Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1521-1530.djvu/165

 safe-conduct given to him to go to Worms would be broken. Who doubts that he would have been deservedly punished if the Emperor and the peers had wished it ; but how could the Emperor, or any honorable Christian, ever intend to violate public faith? Wonders that the Germans can bear such dis- grace from a good-for-nothing friar. The more the King feels indignant at it, the less he is moved by the lies about himself, of which he has read those in Latin, and heard of those in German. It is no new thing for him to make use of any lie to excite the people against their princes, and he has already collected a band of wicked men for the same object. No faction was ever so universally pernicious as this Lutheran conspiracy, which profanes sacred things, preaches Christ so as to trample on His sacraments, boasts of the grace of God so as to destroy free will, extols faith so as to give license to sin, and places the inevitable cause of evils in the only good God. The poison is producing dissension in the Church, weakening the power of the laws and of the magistrates, ex- citing the laity against the clergy, and both against the Pope, and has no other end than to instigate the people to make war on the nobles, while the enemies of Christ look on with laughter. Refers to the progress of Mohammedanism and the Bohemian sect. Princes must assist in preventing these evils, and must not consider the matter merely scholastic. It is their duty, more than others, as they are nearest to the danger, and can most easily crush it before it increases.

Luther writes in more than one place that he has been chosen by God to preach this doctrine, which alone he calls the Gospel; but they will easily perceive that he shows no reasons why he should be thought to understand the Gospel better than the old Saints and doctors of the Church, all of whose interpretations he despises, in comparison with his own, while he rejects what has been handed down by tradition from the Apostles.

His doctrine is like that of WycliflFe, which, he doubts not, they abhor, as German princes and their progenitors endeav- ored to exterminate it, and have confined it to Bohemia. Feels sure they will prevent it from flooding Saxony and the whole of Germany.

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