Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1507-1521.djvu/432

 studies on the subject. In his new blasphemous book on the Babylonian captivity, this Mohammed says that there are no distinctions among Christian men; that where the Pope can dispense, every simple layman has full freedom both for himself and for his neighbor, and other monstrosities which I fear to repeat. At the close of my address, all the members of the council were for us. . ..

On the same day the Bishop of Liege gave a dinner to Chievres and other princes, to which he also invited me. We talked much of Luther's writings. There was present a cer- tain magnate who had Luther's popular works in his head and was deeply tinctured with heresy, but whose name, as long as I am here, I dare not trust to paper, as little as I dare to set down that of another still more powerful and still worse heretic, for by so doing I might, if they found it out while I was still in Germany, bring a storm about my head. This gentleman, after we had risen from table and closed the doors, brought up many points, which I was able to answer in the hearing of all with such skill that he was com- pletely won for us, though I do not know whether he will remain so. Finally, Chievres and all the others were much edified, and began to hope that the affair was at last getting on the right track.

The whole complicated affair should not be treated in such a way as to arouse the doubts of the court or the displeasure of the Saxon Elector or of his friends, nor even should it be guided by the wish to make them more complaisant to our Lord the Pope in other matters. So I earnestly begged Chievres and the other ministers not to confound the matter of faith with other special interests on which the Pope and Emperor were negotiating, for the latter would suffer severe losses should the Lutheran doctrine spread wider. For as in his last book Luther sets out to kill all obedience to the spiritual authorities, so he secretly wished to do against the temporal powers. I clearly proved this from his book, and the proof greatly helped our side.

Yesterday morning after the consecration of the Arch- bishop of Palermo,^ at which the Emperor, the court and the

^John de Carondelet, Primate of Sicily, a Burgundian, who attained high

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