United States or South Africa ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
His cause, meanwhile, was rapidly gaining friends. His replies to Tetzel, Prierias, Hochstrat, and Eck had gone forth to deepen the favorable impression made by the Ninety-five Theses. Truth had once more lifted up its head in Europe, and Rome would find it no child's play to put it down. The skirmish-lines of the hierarchy had been met and driven in. The tug of serious battle was now to come.
Prierias' pamphlet provoked him to exclaim, in that same letter to Spalatin, 'I think that at Rome they are all mad, silly, and raging, and have become mere fools, sticks and stones, hells and devils. His remarks on this pamphlet, written in Latin, contain the strongest words that we have yet heard from his lips about the 'only means left, and the 'short work' to be made of Rome.
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.
Luther's old opponent Prierias, in a new pamphlet, extended them to the temporal as well as the spiritual sovereignty of the world; the Pope, he said, was head of the Universe. Eck now devoted an entire treatise to justifying the Divine right of the Papal primacy, resting his proofs boldly, and without any attempt at critical inquiry, on spurious old documents.
Word Of The Day