cessation; and even in his last years he treated the hot-headed Henry of Brunswick like a naughty school-boy.  “Clown” was the mildest of many dramatic characters in which he represented him.  When, later, such outpourings of excessive zeal stared at him from the printed page, and his friends complained, he would be vexed at his rudeness, upbraid himself, and honestly repent.  But repentance availed little, for on the next occasion he would commit the same fault; and Spalatin had some reason to look distrustfully upon a projected publication even when Luther proposed to write very gently and tamely.  His opponents could not equal him in his field.  They called names with equal vigor, but they lacked his inward freedom.  Unfortunately it cannot be denied that this little appendage to the moral dignity of his nature was sometimes the spice which made his writings so irresistible to the honest Germans of the sixteenth century.

In the autumn of 1517 he had got into a quarrel with a reprobate Dominican friar; in the winter of 1520 he burned the Pope’s bull.  In the spring of 1518 he had prostrated himself at the feet of the Vicar of Christ; in the spring of 1521 he declared at the Diet of Worms, before the emperor and the princes and the papal legates, that he believed neither the Pope nor the Councils alone, only the testimony of the Holy Scripture and the interpretation of reason.  Now he was free, but excommunication and outlawry hovered over his head.  He was inwardly free, but he was free as the beast of the forest is free, and behind him bayed the blood-thirsty pack.  He had reached the culminating point of his life, and the powers against which he had revolted, even the thoughts which he himself had aroused among the people, were working from now on against his life and doctrine.

Even at Worms, so it appears, it had been made clear to Luther that he must disappear for a while.  The customs of the Franconian Knights, among whom he had faithful followers, suggested the idea of having him spirited away by armed men.  Elector Frederick, with his faithful friends, discussed the abduction, and it was quite after the manner of this prince that he himself did not wish to know the place of retreat, in order to be able, in case of need, to swear to his ignorance.  Nor was it easy to win Luther over to the plan, for his bold heart had long ago overcome earthly fear; and with an enthusiastic joy, in which there was much fanaticism and some humor, he watched the attempts of the Romanists to put out of the way a man of whom Another must dispose, He who spoke through his lips.

Unwillingly he submitted.  The secret was not easy to keep, however skilfully the abduction had been planned.  At first none of the Wittenbergers but Melanchthon knew where he was.  But Luther was the last man to submit to even the best-intentioned intrigue.  Very soon an active communication arose between the Wartburg and Wittenberg.  No matter how much caution was used in delivering the letters,