uptions of
papacy, and was exhibiting to astonished Europe the enormous aggression
and the unbridled licentiousness of pontifical power. Letter succeeded
letter, and pamphlet pamphlet, and they fell upon the decaying hierarchy
like shot and shell upon the walls of a fortress already crumbling and
tottering through age.

On the 15th of July, 1520, three months before the coronation of Charles
V., the pope issued his world-renowned bull against the intrepid monk.
He condemned Luther as a heretic, forbade the reading of his writings,
excommunicated him if he did not retract within sixty days, and all
princes and states were commanded, under pain of incurring the same
censure, to seize his person and punish him and his adherents. Many were
overawed by these menaces of the holy father, who held the keys of
heaven and of hell. The fate of Luther was considered sealed. His works
were publicly burned in several cities.

Luther, undaunted, replied with blow for blow. He declared the pope to
be antichrist, renounced all obedience to him, detailed with scathing
severity the conduct of corrupt pontiffs, and called upon the whole
nation to renounce all allegiance to the scandalous court of Rome. To
cap the climax of his contempt and defiance, he, on the 10th of
December, 1520, not two months after the crowning of Charles V., led his
admiring followers, the professors and students of the university of
Wittemberg, in procession to the eastern gate of the city, where, in the
presence of a vast concourse, he committed the papal bull to the flames,
exclaiming, in the words of Ezekiel, "Because thou hast troubled the
Holy One of God, let eternal fire consume thee." This dauntless spirit
of the reformer inspired his disciples throughout Germany with new
courage, and in many other cities the pope's bull of excommunication was
burned with expressions of indignation and contempt.

Such was the state of this great religious controversy when Charles V.
held his first diet at Worms. The pope, wielding all the energies of
religious fanaticism, and with immense temporal revenues at his
disposal, with ecclesiastics, officers of his spiritual court, scattered
all over Europe, who exercised almost a supernatural power over the
minds of the benighted masses, was still perhaps the most formidable
power in Europe. The new emperor, with immense schemes of ambition
opening before his youthful and ardent mind, and with no principles of
heartfelt piety t