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But Luther, to whom he announced through Spalatin the Emperor's offer, replied immediately, 'If I am summoned, I will, so far as I am concerned, come; even if I have to be carried there ill; for no man can doubt that, if the Emperor calls me, I am called by the Lord. Violence, he said, would no doubt be offered him; but God still lived, who had delivered the three youths from the fiery furnace at Babylon, and if it was not His will that he should be saved, his head was of little value.
Whilst Luther was working on this treatise, new disquieting rumours and remonstrances addressed from Rome to the Elector reached him through Spalatin. But with them came also that promise of protection from Schauenburg.
These Roman knaves come along, place the Pope above Christ and make him a judge over the Scriptures. They say that he cannot err." "Das Bemulhen der Leipziger Gehässigkeit." To Spalatin, Jan. 10. "Die Nichstwürdigkeitem der Leipziger." To Joh. Lang, Jan. 26. "Die Kunstangriffder Leipziger Partei." To Spalatin, Feb. 5.
If the books that I publish betray me, then I shall change my abode; it is very strange that nobody thinks of Bohemia. This letter, so Luther thought, Spalatin might let fall into the hands of some of his spying opponents, so as to lead them astray in their conjecture. Spalatin made no use of this naive attempt at trickery.
It was particularly the nobles and peasants whom he had to rebuke for open or secret resistance against this Word. He exclaims in a letter to Spalatin, written in 1533: '0 how shamefully ungrateful are our times!
The work, as far as I can see, has hardly yet begun, so little reason have the great men at Rome for hoping it is finished. Again, while informing Spalatin, through whom the Elector always urged him to moderation, of new Papal edicts and regulations aimed against him, he declared, 'The more those Romish grandees rage and meditate the use of force, the less do I fear them.
A few days after, immediately before his departure for Eisleben, he wrote again to Spalatin, recommending his friend, who had been so utterly averse to matrimony, to take care that he was not anticipated in the step.
He further remarked that a severe treatment in material things was pleasing to God, even though it might seem to be too harsh. Spalatin writes in a like strain that the burdens in Germany were, if anything, too light.
'I do not need, says Luther, the King to teach me this. But the personal tone adopted by Luther against Henry went beyond anything that his expressions to Spalatin might have led one to expect, and was even more marked in a German edition of his treatise, which he published after the royal one had been translated into German.
The princes and representatives of the towns brought their theologians with them to the number of about forty in all. The Elector John Frederick brought Luther, Melancthon, Bugenhagen, and Spalatin. On January 29 the Wittenberg theologians were summoned by their prince to Torgau.
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