[Sidenote: Luther advocates social as well as religious reforms.] The pamphlet closes with a long list of evils which must be done away with before Germany can become prosperous. Luther saw that his view of religion really implied a social revolution. He advocated reducing the monasteries to a tenth of their number and permitting those who were disappointed in the good they got from living in them freely to leave. He would not have them prisons, but hospitals and refuges for the soul-sick. He points out the evils of pilgrimages and of the numerous church holidays, which interfere with daily work. The clergy, he urged, should be permitted to marry and have families like other citizens. The universities should be reformed, and "the accursed heathen, Aristotle," should be cast out from them. It should be noted that Luther appeals to the authorities not in the name of religion chiefly, but in that of public order and prosperity. He says that the money of the Germans flies feather-light over the Alps to Italy, but it suddenly becomes like lead when there is a question of its coming back. He showed himself a master of vigorous language, and his denunciations of the clergy and the Church resounded like a trumpet call in the ears of his countrymen. [Sidenote: Luther attacks the sacramental system in his _Babylonian Captivity of the Church_, 1520.] Luther had said little of the doctrines of the Church in his _Address to the German Nobility_, but within three or four months he issued a second work, in which he sought to overthrow the whole system of the sacraments, as it had been taught by Peter Lombard and the theologians of the thirteenth century.[281] Four of the seven sacraments--ordination, marriage, confirmation, and extreme unction--he rejected altogether. He completely revised the conception of the Mass, or the Lord's Supper. He stripped the priest of his singular powers by denying that he performed the miracle of transubstantiation or offered a sacrifice for the living and the dead when he officiated at the Lord's Supper. The priest was, in his eyes, only a minister, in the Protestant sense of the word, one of whose chief functions was preaching. [Sidenote: Luther excommunicated.] 146. Luther had long expected to be excommunicated. But it was not until late in 1520 that his adversary, Eck, arrived in Germany with a papal bull condemning many of Luther's assertions as heretical and giving him sixty days in which to recant. Should he fail to come to himself within that time, he and all who adhered to or favored him were to be excommunicated, and any place which harbored him should fall under the interdict. Now, since the highest power in Christendom had pronounced Luther a heretic, he should unhesitatingly have been delivered up by the German authorities. But no one thought of arresting him. [Sidenote: The German authorities reluctant to publish the bull against Luther.]