The appeal of which Luther here spoke, was 'from the Pope ill-informed to the same when better informed.' On October 16 he submitted it, formally prepared, to a public notary. While Staupitz and Link, warned to consult their personal safety, and despairing of any good result, left Augsburg, Luther still remained there. He even addressed on October 17 a letter to Caietan, conceding to him the utmost he thought possible. Moved, as he said, by the persuasions of his dear father Staupitz and his brother Link, he offered to let the whole question of indulgences rest, if only that which drove him to this tragedy were put a stop to; he confessed also to having been too violent and disrespectful in dispute. In after years he said to his friends, when referring to this concession, that God had never allowed him to sink deeper than when he had yielded so much. The next day, however, he gave notice of his appeal to the legate, and told him he did not wish longer to waste his time in Augsburg. To this letter he received no answer.

Luther waited, however, till the 20th. He and his Augsburg patrons began to suspect whether measures had not already been taken to detain him. They therefore had a small gate in the city wall opened in the night, and sent with him an escort well acquainted with the road. Thus he hastened away, as he himself described it, on a hard-trotting hack, in a simple monk's frock, with only knee-breeches, without boots or spurs, and unarmed. On the first day he rode eight miles, as far as the little town of Monheim. As he entered in the evening an inn and dismounted in the stable, he was unable to stand from fatigue, and fell down instantly among the straw. He travelled thus on horseback to Wittenberg, where he arrived well and joyful, on the anniversary of his ninety-five theses. He had heard on the way of the Pope's brief to Caietan, but he refused to think it could be genuine. His appeal, meanwhile, was delivered to the Cardinal at Augsburg, who had it posted by his notary on the doors of the cathedral.

From Augsburg Luther was followed by a letter from Caietan to the Elector, full of bitter complaints against him. He had formed, he said, the highest hopes of his spiritual recovery, and had been grievously disappointed in him; the Elector, for his own honour and conscience' sake, must now either send him to Rome or, at least, expel him from his territory, since measures of fatherly kindness had failed to make him acknowledge his error. Frederick, after waiting four weeks, returned a quiet answer, showing how the conduct of Luther quite agreed with his own view of the matter. He would have expected that no recantation would have been required of Luther till the matter in dispute had been satisfactorily examined and explained. There were a number of learned men, also, at foreign universities, from whom he could not yet have learned with certainty that Luther's doctrine was unchristian; while, to say the least, it was chiefly those whose personal and financial interests were affected by it that had become his opponents. He would propose therefore that the judgment of several universities should be obtained, and have the matter disputed at a safe place. Luther, however, to whom the Elector showed this letter, at once declared himself ready to go into exile, but would not be deterred from publishing new declarations or taking further steps.

He had a report of his conference with Caietan printed, with a justification of himself to the readers. And in this he advanced propositions against the Papacy which entirely shook its whole foundation. Already, in the solutions to his theses, he had incidentally, and without attracting further notice by the remark, spoken of a time when the Papacy had not yet acquired supremacy over the Universal Church, thereby contradicting what the Romish Church maintained and had made into a dogma, namely, that the Papal see possessed this primacy by original institution through Christ, and by means of immutable Divine right. He now expressed this opinion as a positive proposition. The Papal monarchy, he declared, was only a Divine institution in the sense in which every temporal power, advanced by the progress of historical development, might be called so also. 'The kingdom of God cometh not with observation.'

Without waiting for an answer direct from Rome, Luther now abandoned all thoughts of success with Leo X. On November 28 he formally and solemnly appealed from the Pope to a General Christian Council. By so doing he anticipated the sentence of excommunication which he was daily expecting. With Rome he had broken for ever, unless she were to surrender her claims and acquisitions of more than a thousand years.

After once the first restraints of awe were removed with which Luther had regarded the Papacy, behind and beyond the matter of the indulgences, and he had learned to know the Papal representative at Augsburg, and made a stand against his demands and menaces, and escaped from his dangerous clutches, he enjoyed for the first time the fearless consciousness of freedom. He took a wider survey around him, and saw plainly the deep corruption and ungodliness of the powers arrayed against him. His mind was impelled forward with more energy as his spirit for the fight was stirred within him. Even the prospect that he might have to fly, and the uncertainty whither his flight could be, did not daunt or deter him. His thought was how he could throw himself with more freedom into the struggle, if no longer hampered by any obligations to his prince and his university. Writing at that time to his friend Link, to inform him of his new publications and his appeal, he invited his opinion as to whether he was not right in saying that the Antichrist of whom St. Paul speaks (2 Thess. ii.), ruled at the Papal court. 'My pen,' he went on to say, 'is already giving birth to something much greater. I know not whence these thoughts come. The work, as far as I can see, has hardly yet begun, so little reason have the great men at Rome for hoping it is finished.' Again, while informing Spalatin, through whom the Elector always urged him to moderation, of new Papal edicts and regulations aimed against him, he declared, 'The more those Romish grandees rage and meditate the use of force, the less do I fear them. All the more free shall I become to fight against the serpents of Rome. I am prepared for all, and await the judgment of God.'

He was really prepared for exile or flight at any moment. At Wittenberg his friends were alarmed by rumours of designs on the part of the Pope against his life and liberty, and insisted on his being placed in safety. Flight to France was continually talked of; had he not followed in his appeal a precedent set by the university of Paris? We certainly cannot see how he could safely have been conveyed thither, or where, indeed, any other and safer place could have been found for him. Some urged that the Elector himself should take him into custody and keep him in a place of safety, and then write to the legate that he held him securely in confinement and was in future responsible for him. Luther proposed this to Spalatin, and added, 'I leave the decision of this matter to your discretion; I am in the hands of God and of my friends.' The Elector himself, anxious also in this respect, arranged early in December a confidential interview between Luther and Spalatin at the Castle of Lichtenberg. He also, as Luther reported to Staupitz, wished that Luther had some other place to be in, but he advised him against going away so hastily to France. His own wish and counsel, however, he refrained as yet from making known. Luther declared that at all events, if a ban of excommunication were to come from Rome, he would not remain longer at Wittenberg. On this point also the prince kept secret his resolve.

CHAPTER IV.

MILTITZ AND THE DISPUTATION AT LEIPZIG, WITH IT RESULTS.

The rumours of the dangers that threatened Luther from Rome had a good foundation. A new agent from there had now arrived in Germany, the Papal chamberlain, Charles von Miltitz.