man Reformation. "He is pious and quiet," Luther said of him; "he
talks in a year less than I do in a day. He is a child of fortune." He
liked to praise the Emperor's moderation, modesty, and forbearance.
Long after he had condemned Charles' policy, and in secret distrusted
his character, he insisted upon it among his table companions that the
master of Germany should be spoken of with reverence, and said
apologetically to the younger ones, "A politician cannot be so frank
as we of the clergy."

Even as late as 1530 it was his view that it was wrong for the
Elector to take arms against his Emperor. Not until 1537 did he fall
in reluctantly with the freer views of his circle, but he thought then
that the endangered prince had no right to make the first attack. The
venerable tradition of a firm, well articulated federal State was
still thus active in this man of the people at a time when the proud
structure of the old Saxon and Franconian empires was already
crumbling away. Yet in such loyalty there was no trace of a slavish
spirit. When his prince once urged him to write an open letter, his
sense of truth rose against the title of the Emperor, "Most Gracious
Lord," for he said the Emperor was not graciously disposed toward him.
And in his frequent intercourse with those of rank, he showed a
reckless frankness which more than once alarmed the courtiers. In all
reverence he spoke truths to his own prince such as only a great
character may express and only a good-hearted one can listen to. On
the whole he cared little for the German princes, much as he esteemed
a few. Frequent and just were his complaints about their incapacity,
their lawlessness, and their vices. He also liked to treat the
nobility with irony; the coarseness of most of them was highly
distasteful to him. He felt a democratic displeasure toward the hard
and selfish jurists who managed the affairs of the princes, worked for
favor, and harassed the poor; for the best of them he admitted only a
very doubtful prospect of the mercy of God. His whole heart, on the
other hand, was with the oppressed. He sometimes blamed the peasants
for their stolidity, and their extortions in selling their grain, but
he often praised their class, looked with cordial sympathy upon their
hardships, and never forgot that by birth he belonged among them.

But all this belonged to the temporal order; he served the spiritual.
The popular conception was also firmly fixed in his mind th