rs now must feast,
'Fore all the crowd of Simonists,
Whose waxing number no man wists,
The towns and thorps seem full of them,
And in all lands they're seen with shame.
Their violence and knavery
Leave not a church or living free.

A prose pamphlet, apparently published about the summer of 1520,
shortly after Luther's ex-communication, was the so-called "Wolf Song"
(_Wolf-gesang_), which paints the enemies of Luther as wolves. It
begins with a screed on the creation and fall of Adam, and a
dissertation on the dogma of the Redemption; and then proceeds: "As
one might say, dear brother, instruct me, for there is now in our
times so great commotion in faith come upon us. There is one in Saxony
who is called Luther, of whom many pious and honest folk tell how that
he doth write so consolingly the good evangelical (_evangelische_)
truth. But again I hear that the Pope and the cardinals at Rome have
put him under the ban as a heretic; and certain of our own preachers,
too, scold him from their pulpits as a knave, a misleader, and a
heretic. I am utterly confounded, and know not where to turn; albeit
my reason and heart do speak to me even as Luther writeth. But yet
again it bethinks me that when the Pope, the cardinal, the bishop, the
doctor, the monk, and the priest, for the greater part are against
him, and so that all save the common men and a few gentlemen, doctors,
councillors, and knights, are his adversaries, what shall I do?" "For
answer, dear friend, get thee back and search the Scriptures, and thou
shalt find that so it hath gone with all the holy prophets even as it
now fareth with Doctor Martin Luther, who is in truth a godly
Christian and manly heart and only true Pope and Apostle, when he the
true office of the Apostles publicly fulfilleth.... If the godly man
Luther were pleasing to the world, that were indeed a true sign that
his doctrine were not from God; for the word of God is a fiery sword,
a hammer that breaketh in pieces the rocks, and not a fox's tail or a
reed that may be bent according to our pleasure." Seventeen noxious
qualities of the wolf are adduced--his ravenousness, his cunning, his
falseness, his cowardice, his thirst for robbery, amongst others. The
Popes, the cardinals, and the bishops are compared to the wolves in
all their attributes: "The greater his pomp and splendour, the more
shouldst thou beware of such an one; for he is a wolf that cometh in
the shape of a