ermany. What he had said about the
use and abuse of indulgences had not inflamed the nation. But the
appeal to Scripture was definite and clear, and it met many objections
and many causes of opposition.

When Luther was discussing the value of indulgences here and in the
other world he meant no more and saw no farther. But now he saw the
chasm, and possessed a principle on which to found his theology, his
ethics, his politics, his theory of Church and State, and he proceeded
to expound his ideas thoroughly in three celebrated works, known as
his Reformation Tracts, which appeared in 1520. Luther's fundamental
doctrine had come to him in early life, not from books, but from a
friend. When all the efforts and resources of monastic criticism had
led him only to despair, one of the brethren told him that his own
works could not bring relief from the sense of unforgiven sin, but
only faith in the merits of Christ. He found such comfort in this
idea, which became the doctrine of imputation, and he grasped it with
such energy that it has transformed the world. Predestination seemed
to follow logically, and the rejection of free-will; and, as the
office of the ordained priest became superfluous, the universal
priesthood, with the denial of Prelacy. All this was fully worked out
in the writings of 1520.

Luther was unconscious at first of the tremendous revolution he was
preparing, because he found satisfaction in the strong language of St.
Bernard. Under the shadow of the greatest doctor of the medieval
church he felt assured of safety. And when he spoke of the Bible
only, that was not textually more than had been said by Scotus and
others, such as Erasmus, and quite lately the Bishop of Isernia at the
Lateran Council. He did not start with a system or an apostolate; but
now that his prodigious power as a writer of German had been revealed,
he rejoiced in the conflict. He obtained his opportunity at the Diet
of Worms. The young Emperor had come over from Spain to receive the
crown, and he had accepted the Bull of Leo against Luther. At that
moment he was on friendly terms with Rome, but his chancellor,
Gattinara, warned him that the people throughout Germany favoured the
reformer; and Tunstall wrote to Wolsey that 100,000 men would give
their lives rather than let him be sacrificed to the Papacy. Even at
Mentz, an episcopal city, the Nuncio Aleander was in danger of being
stoned. "The conflicts of Church and St