and error
would be more clearly seen, as they should take the field in open warfare.
Never from that day would Rome stand as secure as she had stood.

While most of the members of the Diet would not have hesitated to yield up
Luther to the vengeance of Rome, many of them saw and deplored the
existing depravity in the church, and desired a suppression of the abuses
suffered by the German people in consequence of the corruption and greed
of the hierarchy. The legate had presented the papal rule in the most
favorable light. Now the Lord moved upon a member of the Diet to give a
true delineation of the effects of papal tyranny. With noble firmness,
Duke George of Saxony stood up in that princely assembly, and specified
with terrible exactness the deceptions and abominations of popery, and
their dire results. In closing he said:

"These are some of the abuses that cry out against Rome. All shame has
been put aside, and their only object is ... money, money, money, ... so
that the preachers who should teach the truth, utter nothing but
falsehoods, and are not only tolerated, but rewarded, because the greater
their lies, the greater their gain. It is from this foul spring that such
tainted waters flow. Debauchery stretches out the hand to avarice....
Alas, it is the scandal caused by the clergy that hurls so many poor souls
into eternal condemnation. A general reform must be effected."(203)

A more able and forcible denunciation of the papal abuses could not have
been presented by Luther himself; and the fact that the speaker was a
determined enemy of the Reformer, gave greater influence to his words.

Had the eyes of the assembly been opened, they would have beheld angels of
God in the midst of them, shedding beams of light athwart the darkness of
error, and opening minds and hearts to the reception of truth. It was the
power of the God of truth and wisdom that controlled even the adversaries
of the Reformation, and thus prepared the way for the great work about to
be accomplished. Martin Luther was not present; but the voice of One
greater than Luther had been heard in that assembly.

A committee was at once appointed by the Diet to prepare an enumeration of
the papal oppressions that weighed so heavily on the German people. This
list, containing a hundred and one specifications, was presented to the
emperor, with a request that he would take immediate measures for the
correction of these abuses. "What a loss of Christian