Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1507-1521.djvu/493

 Chievres, as seemed to me most judicious, that I did not know exactly what he was alluding to with his generalizations. But I could not refrain from answering boldly to his expression "your Pope/' that if they were Christians the Pope was just as much their lord as ours, and that with all their power they had better avoid the wrath of Grod "who takes princes in their pride,"^ and that they should not, as though careless of their duty, mix the affair of the faith with private and tem- poral interests. He replied that they had no intention of destroying the faith, that I only need note carefully what he had said, and he added, smiling, that for himself he did not think the suppression of the Lutheran movement would be so extremely difficult. Then I said to him straight out that if they were not very careful they would soon see such a con- flagration throughout the world as all the water in their German Ocean could not put out.

We live in evil times, when men show so little respect for God and his true vicegerent, and everyone turns his con- science according to his need, and if occasion comes up their confessors encourage them not to fear ecclesiastical punish- ment and to despise that which it is their duty to esteem highly. I know what I say, for I have seen it, without wishing to, for some time, but I can't tell it all in my letters. I only pray his Holiness most earnestly to conduct the Roman policy with the greatest circumspection, at least until we have finished with this Lutheran question, so that no offence be given to these people. I mean the Emperor and his court and the whole German nation.

I notice that the favor for Luther shown by the princes and estates at the Diet has considerably cooled off, and I see clearly that, as many assure me and as I myself would hardly have believed, this is the result of my oration on Ash Wednesday, for these princes and nobles had only read Luther's slanderous attacks on Pope and clergy, but not his expressions about the sacraments and his avowal of all the doctrines of John Huss. Since I pointed that out before a numerous assembly on the ground of his own writings, very many of the princes abhor him, and only the hatred for Rome stands in the way of en-

^Ptalm IxxTi. 13.

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