We move past several talks here, to eventually land on Elder Sterling W. Sill's talk, "Thou Shalt Not" - yet another talk featuring the Ten Commandments, which seemed to be something of a theme in 1971.
The Quote
"Sin is more than ordinarily important,
for as Martin Luther once said,
“One vice can overcome ten virtues.”
Yes, depending on the vice, that's true. A reputation can still be quickly ruined for even a single offense online today, no matter how hard a person works or how good they are before that point. It seems unfair, but that's what often happens. Yet at other times, people somehow overlook the vice to some extent.
So did Martin Luther actually say this, and where did he say it? Or something like it?
Martin Luther's Table Talk
And so I came upon an item I didn't know existed. I knew that Martin Luther had nailed up his 97 Theses to the door of the All-Saints Church in Wittenburg, Germany (which maybe was true or maybe not, kind of like Washington and the cherry tree). But I didn't know about his other writings.
This book, his Table Talk, is really interesting. It seems to contain a lot of his sayings and wisdom, along with some personal stories of his life. And it appears that he did say something along the lines of the quote that ended up in the Conference talk.
In Section CCCXCVIII (398) of the chapter entitled 'Of Preachers and Preaching', he said the following:
"The defects in a preacher are soon spied;
let a preacher be endued with ten virtues,
and but one fault,
yet this one will eclipse and darken all his virtues and gifts,
so evil is the world in these times.
Dr. Justus Jonas has all the good virtues and qualities a man may have;
yet merely because he hums and spits,
the people cannot bear that good and honest man."
Intriguing. I may peruse this source a bit further.
And yes, you're welcome for searching through all those Roman numerals to find just the spot - although I have to admit a bit of help from this handy-dandy Roman numeral converter.
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