e, but motionless. The students, the artisans, the tradesmen,
were at heart with the Reformer; and their enthusiasm could not be
wholly repressed. The press grew fertile with pamphlets; and it was
noticed that all the printers and compositors went for Luther. The
Catholics could not get their books into type without sending them to
France or the Low Countries.

Yet none of the princes except the elector had as yet shown him favour.
The bishops were hostile to a man. The nobles had given no sign; and
their place would be naturally on the side of authority. They had no
love for bishops--there was hope in that; and they looked with no favour
on the huge estates of the religious orders. But no one could expect
that they would peril their lands and lives for an insignificant monk.

There was an interval of two years before the emperor was at leisure to
take up the question. The time was spent in angry altercation, boding no
good for the future.

The Pope issued a second bull condemning Luther and his works. Luther
replied by burning the bull in the great square at Wittenberg.

At length, in April 1521, the Diet of the Empire assembled at Worms, and
Luther was called to defend himself in the presence of Charles the
Fifth.

That it should have come to this at all, in days of such high-handed
authority, was sufficiently remarkable. It indicated something growing
in the minds of men, that the so-called Church was not to carry things
any longer in the old style. Popes and bishops might order, but the
laity intended for the future to have opinions of their own how far such
orders should be obeyed.

The Pope expected anyhow that the Diet, by fair means or foul, would
now rid him of his adversary. The elector, who knew the ecclesiastical
ways of handling such matters, made it a condition of his subject
appearing, that he should have a safe conduct, under the emperor's hand;
that Luther, if judgment went against him, should be free for the time
to return to the place from which he had come; and that he, the elector,
should determine afterwards what should be done with him.

When the interests of the Church were concerned, safe conducts, it was
too well known, were poor security. Pope Clement the Seventh, a little
after, when reproached for breaking a promise, replied with a smile,
'The Pope has power to bind and to loose.' Good, in the eyes of
ecclesiastical authorities, meant what was good for the Church; evil,
whatever was