For those who have the tools and the time for an historical puzzle. I'm trying to figure out who this Wolfgang Herman is that Johannes Brenz refers to below. This has to do with the notorious saying that without the church the scriptures have no more authority than Aesop's fables. I'm having a tough time tracking this with so little of the information in English (French, Latin probably German). The below comes from Johannes Brenz, In Apologiam Confessionis Wirtenbergensis (1555; 1590 ed. is at Classic Protestant Texts if you have access). It is hard to tell quotations and commentary but I think I have them tagged right; the Sotus is Pedro de Soto. I inferred that Wolfgang Herman was noted in some preface to some work of do Soto's but I'm not sure after a lot of hunting. A french work gives the literature on the charge which I will post later; but it says Brenz adduces the quotation and it seems he simply says everyone knows about it. But I haven't found any written source prior to Brenz.
Sed absolvamus tandem hunc catalogum, si priùs unum adhuc & alterum testimonium Soti adiecerimus, ut intelligamus, quanti momenti habeatur apud Asoticos sacra Scriptura.
Imò verò, inquit Sotus, illud etiam constitit, tantò verbum Dei digniùs à Deo tradi, quantò remotiùs AB OMNI SCRIPTURA, imò etiam AB OMNI VOCALI VERBO, quando scilicet sola divina revelatione sine ulla imagine & phantasmate ab eo infunditur cordibus.
Et cùm in epistola nuncupatoria recitassem dictum Wolffgangi cuiusdam Hermanni, quod publicè extat, de scriptura collata cum fabulis Aesopi, si destituatur autoritate ecclesiae, ibi Sotus, homo scilicet modestus, non gaudet tali comparatione, sed interea non improbat sententiam. Sic enim scribit:
Rough mostly not particularly helpful Google translation:
But at last this a catalog to be absolved, if the first one until now and the testimony of the other companion was added to it, that we may understand, how important should be Asoticos with Sacred Scripture.
Indeed, Yes, Sotus, take that also to he stood, so much more worthy of the word of God from God, to be delivered to, How much farther removed from the All Scripture, AB, yea, in too of all, in vocal words, namely, when only the divinerevelation, without any use of the imagination and the image of him is poured into our hearts.
And when, being in the Epistle Dedicatory read the Wolffgangi has been said of a certain Hermann, which the public is extant, compared with the scripture out of the fables of Aesop, if deprived of authority of the Church, where he says Sotus, a modest man, namely, does not delight in such a comparison, but in the meantime does not disapprove the sentence. He writes as thus:
Sed absolvamus tandem hunc catalogum, si priùs unum adhuc & alterum testimonium Soti adiecerimus, ut intelligamus, quanti momenti habeatur apud Asoticos sacra Scriptura.
Imò verò, inquit Sotus, illud etiam constitit, tantò verbum Dei digniùs à Deo tradi, quantò remotiùs AB OMNI SCRIPTURA, imò etiam AB OMNI VOCALI VERBO, quando scilicet sola divina revelatione sine ulla imagine & phantasmate ab eo infunditur cordibus.
Et cùm in epistola nuncupatoria recitassem dictum Wolffgangi cuiusdam Hermanni, quod publicè extat, de scriptura collata cum fabulis Aesopi, si destituatur autoritate ecclesiae, ibi Sotus, homo scilicet modestus, non gaudet tali comparatione, sed interea non improbat sententiam. Sic enim scribit:
Citat (Brentius) dixisse quendam, Scripturam, si destituatur autoritate ecclesiae, valere sicut fabulas Aesopi. Hoc nos non diximus, nec certè gaudemus simili comparatione. Quamvis si Catholicus aliquis hoc asservit, ad id fortè referri voluit, quod Augustinus contra Epistolam Fundamenti dixit: Si de autotitate ecclesiae in ciperem dubitare, vel illi in aliqua re non credere, multò magis tune de autoritate scripturae dubitarem, &c. Et mox addit Asotus. Dicamus igitur modestiùs, sine autoritate ecclesiae Scriptura sacra non habet autoritatem, hoc certissimè fatemur.
Hactenus verba Soti. Vides ergo Sotum non improbare sententiam impii illius dicti de fabulis Aesopi, sed solummodò non delectari hoc genere sermonis.
Rough mostly not particularly helpful Google translation:
But at last this a catalog to be absolved, if the first one until now and the testimony of the other companion was added to it, that we may understand, how important should be Asoticos with Sacred Scripture.
Indeed, Yes, Sotus, take that also to he stood, so much more worthy of the word of God from God, to be delivered to, How much farther removed from the All Scripture, AB, yea, in too of all, in vocal words, namely, when only the divinerevelation, without any use of the imagination and the image of him is poured into our hearts.
And when, being in the Epistle Dedicatory read the Wolffgangi has been said of a certain Hermann, which the public is extant, compared with the scripture out of the fables of Aesop, if deprived of authority of the Church, where he says Sotus, a modest man, namely, does not delight in such a comparison, but in the meantime does not disapprove the sentence. He writes as thus:
He summons the (Brent) to have said of a particular man the scripture, that if he is deprived of authority of the Church, health, even as the fables of Aesop. This is what we did not maintain, nor a certain we are delighted with a similar point of comparison. Although if this PRESERVE catholics hold someone, perhaps a few to be referred to that he wished that Augustine against the Letter of the Foundation said: "If out of the of the church in autotitate ciperem to doubt, or that in some thing not to believe, much more then I doubted but about the authority of Scripture, & c. And later, after he adds profligate. Let us say, therefore, a more moderate one, without authority of the Church does not have the holy Scripture the authority of, this most certainly confesse.
So much for the words of the companion. You see, therefore Sotum does not disapprove the opinion of these have been said of the wicked out of the fables of Aesop, but only not to take pleasure in this kind of discourse.
