented new ones. He denies the power of the keys and encourages the laity to wash their hands in the blood of the clergy. His teaching makes for rebellion, division, war, murder, robbery, arson, and the collapse of Christendom. … He does more harm to the civil than to the ecclesiastical power. We have labored with him, but he recognizes only the authority of Scripture, which he interprets in his own sense.
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Luther’s degradation of the Christian Sacrament of Marriage started a slide down a slippery slope on matters of Christian sexual morals. Many of the problems became obvious in his own day. By what authority did Luther presume to refute and change so much of Christian practice in regards to marriage? Although same-sex marriage was not an issue in the 16th century, it certainly is now. It can never be and will never be allowable in Catholic teaching. But it can in a Sola Scriptura tradition, and in fact is in many of them. That fact alone should cause tremendous concern in the various Sola Scriptura camps.
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Catholic leadership is generally aware of the truth about the early Reformation and how badly the Reformers have damaged the Christian Church and specifically, its unity, which leads to the question: Why is the Church taking part in events throughout the world that commemorate and actually seem to honor Martin Luther and the Reformation?
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T.J. Lang converted to Catholicism 25 years ago and has been studying the early Reformation ever since. He lives in rural Maryland and has four children and five grandchildren.
These quotes are taken directly out of Luther’s writings:
“I look upon God no better than a scoundrel”
(ref. Weimar, Vol. 1, Pg. 487. Cf. Table Talk, No. 963).
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“Christ committed adultery first of all with the women at the well about whom St. John tells us. Was not everybody about Him saying: ‘Whatever has He been doing with her?’ Secondly, with Mary Magdalen, and thirdly with the women taken in adultery whom He dismissed so lightly. Thus even, Christ who was so righteous, must have been guilty of fornication before He died.”
(ref. Trishreden, Weimer Edition, Vol. 2, Pg. 107. – What a great blasphemy from a man who is regarded as “great reformer”!).
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“I have greater confidence in my wife and my pupils than I have in Christ”
(ref. Table Talk, 2397b).
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“It does not matter how Christ behaved – what He taught is all that matters”
(ref. Erlangen Vol. 29, Pg. 126).
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“[The commandments] only purpose is to show man his impotence to do good and to teach him to despair of himself”
(ref: Denifle’s Luther et Lutheranisme, Etude Faite d’apres les sources. Translation by J. Paquier (Paris, A. Picard, 1912-13), Volume III, p. 364).
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“We must remove the Decalogue out of sight and heart”
(ref. De Wette 4, 188)
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“If we allow them – the Commandments – any influence in our conscience, they become the cloak of all evil, heresies and blasphemies”
(ref. Comm. ad Galat, p.310).
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“It is more important to guard against good works than against sin.”
(ref. Trischreden, Wittenberg Edition, Vol. VI., p. 160).
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“Good works are bad and are sin like the rest.”
(ref. Denifle’s Luther et Lutheranisme, Etude Faite d’apres les sources. Translation by J. Paquier (Paris, A. Picard, 1912-13), VOl. III, pg. 47).
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“There is no scandal greater, more dangerous, more venomous, than a good outward life, manifested by good works and a pious mode of life. That is the grand portal, the highway that leads to damnation.”
(ref. Denifle’s Luther et Lutheranisme, Etude Faite d’apres les sources. Translation by J. Paquier (Paris, A. Picard, 1912-13), VOl. II, pg. 128).
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“…with regard to God, and in all that bears on salvation or damnation, (man) has no ‘free-will’, but is a captive, prisoner and bond slave, either to the will of God, or to the will of Satan.”
(ref. From the essay, ‘Bondage of the Will,’ ‘Martin Luther: Selections From His Writings, ed. by Dillenberger, Anchor Books, 1962 p. 190).
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“Man is like a horse. Does God leap into the saddle? The horse is obedient and accommodates itself to every movement of the rider and goes whither he wills it. Does God throw down the reins? Then Satan leaps upon the back of the animal, which bends, goes and submits to the spurs and caprices of its new rider… Therefore, necessity, not free will, is the controlling principle of our conduct. God is the author of what is evil as well as of what is good, and, as He bestows happiness on those who merit it not, so also does He damn others who deserve not their fate.”
