United States or Cuba ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The Spaniards prepared for battle, and bore down upon the Lutherans; for, with them, all Protestants alike were branded with the name of the arch-heretic.
The diet assembled, the cardinal, as instructed, demanded that severe measures should be taken against the arch-heretic: the Elector of Saxony, on the contrary, insisted that Luther should be heard in his own defence; the emperor and the princes agreed with him, silencing the cardinal's declaration that the diet had no right or power to question the decision of the pope, and inviting Luther to appear before the imperial assembly at Worms, the emperor granting him a safe-conduct.
A reward had been offered to anyone who should kill this arch-heretic; so his friends brought him disguised as a knight to the Wartburg, and very few people knew of his whereabouts. As you look through the latticed windows of that little room, the exquisite blue and purple hills of the Thüringen-Wald stretch away in the distance, and no human habitation is to be seen.
But the most noted Anti-Scripturist seems to have been a Clement Wrighter, a Worcester man, living in London, of whom Edwards gives this terrible character "Sometimes a professor of religion and judged to have been godly, who is now an arch-heretic and fearful apostate, an old wolf, and a subtle man, who goes about corrupting, and venting his errors; he is often in Westminster Hall and on the Exchange; he comes into public meetings of the Sectaries upon occasions of meeting to draw up petitions for the Parliament or other businesses.
Into what an abominable heretic house Master Adrian had sent him! To despatch a good Christian to such an unclean hole! No images of the Virgin and the saints, no crucifix nor anything else that elevates a human soul in the whole dwelling, but the portrait of the anti-Christ, the arch-heretic Luther, in the best place in the room!
Although Catholics regarded him in the heat of the struggle as the corrupter of the Church, and Protestants as the betrayer of the Gospel, yet his word of moderation and kindliness did not pass by unheard or unheeded on either side. Eventually neither camp finally rejected Erasmus. Rome did not brand him as an arch-heretic, but only warned the faithful to read him with caution.
The Governor-General himself, brother of his Catholic Majesty, was to sit quietly with folded arms in Luxemburg, while the arch-heretic and rebel reigned supreme in Brussels. It was too much to expect that the choleric soldier would be content with what he could not help regarding as a dishonorable capitulation.
He did wickedly, and we may have to curse him some for decency's sake, but be deserves pity, too, for he was the misguided pupil of that arch-heretic Luther. That is Catholic equity in estimating Luther's share in the peasant uprising. We only note in conclusion that Thomas Muenzer died in the arms of the alone-saving Church, a penitent prodigal that had returned to the bosom of "Holy Mother."
To enumerate fully all the wicked, false, and perverse teachings of the arch-heretic would require a volume many times larger than the Bible, and every one of the lies and falsehoods that have been used against the Catholic Church may be traced back to him as to their original formulator."
If there be any efficacy in holy water, the little chamber must by this time be effectually cleansed from the sad defilement of the arch-heretic. Ferrara is indissolubly connected with the Reformation in Italy. In fact, it was the centre of the movement in the south of the Alps.
Word Of The Day