"Wherefore, most Holy Father, I throw myself at the feet of your Holiness, and submit to you with all I have, and all I am. Destroy my cause, or embrace it; decide for me, or decide against me; take my life, or restore it to me, just as you please. I will recognise your voice as the voice of Jesus Christ, who presides and speaks by you. If I have deserved death I refuse not to die.487 The earth belongs unto the Lord, and all that it contains. Let him be praised to all eternity. Amen. May he sustain you for ever and ever. Amen.
"On the day of the Holy Trinity, in the year 1518.
"Friar Martin Luther, Augustin."
What humility and truth in this fear, or rather in this confession of Luther, that his young and boiling blood had perhaps been too quickly inflamed! We here recognise the man of sincerity, who, not presuming on himself, fears the influence of passion even in those of his actions which are most conformable to the word of God. There is a wide difference between this language and that of a proud fanatic. We see in Luther an earnest desire to gain over Leo to the cause of truth, to prevent all disruption, and make this reformation, the necessity of which he proclaims, come from the very pinnacle of the Church. Assuredly, he is not the person who ought to be charged with destroying in the West that unity, the loss of which was afterwards so much regretted. He sacrificed every thing in order to maintain it; every thing but truth. It was not he, but his adversaries, who, by refusing to acknowledge the fulness and sufficiency of the salvation wrought out by Jesus Christ, are chargeable with having rent the Saviour's robe at the foot of the cross.
After writing this letter, Luther, the very same day, addressed his friend Staupitz, vicar-general of his order. It was through him he wished his "Solutions" and his epistle to reach Leo.
"I pray you," says he to him, "kindly to accept the miserable things488 which I send you, and transmit them to the excellent pope, Leo X. Not that I would thereby drag you into the perils to which I am exposed. I wish to take all the danger to myself. Jesus Christ will see whether what I have said comes from him or comes from me—Jesus Christ, without whose will neither the tongue of the pope can move, nor the hearts of kings resolve.
"To those who threaten me I have no answer to give, unless it be the remark of Reuchlin, 'The poor man has nothing to fear, for he has nothing to lose.'489 I have neither money nor goods, and I ask none. If I once possessed some honour and some reputation, let him that has begun to strip me of them finish his work. I have nothing left but this miserable body, enfeebled by so many trials; let them kill it by force or fraud, to the glory of God. In this way they will, perhaps, shorten my life an hour or two. Enough for me to have a precious Redeemer, a powerful Priest, Jesus Christ the Lord! I will praise him while I have a breath of life; and if none will praise him with me, how can I help it?"
These words enable us to read Luther's heart.
While he was thus looking with confidence towards Rome, Rome had thoughts of vengeance towards him. On the 3rd of April, Cardinal Raphael De Rovere had written to the Elector Frederick in the pope's name, stating that suspicions were entertained of his faith, and that he ought to beware of protecting Luther.
"Cardinal Raphael," says Luther, "would have had great pleasure in seeing me burned by Duke Frederick."490 Thus Rome began to whet her arms against Luther, and the first blow which she aimed at him was through the mind of his protector. If she succeeded in destroying the shelter under which the monk of Wittemberg was reposing, he would become an easy prey.
The German princes attached much importance to their reputation as Christian princes. The slightest suspicion of heresy filled them with alarm, and the court of Rome had shrewdly availed itself of this feeling. Frederick, moreover, had always been attached to the religion of his fathers, and Raphael's letter made a very strong impression on his mind. But it was a principle with the Elector not to act hastily in any thing. He knew that truth was not always on the side of the strongest. The transactions of the empire with Rome had taught him to distrust the selfish views of that court; and he was aware that in order to be a Christian prince, it was not necessary to be the pope's slave.
"He was not," says Melancthon, "one of those profane spirits who wish to stifle all changes in their first beginnings.491 Frederick resigned himself to God. He carefully read the writings which were published, and what he judged true he allowed no one to destroy."492 He had power to do so. Supreme in his own States, he was respected in the empire at least as highly as the emperor himself.
It is probable that Luther learned something of this letter of Cardinal Raphael, which was sent to the Elector on the 7th of July. Perhaps it was the prospect of excommunication which this Roman missive seemed to presage, that led him to mount the pulpit of Wittemberg on the 15th of the same month, and on this subject deliver a discourse which made a profound impression. He distinguished between internal and external excommunication; the former excluding from communion with God, and the latter excluding only from the ceremonies of the Church. "Nobody," says he, "can reconcile a lapsed soul with God save God himself. Nobody can separate man from communion with God unless it be man himself by his own sins! Happy he who dies unjustly excommunicated! While for righteousness' sake he endures a heavy infliction on the part of man, he receives the crown of eternal felicity from the hand of God."
Some highly applauded this bold language, while others were more irritated by it. But Luther was no longer alone; and although his faith needed no other support than that of God, a phalanx of defence against his enemies was formed around him. The Germans had heard the voice of the Reformer. His discourses and his writings sent forth flashes which awoke and illumined his contemporaries. The energy of his faith fell in torrents of fire on slumbering hearts. The life which God had infused into this extraordinary soul was imparted to the dead body of the Church; and Christendom, which had for so many ages been motionless, was animated with a religious enthusiasm. The devotedness of the people to the superstitions of Rome diminished every day, and the number of hands which offered money for the purchase of pardon became fewer and fewer,493 while at the same time Luther's fame continued to increase. People turned towards him, and hailed him with love and respect as the intrepid defender of truth and liberty.494 No doubt the full depth of the doctrines which he announced was not perceived. It was enough for the greater number to know that the new doctor withstood the pope, and that the empire of priests and monks was shaken by his powerful word. To them the attack of Luther was like one of those fires which are kindled on mountain tops, as the signal for a whole nation to rise and burst its chains. Before the Reformer suspected what he had done, all the generous hearted among his countrymen had already acknowledged him for their leader. To many, however, the appearance of Luther was something more. The word of God, which he wielded with so much power, pierced their minds like a sharp two-edged sword; and their hearts were inflamed with an ardent desire to obtain the assurance of pardon and eternal life. Since primitive times the Church had not known such hungering and thirsting after righteousness. If the preaching of Peter the Hermit and Bernard so aroused the population of the middle ages as to make them take up a perishable cross, the preaching of Luther disposed