(ref. ‘De Servo Arbitrio’, 7, 113 seq., quoted by O’Hare, in ‘The Facts About Luther, TAN Books, 1987, pp. 266-267).
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“His (Judas) will was the work of God; God by His almighty power moved his will as He does all that is in this world.”
(ref. De servo Arbitrio, against man’s free will).
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“No good work happens as the result of one’s own wisdom; but everything must happen in a stupor . . . Reason must be left behind for it is the enemy of faith.”
(ref. Trischreden, Weimer VI, 143, 25-35).
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“Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides… No sin can separate us from Him, even if we were to kill or commit adultery thousands of times each day.”
(ref. ‘Let Your Sins Be Strong, from ‘The Wittenberg Project;’ ‘The Wartburg Segment’, translated by Erika Flores, from Dr. Martin Luther’s Saemmtliche Schriften, Letter No. 99, 1 Aug. 1521. – Cf. Also Denifle’s Luther et Lutheranisme, Etude Faite d’apres les sources. Translation by J. Paquier (Paris, A. Picard, 1912-13), VOl. II, pg. 404))
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“Do not ask anything of your conscience; and if it speaks, do not listen to it; if it insists, stifle it, amuse yourself; if necessary, commit some good big sin, in order to drive it away. Conscience is the voice of Satan, and it is necessary always to do just the contrary of what Satan wishes.”
(ref. J. Dollinger, La Reforme et les resultants qu’elle a produits. (Trans. E. Perrot, Paris, Gaume, 1848-49), Vol III, pg. 248).
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“Peasants are no better than straw. They will not hear the word and they are without sense; therefore they must be compelled to hear the crack of the whip and the whiz of bullets and it is only what they deserve.”
(ref. Erlangen Vol 24, Pg. 294).
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“To kill a peasant is not murder; it is helping to extinguish the conflagration. Let there be no half measures! Crush them! Cut their throats! Transfix them. Leave no stone unturned! To kill a peasant is to destroy a mad dog!” – “If they say that I am very hard and merciless, mercy be damned.Let whoever can stab, strangle, and kill them like mad dogs”
(ref. Erlangen Vol 24, Pg. 294).
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“Like the drivers of donkeys, who have to belabor the donkeys incessantly with rods and whips, or they will not obey, so must the ruler do with the people; they must drive, beat throttle, hang, burn, behead and torture, so as to make themselves feared and to keep the people in check.”
(ref. Erlangen Vol 15, Pg. 276).
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“If the husband is unwilling, there is another who is; if the wife is unwilling, then let the maid come.”
(ref. Of Married Life).
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“Suppose I should counsel the wife of an impotent man, with his consent, to give herself to another, say her husband’s brother, but to keep this marriage secret and to ascribe the children to the so-called putative father. The question is: Is such a women in a saved state? I answer, certainly.”
(ref. On Marriage).
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“It is not in opposition to the Holy Scriptures for a man to have several wives.”
(ref. De Wette, Vol. 2, p. 459).
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“The word and work of God is quite clear, viz., that women are made to be either wives or prostitutes.”
(ref. On Married Life).
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“In spite of all the good I say of married life, I will not grant so much to nature as to admit that there is no sin in it. .. no conjugal due is ever rendered without sin. The matrimonial duty is never performed without sin.”
(ref. Weimar, Vol 8. Pg. 654. In other words for Luther the matrimonial act is “a sin differing in nothing from adultery and fornication.” ibid. What then is the purpose of marriage for Luther you may ask? Luther affirms that it’s simply to satisfy one’s sexual cravings “The body asks for a women and must have it” or again “To marry is a remedy for fornication” – Grisar, “Luther”, vol. iv, pg. 145).
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“What harm could it do if a man told a good lusty lie in a worthy cause and for the sake of the Christian Churches?”
(ref. Lenz: Briefwechsel, Vol. 1. Pg. 373).
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“To lie in a case of necessity or for convenience or in excuse – such lying would not be against God; He was ready to take such lies on Himself”
(ref. Lenz: Briefwechsel, Vol. 1. Pg. 375).
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“St. Augustine or St. Ambrosius cannot be compared with me.”
(ref. Erlangen, Vol. 61, pg. 422).
“What I teach and write remains true even though the whole world should fall to pieces over it”
(ref. Weimar, Vol. 18, Pg. 401).