ter,--in person, in voice, and in opinion,--but as Luther
was not to be silenced by his argument, he ended by calling him "a
gentile and publican," and wending his way to Borne, where he expressed
his opinion of the new movement, demanded that the heretic should be
made to feel the heavy hand of church discipline.

Back he came soon to Germany, bearing a bull from the pope, in which
were extracts from Luther's writings stated to be heretical, and which
must be publicly retracted within sixty days under threat of
excommunication. This the ardent agent tried to distribute through
Germany, but to his surprise he found that Germany was in no humor to
receive it. Most of the magistrates forbade it to be made public. Where
it was posted upon the walls of any town, the people immediately tore it
down. In truth, Luther's heresy had with extraordinary rapidity become
the heresy of Germany, and he found himself with a nation at his back, a
nation that admired his courage and supported his opinions.

His most decisive step was taken on the 10th of December, 1520. On that
day the faculty and students of the University of Wittenberg, convoked
by him, met at the Elster gate of the town. Here a funeral pile was
built up by the students, one of the magistrates set fire to it, and
Luther, amid approving shouts from the multitude, flung into the flames
the pope's bull, and with it the canonical law and the writings of Dr.
Eck. In this act he decisively broke loose from and defied the Church of
Rome, sustained in his radical step of revolt apparently by all
Wittenberg, and by a large body of converts to his views throughout
Germany.

The bold reformer found friends not only among the lowly, but among the
powerful. The Elector of Saxony was on his side, and openly accused the
pope of acting the unjust judge, by listening to one side and not the
other, and of needlessly agitating the people by his bull. Ulrich von
Hutten, a favorite popular leader, was one of the zealous proselytes of
the new doctrines. Franz von Sickingen, a knight of celebrity, was
another who offered Luther shelter, if necessary, in his castles.

And now came a turning-point in Luther's career, the most dangerous
crisis he was to reach, and the one that needed the utmost courage and
most inflexible resolution to pass it in safety. It was that which has
become famous as the "Diet of Worms." Germany had gained a new emperor,
Charles V., under whose sceptre the empire of