Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1521-1530.djvu/272

 ment, as clear. There is no reason, therefore, why anyone should reproach me with delay, for I have not delayed as long as St. Hilary * before he unsheathed his pen against the Arians. His long silence was not due to collusion, but to religious scruples, and I, too, was moved by a religious motive, though of another kind.

I often sigh to myself when I consider to what depths Chris- tian piety had fallen. The world had been numbed by cere- monies, bad monks reigned unpunished and had caught men's consciences in snares that could not be loosed. The- ology I to what trite sophistries had it descended? Audacity in making definitions had gone to the extreme. I shall not speak here of the bishops or the priests or of those who practiced tyranny under the name of the Roman Pope. And so I thought to myself, What if our diseases have deserved this unpleasant healer to cure with cuttings and cauteries the evil that cannot be cured with poultices and salves; what if it be God's will to use Luther as of old He used the Pharaohs, the Philistines, the Nebuchadnezzars and the Romans? It seemed that so much success could not be won without His favor, especially since a good part of the busi- ness was done by base men of prodigious folly. Thus I arrived at the decision to commit the outcome of this tragedy to Christ, doing only one thing meanwhile, viz., keeping everyone I could from taking sides, and soliciting both parties to come together, if possible, on fair terms, so that little by lit- tle peace might be restored.

I believed that my first attempts to accomplish this were not badly thought out. It was tried first at the Diet of Worms ; soon afterwards I urged the same course in a letter to the Emperor, then to Adrian VI and Qement VII," and, last of all, to his legate. Cardinal Campeggio.' The heads of the Lutheran party were approached to see if they could yield something, but I found them very stiff, and so averse to giv- ing up Bnything they had undertaken that they were con- stantly adding still harsher things to the harsh things that had gone before, and the princes of the other party thought best to decree that the dissension should be settled by force.

^HiUry of Poitiers. >Vol. I. p. 416. •Vol. I. pi 3x6.

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