Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/124

 S6 Readings in Europeati History Luther summoned to Worms. promote sedition, discord, war, murder, robbery, and arson, and tend toward the complete downfall of the Christian faith. For he teaches a loose, self-willed life, severed from all laws and wholly brutish ; and he is a loose, self-willed man, who condemns and rejects all laws ; for he has shown no fear or shame in burning publicly the decretals and canon law. And had he feared the secular sword no more than the ban and penalties of the pope, he would have committed much worse offenses against the civil law. 13. He does not blush to speak publicly against holy councils, and to abuse and insult them at will. Especially has he everywhere bitterly attacked the Council of Constance with his foul mouth, and calls it a synagogue of Satan, to the shame and disgrace of the whole Church and of the German nation. . . . And he has fallen into such madness of spirit as to boast that if Huss were a heretic then he is ten times a heretic. 14. But all the other innumerable wickednesses of Luther must, for brevity's sake, remain unreckoned. This fellow ap- pears to be not so much a man as the wicked demon in the form of a man and under a monk's cowl. He has collected many heresies of the worst heretics, long since condemned and forgotten, together with some newly invented ones, in one stinking pool, under pretext of preaching faith, which he extols with so great industry in order that he may ruin the true and genuine faith, and under the name and appear- ance of evangelical doctrine overturn and destroy all evan- gelical peace and love, as well as all righteous order and the most excellent hierarchy of the Church. . . . 16. And now, particularly on account of these things, we have summoned here to Worms the electors, princes, and estates of this our Holy Empire, and carefully examined the aforesaid matters with great diligence, as evident necessity demands, and with unanimous advice and consent of all, we decree what follows. 17. Although one so condemned and persisting in his obstinate perversity, separated from the rites of the Christian Church and a manifest heretic, is denied a hearing under