Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 7.djvu/60

 LUTHER

BEFORE THE DIET OF WORMS

(1520)


 * —I this day appear before you in all humility, according to your command, and I implore your majesty and your august highnesses, by the mercies of God, to listen with favor to the defense of a cause which I am well assured is just and right. I ask pardon, if by reason of my ignorance, I am wanting in the manners that befit a court; for I have not been brought up in king's palaces, but in the seclusion of a cloister.

Two questions were yesterday put to me by 38