This was the frame of mind in which Luther confronted the Council.
We shall be better able to appreciate the strangeness of his attitude if we imagine Luther, attended by a few theologians of his own circle, journeying to the Council at Trent and there holding converse with the foreign prelates, as he had done at Wittenberg with the Legate Vergerio.
In his wonted fashion he would not have hesitated to express plainly his views concerning his own authority. Some examples of his opinions of himself have already been given.[1558] What impression would the Wittenberger’s novel claims have made on bishops and theologians from distant lands where the Church was still in perfect peace, and where the spiritual supremacy of the hierarchy was unquestioned? With what astonishment would they have listened to those strange replies, which the Saxon had always ready in plenty, to such objections as they might have raised on the score of his disturbance of the peace of both Church and State, of the disorders within his own fold and of his own private life and that of his followers?
A number of other statements taken from his writings and conversations with his intimates may help to make the picture even more vivid.
“I have the Word,” we can hear him saying to the bishops in his usual vein, “that is enough for me! Were even an angel to come to me now I should not believe him.”[1559]
“Whoever obtrudes his doctrine on me and refuses to yield, must inevitably be lost; for I must be right, my cause being not mine, but God’s, Whose Word it also is. Hence those who are against it must go under. Hence my unfailing defiance.... I have risked my life on it and will die for it. Therefore whoever sets himself against me must be ruined if a God exists at all.”[1560]
To friend and foe I can only say: “Take in faith what Christ says to you through me; for I am not deceived, so far as I know. It is not the words of Satan that I speak. Christ speaks through me.”[1561]
“Though there are many who regard my cause as diabolical and condemn it, yet I know that my word and undertaking is not of me but of God, and neither death nor persecution will teach me otherwise.”[1562]
And before anyone can slip in a word of rejoinder he, again, as his way was, appeals to his personal knowledge. “I know that God together with all His angels bears me witness that I have not falsified His Word, baptism or sacrament, but have preached rightly and truthfully.”[1563]