“I can dispute no longer with this beast; it has two wicked eyes and marvellous thoughts in its head.”

Luther’s view of the matter was much less complimentary.  He said of the legate,—­

“He knows no more about the Word than a donkey knows of harp-playing.”

In the next year, 1519, a discussion took place at Leipzig, between Luther on the one hand, aided by his friends Melanchthon and Carlstadt, and a zealous and talented ecclesiastic, Dr. Eck, on the other.  Eck was a vigorous debater,—­in person, in voice, and in opinion,—­but as Luther was not to be silenced by his argument, he ended by calling him “a gentile and publican,” and wending his way to Borne, where he expressed his opinion of the new movement, demanded that the heretic should be made to feel the heavy hand of church discipline.

Back he came soon to Germany, bearing a bull from the pope, in which were extracts from Luther’s writings stated to be heretical, and which must be publicly retracted within sixty days under threat of excommunication.  This the ardent agent tried to distribute through Germany, but to his surprise he found that Germany was in no humor to receive it.  Most of the magistrates forbade it to be made public.  Where it was posted upon the walls of any town, the people immediately tore it down.  In truth, Luther’s heresy had with extraordinary rapidity become the heresy of Germany, and he found himself with a nation at his back, a nation that admired his courage and supported his opinions.

His most decisive step was taken on the 10th of December, 1520.  On that day the faculty and students of the University of Wittenberg, convoked by him, met at the Elster gate of the town.  Here a funeral pile was built up by the students, one of the magistrates set fire to it, and Luther, amid approving shouts from the multitude, flung into the flames the pope’s bull, and with it the canonical law and the writings of Dr. Eck.  In this act he decisively broke loose from and defied the Church of Rome, sustained in his radical step of revolt apparently by all Wittenberg, and by a large body of converts to his views throughout Germany.

The bold reformer found friends not only among the lowly, but among the powerful.  The Elector of Saxony was on his side, and openly accused the pope of acting the unjust judge, by listening to one side and not the other, and of needlessly agitating the people by his bull.  Ulrich von Hutten, a favorite popular leader, was one of the zealous proselytes of the new doctrines.  Franz von Sickingen, a knight of celebrity, was another who offered Luther shelter, if necessary, in his castles.

And now came a turning-point in Luther’s career, the most dangerous crisis he was to reach, and the one that needed the utmost courage and most inflexible resolution to pass it in safety.  It was that which has become famous as the “Diet of Worms.”  Germany had gained a new emperor, Charles V., under whose sceptre the empire of Charlemagne was in great part restored, for his dominions included Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands.  This young monarch left Spain for Germany in 1521, and was no sooner there than he called a great diet, to meet at Worms, that the affairs of the empire might be regulated, and that in particular this religious controversy, which was troubling the public mind, should be settled.