Indeed, he has changed his lodging and has gone into a Do- minican monastery, openly giving out that he can neither es- cape their snares nor return to Ingolstadt. I should not wish him murdered, although I see his plans will be frustrated. The Lord do what is good in his eyes.
We have no news except the rumor of war with Prussia. The Archbishop of Mayence commands the books of Hutten to be publicly prohibited, calling down a curse on his head. Hutten girds himself with great courage to try his arms and genius against the Pope.
Our Adrian^ rages against me, carried away by I know not what fury, perhaps seeking an occasion of withdrawing. Though I have done nothing to him he rails at my sermons, ready to teach me the Gospel, though he does not understand his own Old Testament. There are various possible explana- tions of his madness, but let it pass, time will show what it is. Martin Luther, Augustinian.
304. LUTHER TO SPALATIN. Enders, ii. 49a Witfenberg, October (11), 152a
Greeting. At last that Roman bull brought by Eck has arrived.* Our friends are writing to the elector about it. I despise it, and am now attacking it as impious and fraudu- lent, Eckian to the core. You see that Christ himself is condemned in it. It says nothing to the purpose, but sum- mons me not to be heard, but to recant, so that you may know that they are full of fury, blindness and insanity, seeing and considering nothing. I shall still act without mentioning the Pope's name, as though it were a fictitious and forged bull,* although I believe it is their true work. Would that Charles^ were a man to grapple with these devils for Christ !
I fear nothing for myself. God's will be done. Nor do I know what the elector ought to do, except that I think it
IThe professor of Hebrew.
'Eck sent the bull with a note to Burckhart, the Rector of Wittenberg, on October 3. Burckhart refused on technical grounds to post it, but forwarded it to Duke John. Schubert: Luthers Berufung auf Worms, p. i8ff.
- C/. Luther's Von den neuen Eckischen Bullen und Lugen, Weimar, yi. 576.
Erasmus also pretended to doubt the genuineness of the bull, hoping thus to make it possible for the Pope to withdraw it.
- Thc Emperor-elect, now twenty years old.
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