“Some pastors and preachers are lazy and no good. They do not pray; they do not study; they do not read; they do not search the Scripture… The call is: watch, study, attend to reading… [Y]ou cannot read too much in Scripture, what you read you cannot read too carefully, what you read carefully you cannot teach too well, what you teach well you cannot live too well… Therefore dear… pastors and preachers, pray, read, study, be diligent… This evil, shameful time is no season for being lazy, for sleeping, and snoring.”
–Martin Luther, WA 53, 218, as quoted by Fred W. Meuser in “Luther as Preacher of the Word of God,” in The Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther, Ed. Donald K. McKim (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 141.
