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At length an attempt was actually made to remove him to Gotha, the necessary medical appliances being not procurable at Schmalkald. On the 26th of the month the Erfurt physician, Sturz, drove him thither, together with Bugenhagen, Spalatin, and Myconius, in one of the Elector's carriages. Another carriage followed them, with instruments and a pan of charcoal, for warming cloths.
But an attack of such a kind on a magnate like Albert, the great prince of the Empire, Elector of Mayence, and brother of the Elector of Brandenburg, was not to Frederick's taste, and he informed Luther, through Spalatin that he forbade it. He would not sanction anything, he said, which might disturb the public peace.
He issued at the same time a short public 'offer, appealing therein to the fact, that he had so long begged in vain for a proper refutation. These two writings were first examined and corrected by Spalatin, and so appeared only at the end of August, not, as is generally supposed, in the January of this year.
On receiving the news from Wittenberg, he wrote to Spalatin, 'Good Heaven! our Wittenbergers will allow even the monks to have wives, but they shall not force me to take one. And he asks Melancthon jokingly, if he was going to revenge himself upon him for having helped him to get a wife; he would know well enough how to guard against that.
Luther in this tractate aims beyond the "undersized scribe of the barefoot friars at Leipzig," at the "brave and great flag-bearers who remain in hiding, and would win a notable victory in another's name," namely Prierias, Cajetan, Eck, Emser and the Universities of Cologne and Louvaine. Luther uses the epithet quoted above in one of his letters to Spalatin.
He then dismissed him with the words, 'Revoke, or do not come again into my presence. Nevertheless he spoke in quite a friendly manner after this to Staupitz, urging him to try his best to convert Luther, whom he wished well. Luther, however, wrote the same day to his friend Spalatin, who was with the Elector, and to his friends at Wittenberg, telling them that he had refused to yield.
Of this, as he wrote to Spalatin, he was convinced, and for many strong reasons. And in fact the Emperor Charles, before leaving the Netherlands, on his journey to Aix-la-Chapelle to be crowned, had already been induced by Aleander to take his first step against Luther.
To his wife he wrote from Tambach, telling her that she need not accept the Elector's offer to drive her to him, it being now unnecessary. On March 14 he arrived again at his home. His recovery had made good progress, though, as he wrote to Spalatin, even eight days afterwards his legs could hardly support him.
To Spalatin he replied, though Huss were burnt, yet the truth was not burnt; he would go to Worms, though there were as many devils there as there were tiles on the roofs of the houses. On April 16, at ten o'clock in the morning, Luther entered Worms. He sat in an open carriage with his three companions from Wittenberg, clothed in his monk's habit.
Luther for the first time felt himself, as he wrote to Spalatin, really free, being at length convinced that the Popedom was Antichrist and the seat of Satan. He was not at all discouraged by a letter sent at this time by Erasmus from Holland to Wittenberg, saying that no hopes could be placed in the Emperor Charles, as he was in the hands of the Mendicant Friars.
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