Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1507-1521.djvu/551

 is also unacceptable and would be most destructive to our cause, which would get no profit thereby.

Your Lordship must not think that we thought out or p^^ pared the way for these four startling propositions; on the contrary, we protested against any recantation other than in the form prescribed by us. Nevertheless, the archbishop said that as he saw that Luther had refused our questions put to him by the official, he had made this offer to Luther, to induce him, in any possible way, to take back even a small part of his errors, which would have turned the whole people against him. But the archbishop remarked that it had never come into his mind that his proposals would be in the least binding, save in so far as the papal authority allowed theffl, and that he would have previously given us notice of them. But Luther spared him this trouble by positively refusing from the very first to entertain these proposals, all of which he declared suspicious. Nor need we be surprised at this, for the Emperor's confessor told us this morning that ten days ago he had given Luther to understand that if he would recant the already condemned theses and the manifest er- rors, some means would be found tacitly to allow a discus- sion of the other points until the decision of a council, but that Luther had sent him word that he would not trust in councils, which perhaps might do something to improve Chris- tian morals, but had always treated the gospel truth evilly.

As to the archbishop, when he saw such obstinacy and when his official warned him that he ran the risk of severe blame if Martin should have closed with one of his offers, he at once hastened to the Emperor, whither we im- mediately followed him, and laid down the commission he had undertaken. He seemed to thank his Creator that he had come out of it without any scandal. We really believe that he acted with the best intentions, for he has always done his duty and so has his official, and he has shown himself a true servant of the Pope and the Holy See. Then the Emperor commissioned his Secretary Maximilian [des Berghes], the Official of Trier, and the Austrian Chancellor* and two wit-

Maximilian, went to the Netherlands to lay before Charles some complainta of the
 * Dr. John Schneidpeck, Chancellor of the Lower Austrian government under

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