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Luther answered Spalatin, 'The die is cast, I despise alike the wrath and the favour of Rome; I will have no reconciliation with her, no fellowship. Friends who heard of his new work grew alarmed; Staupitz, even at the eleventh hour, tried to dissuade him from it. But before August was far advanced, four thousand copies were already printed and published. A new edition was immediately called for.
George Spalatin, his friend at court, to prepare a "spiritual consolation" for the Elector, Luther wrote "The Fourteen of Consolation," one of his finest and tenderest devotional writings, and, in conception and execution, one of the most original of all his works. Its composition falls within the months of August and September of the year 1519. On August 29th, the Day of the Beheading of St.
After two days' negotiations, he thus, on April 25, according to Spalatin, declared himself to the Archbishop: 'Most gracious Lord, I cannot yield; it must happen with me as God wills; and continued: 'I beg of your Grace that you will obtain for me the gracious permission of His Imperial Majesty that I may go home again, for I have now been here for ten days and nothing yet has been effected. Three hours later the Emperor sent word to Luther that he might return to the place he came from, and should be given a safe-conduct for twenty-one days, but would not be allowed to preach on the way.
When two papal legates, Aleander and Caraccioli, appeared on the Rhine to execute the bull and work upon the Emperor in person, he was anxious to strike a blow at them on his own account, little good as, on calm reflection, it was evident could have come of it. Luther, on hearing of it, could not refrain remarking in a letter to Spalatin, 'If only he had caught them!
Erasmus also, who was then staying at Cologne, expressed himself to the same effect, in an opinion obtained from him by Frederick through Spalatin.
When the episcopal missive from Stolpen threatened to make the storm break out afresh, he sent, by Spalatin, an urgent exhortation to Luther to restrain his pen, and further advised him to send letters of explanation, in a conciliatory spirit, to Albert, Archbishop of Magdeburg and Mayence, and the Bishop of Merseburg. Luther wrote to both in a tone of perfect dignity.
In the Babylonian Captivity he definitely reduces the seven sacraments of the Roman Church to baptism, the Lord's Supper and penance, but he had his doubts on this point before he wrote this present work, as we may conclude from a remark in the Sermon of 1519, in which he distinguishes "baptism and the bread" as the two "principal sacraments," and also from a letter to Spalatin, in which he writes that no one need expect from him a publication on the other sacraments until he shall first have been taught by what passage of Scripture he may justify them.
Spalatin himself sent from Worms a second warning to Luther after he had left Frankfort, intimating that he would suffer the fate of Huss. Meanwhile Glapio, on the other side, no doubt with the knowledge and consent of his imperial master, made one more attempt in a very unexpected manner to influence Luther, or at least to prevent him from going to Worms.
He had learned to know him better since the Leipzig disputation. He now wrote to Spalatin: 'I have hitherto, unconsciously, taught everything that Huss taught, and so did John Staupitz, in short we are all Hussites, without knowing it. Paul and Augustine are also Hussites.
Luther however persisted in repeating to himself and his friends the warning of the Psalmist, 'Put not your trust in princes, nor in any child of man, for there is no help in them. Nay, when Spalatin, who had gone with the Elector to the Emperor, told him how little was to be hoped for from the latter, he expressed to him his joy at finding that he too had learned the same lesson.
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