John Hilten censured the most flagrant abuses of the monastic life, and the exasperated monks threw him into prison and treated him shamefully.  “The Franciscan, forgetting his malady and groaning heavily, replied:  ’I bear your insults calmly for the love of Christ; for I have said nothing that can injure the monastic state:  I have only censured its most crying abuses.’  ‘But,’ continued he (according to what Melancthon records in his Apology for the Augsburg Confession of Faith), ’another man will rise in the year of our Lord 1516:  he will destroy you, and you shall not be able to resist him.’”

In 1516 Luther held a public discussion with Feld-kirchen, in which he upheld certain doctrines of truth that made a great stir among the Romanists.  Says D’Aubigne:  “The disputation took place in 1516.  This was Luther’s first attack upon the dominion of the sophists and upon the Papacy, as he himself characterizes it.”  And again, “This disputation made a great noise, and it has been considered as the beginning of the reformation.”  Book I, Chap. 9.  The next year, however, he entered publicly upon the actual work of reformation.

Frederick of Saxony, surnamed the Wise, was the most powerful elector of the German empire at the period of the reformation.  A dream he had and related just before the world was startled by the first great act of reformation is so striking that I feel justified in repeating it in this connection.  It was as follows: 

“Having gone to bed last night, tired and dispirited, I soon fell asleep after saying my prayers, and slept calmly for about two hours and a half.  I then awoke, and all kinds of thoughts occupied me until midnight....  I then fell asleep again, and dreamed the Almighty sent me a monk, who was a true son of Paul the apostle.  He was accompanied by all the saints, in obedience to God’s command, to bear him testimony, and to assure me that he did not come with any fraudulent design, but that all he should do was conformable to the will of God.  They asked my gracious permission to let him write something on the doors of the palace-chapel at Wittemberg, which I conceded through my chancellor.  Upon this, the monk retired thither and began to write; so large were the characters that I could read from Schweinitz what he was writing [about 18 miles].  The pen he used was so long that its extremity reached as far as Rome, where it pierced the ears of a lion which lay there, and shook the triple crown on the Pope’s head.  All the cardinals and princes ran up hastily and endeavored to support it....  I stretched out my arm:  that moment I awoke with my arm extended, in great alarm and very angry with this monk, who could not guide his pen better.  I recovered myself a little....  It was only a dream.  I was still half asleep, and once more closed my eyes.  The dream came again.  The lion, still disturbed by the pen, began to roar with all his might, until the whole city of Rome, and all the States of the