"It is no secret that there are persons who are stirring up his Holiness against Luther and against all who dare to murmur against their dogmas. But the great princes ought rather to consider what is demanded by the permanent will of the pope, than by a loyalty extorted by base means. What kind of people the authors of these dissensions are I could make perfectly clear, if I did not fear that while I am telling the truth I may seem to be uttering abuse. Many of them I know intimately; many have declared their quality by their writings, so that no mirror could more clearly reflect the image of their heart and life. Would that they who take up the Censor's rod to drive out of the Senate of Christians whomever they will, had drunk more deeply of the teaching and the spirit of Christ.... "I say these things the more freely because I stand in every way utterly apart from the case of Reuchlin and Luther. I should never care to write things of that sort, nor can I claim so much learning for myself as to defend what others have written, but I cannot help making this mystery plain: that those men [the opponents of Luther] are aiming at something quite different from what they pretend. They have long been unable to bear the idea of sound learning and the languages flourishing, the ancient authors coming to life, who were until just now lying covered with dust and eaten up by moths, the world called back to the original sources themselves. They tremble for their own emptiness, they are unwilling to appear ignorant of anything; they fear to lose something of their own authority. They have long been pressing upon this sore, and at last it has broken, for the pain could no longer be concealed. Before the books of Luther appeared they were most urgent in this thing, especially Dominicans and Carmelites, of whom I would that many were not more wicked than ignorant.