As we returned, however, the crowd had increased, and the debate seemed to be becoming warm among some of them. One of the students was translating the Latin into German for the benefit of the unlearned, and we paused to listen.
What he read seemed to me very true, but not at all remarkable. We had often heard Dr. Luther say and even preach similar things. At the moment we came up the words the student was reading were,—
"It is a great error for one to think to make satisfaction for his sins, in that God always forgives gratuitously and from his boundless grace, requiring nothing in return but holy living."
This sentence I remember distinctly, because it was so much like what we had heard him preach. Other propositions followed, such as that it was very doubtful if the indulgences could deliver souls from purgatory, and that it was better to give alms than to buy indulgences. But why these statements should collect such a crowd, and excite such intense interest, I could not quite understand, unless it was because they were in Latin.
One sentence, I observed, aroused very mingled feelings in the crowd. It was the declaration that the Holy Scriptures alone could settle any controversy, and that all the scholastic teachers together could not give authority to one doctrine.
The students and many of the citizens received this announcement with enthusiastic applause, and some of the professors testified a quiet approval of it; but others of the doctors shook their heads, and a few retired at once, murmuring angrily as they went.
At the close came a declaration by Dr. Luther, that "whatever some unenlightened and morbid people might say, he was no heretic."
"Why should Dr. Luther think it necessary to conclude with a declaration that he is no heretic?" I said to Gottfried as we walked home. "Can anything be more full of respect for the Pope and the Church than many of these theses are? And why should they excite so much attention? Dr. Luther says no more than so many of us think!"
"True, Elsè," replied Gottfried, gravely; "but to know how to say what other people only think, is what makes men poets and sages; and to dare to say what others only dare to think, makes men martyrs or reformers, or both."
November 20.