of truth rose against the title of the Emperor, “Most Gracious Lord,” for he said the Emperor was not graciously disposed toward him.  And in his frequent intercourse with those of rank, he showed a reckless frankness which more than once alarmed the courtiers.  In all reverence he spoke truths to his own prince such as only a great character may express and only a good-hearted one can listen to.  On the whole he cared little for the German princes, much as he esteemed a few.  Frequent and just were his complaints about their incapacity, their lawlessness, and their vices.  He also liked to treat the nobility with irony; the coarseness of most of them was highly distasteful to him.  He felt a democratic displeasure toward the hard and selfish jurists who managed the affairs of the princes, worked for favor, and harassed the poor; for the best of them he admitted only a very doubtful prospect of the mercy of God.  His whole heart, on the other hand, was with the oppressed.  He sometimes blamed the peasants for their stolidity, and their extortions in selling their grain, but he often praised their class, looked with cordial sympathy upon their hardships, and never forgot that by birth he belonged among them.

But all this belonged to the temporal order; he served the spiritual.  The popular conception was also firmly fixed in his mind that two controlling powers ought to rule the German nation in common—­the Church and the princes; and he was entirely right in proudly contrasting the sphere where lay his rights and duties with that of the temporal powers.  In his spiritual field there were solidarity, a spirit of sacrifice, and a wealth of ideals, while in secular affairs narrow selfishness, robbery, fraud, and weakness were to be found everywhere.  He fought vigorously lest the authorities should assume to control matters which concerned the pastor and the independence of the congregations.  He judged all policies according to what would benefit his faith, and according to the dictates of his Bible.  Where the Scriptures seemed endangered by worldly politics, he protested, caring little who was hit.  It was not his fault that he was strong and the princes were weak, and no blame attaches to him, the monk, the professor, the pastor, if the league of Protestant princes was weak as a herd of deer against the crafty policy of the Emperor.  He himself was well aware that Italian diplomacy was not his strong point.  If the active Landgrave of Hesse happened not to follow the advice of the clergy, Luther, in his heart, respected him all the more:  “He knows what he wants and succeeds, he has a fine sense of this world’s affairs.”