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Eck left the disputation with triumph, applauded by his friends and rewarded by Duke George with favours and honours. He followed up his fancied victory by further exciting the people against Luther, and pointing out to them in particular the sympathy between him and Huss. He wrote even to the Elector Frederick from Leipzig, proposing that he should have Luther's books burnt.
Rumour now alleged that he was in the hands of the Mendicant Friars: the Franciscan Glapio was his confessor and influential adviser, the very man who had instigated the burning of Luther's works. He was, however, by no means so dependent on those about him as might have been supposed.
A large concourse gathered, a pyre of fagots was piled high, the Pope's Bull of Excommunication was solemnly placed on top, and the fire was lighted by the hand of Martin Luther. The Theses prepared by Tetzel had small sale. People had heard all these arguments before, but Luther's propositions were new.
Thus did he condemn all forces within the State at war with liberty and right. Stern words he used, words that like Luther's were half battles. Of peace-at-any-price-men he said: "The hounds on the track of Broderick turned peace men, and affected with hysterics at the sniff of powder! Wonderful transformation.
They were chanting, in voices not loud but deep, Luther's majestic hymn: "Nun danket alle Gott." The chant awed even the ragged beggar boys who had followed the Englishman, as they followed any stranger, would have followed King William himself, whining for alms. "What a type of the difference between the two nations!" thought Graham; "the Marseillaise, and Luther's Hymn!"
His first demand was that, like the question to which it was in answer, it should be repeated in German. Next, Eck proceeded to point out that Luther's errors, which were the errors of former heretics, Wyclif, Huss and the like, had been sufficiently condemned by the Church, and particularly by the Council of Konstanz.
This was fulfilled in Luther's time, and in all those after separations which any of the churches have made from Rome, and from those relics and remains of superstition and will-worship, wherewith themselves and the ordinances of Jesus Christ have been denied.
Incivism will Catholic apologists never learn it? is the heaviest stone flung at the Church in all free lands to-day. Father Hecker's blood fairly boiled that the Church of Christ, the very home of Christian freedom, and the nursing-mother of all civil well-being, should be thus assailed, while Calvin's and Luther's degrading doctrines should be paraded as alone worthy of a free people.
Luther's Bible caused him to be regarded as the founder of the present literary language of Germany New High German which his translation permanently established. The English Bible, on the other hand, was the growth of centuries.
I had rather be the humblest German peasant that ever lived, sitting in his cottage, vine clad, from which the grapes hang, made purple by the kiss of the sun as the day dies out of the sky, clad in homespun, shod with wooden shoes, at peace with the world and at peace with God, his family Bible upon his knees, the look of ineffable joy in his face and singing that grand old hymn of Luther's, 'A mighty fortress is our God' I had rather be such a German peasant than to be the mightiest infidel the world has ever known," and so I would, a thousand thousand times.
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