The Treasurer was nearly choking with suppressed laughter, but he felt the sword suspended over his head, and continued: “But I will give the poisonous liar and blasphemer, King Heinz, once for all, a complete answer, and stop his mouth.... Therefore he thinks to hang on to the Pope and play the hypocrite before him.... Therefore they mutually caress and tickle each other like a pair of mule’s ears....”
“No, sire,” More broke off, “I cannot go on; it is high treason to read it.”
“I will read,” said the King, and took the pamphlet from him:
“‘I conquer and defy Papists, Thomists, Henrys, Sophists, and all the swine of hell!’ He calls us swine!”
“He is a madman who ought to be beaten to death with iron bars or hunted in a forest with bloodhounds.”
“Yes, he ought! But imagine!—this scoundrel gives himself out for a prophet and servant of Christ. And he has married a nun. That is incest! But he has been punished for it. The Kurfürst of Saxony has abandoned him, and none of his so-called friends went to the wedding....”
“What is his object? What is his new teaching? Justification through faith. If one only believes, one may live like a swine!”
“And his doctrine about the Communion. The Church says the Elements are changed by consecration, but this materialist says they actually are Christ’s Body and Blood. Then the corn in the field and the grapes in the vineyard are already Christ’s Body and Blood! He is an ass! And the world is mad.”
“And the consequence,—sin with impunity! Sire, allow me to read some lines, which I have written as an answer, not to these but to his other follies—only some lines which I hope to add to.”
“Read! I listen when you speak, for I have learnt to listen, and, through that, I know something.”