Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1507-1521.djvu/508

 been printed, and yet nothing is found except that I said I would prefer Luther corrected than put to death, while there was yet hope that he might devote himself to better things.

• • •

[The second half of this letter is an expansion of the same thoughts and a repetition of the letter to Albert of Mayence, November i, 1519.]

430. ULRICH VON HUTTEN TO EMPEROR CHARLES V. AT

WORMS.

Booking, ii. 38. Ebernburg, March 27, 1521.

If, O Emperor, you determined to do some great and mem- orable injury to the common good of Germany, we Germans, on account of the affection we bear you, would do our best to oppose you as though you were taking upon yourself some great danger, for we would take it ill that you treated our interests either to your own peril or to your disadvantage. And should we not do this the more because, deceived by error, you would, to the incomparable loss of Germany, go to your own ruin? For what else is the cause of Luther lead- ing to than the suppression of our liberty, the overturning of the state and the trampling under foot. of your dignity? Wherefore I think that we should all strive with our might to recall you from the path you are treading with so much dan- ger both to the state and to yourself, and that we should ex- hort and pray you to take courage worthy of your race and your fortune. . . . For what unjuster thing could you do than that which these fellows demand, namely, that you should not give Luther when he arrives a chance of explain- ing his cause, and what could be more calamitous or a worse example to us than that the asserter of the public liberty should be punished? And yet they are striving to get you to do both, and it is said they have extorted from you an edict forbidding his books to be read,. . . They accuse Lu- ther of heresy not considering what crimes that involves; but they accuse him and shout that he should be condemned unheard. . . . For supposing Luther were not the man who with great zeal had brought back the evangelic truth, and had preached it with infinite pains, and had defended your dignity against those who despised it, and had guarded the liberty of

�� �