ished him. I replied that he might shout against Luther until he burst, provided only that he said nothing against me, for by doing the latter he accomplished nothing, but only made himself ridiculous in the eyes of all good men, as I saw that the audience were even then laughing at him. " Ya !" said he, "they are your friends." . . . He charged me with writing an epistle to Luther. "In which," say I, "I warn him what to shun." "Rather," says he, "you teach him what to write." For it seemed that the man took it ill that Luther should write correctly — and so ill, that he preferred to have him dead than corrected. But he could not brook it that I wrote Luther: "I do not advise you what to do, but only to do what you do of yourself." When I excused this as a bit of rhetorical civility, according to the rule that we should deny that we are giving advice even when we are, he grew hot again. "You say rightly," says he, "that the rule of rhetoric is to paint, pretend and lie about everything." I smiled and confessed that rhetoricians sometimes lied, but added that so did our professors sometimes. Again, when I said that I was consulting the dignity of the theologians, he replied: "Leave that to us, we'll attend to it." When I said that by burning Luther's books they might be removed from the li- braries, but not from men's minds : "Ya," says he, "you could do that if you wished." . . .
After some irrelevant bickering the rector^ bade us return to Luther who was the chief subject of the conference. "Come," says Egmond, "you have written for Luther, no'W write against him." Denying that I had written for him, bu^ rather for the theologians against him, I gave many reason for not writing against him again, as lack of leisure and o skill, fear and the desire not to hit a man already down "Well, then," says he, "at least write that we knocked him^ down." I replied that there were not wanting plenty to shout^ this even if I kept silence, and that it would be more fitting for those who won the victory to celebrate it, and finally that, as their books were not yet published, it was not certain whether they had beaten him or not. Turning in desperation to the rector, "Did I not say," says he, "that we would ac-
^Godschalk Rosemund.
�� �
