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Since the Pope is the richest man in Christendom, why indeed does he not build Saint Peter's out of his own pocket? Such are the propositions that leaped hot from Luther's heart; but they are not all of one spirit, for as he wrote he bethought himself that Tetzel was a Dominican, and the Dominicans held the key to the Inquisition.
While these pages of Luther's were in the press, towards the middle of June, Hutten, full of hope himself, and carrying with him the hopes of Luther and Melancthon, set off on his journey to the Emperor's brother in the Netherlands, and, on his way, paid a visit at Cologne to the learned Agrippa von Nettesheim, accompanied, as the latter says, by a 'few adherents of the Lutheran party. There, as Agrippa relates with terror, they expressed aloud their thoughts.
Visit this evening to my friends the J.'s good supper, to which I did justice lively chat with Mrs. J. and I. and J. As I sat out front on the walk afterward, in the evening air, the church-choir and organ on the corner opposite gave Luther's hymn, Ein feste berg, very finely. The air was borne by a rich contralto. The full silver star-beams of Lyra rose silently over the church's dim roof-ridge.
This is said to have given rise to the prevailing Protestant view that during his visit at Rome Luther's eyes were opened to the corruption of the Roman Church and his resolution formed to overthrow that Church. Luther himself is said to be responsible for this false view. He fostered it by his tales of what he had seen and heard at Rome with disgust and horror.
But immediately after that, the welcome tidings came that the Emperor, Charles V., had issued his Proclamation of "Religious Toleration in Germany." In Luther's prayer was fulfilled the remarkable promise of Proverbs, 21: I. "The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the rivers of water; he turneth it whithersoever he will." "John Knox was famous for his earnest prayers.
Luther's guests would have laughed at him if he had claimed such a "discovery" of the Bible as Catholic writers and some of their Protestant authorities think that Mathesius has claimed for him and modern Protestants still credit him with. What Luther did relate we are prepared to show was not, and could not be, an unusual occurrence in those days.
In Luther's view the practical significance of the Real Presence lay in this, that in this special manner the Christian, who felt his need of salvation, was assured, and became a partaker, of forgiveness and communion with his Saviour.
For, according to Catholic belief, Christ founded the Church to be a visible organization with a visible head, the Pope, and plainly and palpably "governing" men. Everybody who has read the records of Luther's work knows that no thought was more foreign to his mind than that of founding a new church.
Under these new conditions and circumstances, Luther's work became limited, as was natural, to a narrower field, and bore no longer the same character of boldness and independence which had marked it in his original contest with Rome.
Ever, as before, does Madness remain a mysterious-terrific, altogether infernal boiling-up of the Nether Chaotic Deep, through this fair-painted Vision of Creation, which swims thereon, which we name the Real. Was Luther's Picture of the Devil less a Reality, whether it were formed within the bodily eye, or without it?
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