Thus Luther's whole desire was, that the watchmen of the Church should awake, and exert themselves in putting an end to the evils which were laying it waste. Nothing could be more noble and more respectful than this letter from a monk to one of the greatest princes of the Church and the empire. Never was there a better exemplification of the spirit of our Saviour's precept--"Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's, and unto God the things which are God's." This is not the course of violent revolutionists, who contemn powers and blame dignities. It is a cry proceeding from the conscience of a Christian and a priest, who gives honour to all, but in the first place fears God. However, all prayers and supplications were useless. Young Albert, engrossed by his pleasures and ambitious designs, made no reply to this solemn appeal. The Bishop of Brandebourg, Luther's ordinary--a learned and pious man, to whom, also, he sent his theses--replied that he was attacking the power of the Church, that he would involve himself in great trouble and vexation, that the thing was beyond his strength, and that his earnest advice to him was to keep quiet.[368] The princes of the Church shut their ears against the voice of God, thus energetically and affectingly declared by the instrumentality of Luther. They would not comprehend the signs of the times; they were struck with that blindness which has been the ruin of so many powers and dignities. "Both thought," says Luther afterwards, "that the pope would be too many for a miserable mendicant like me." But Luther was better able than the bishops to perceive the disastrous effects which the indulgences had upon the manners and lives of the people; for he was in direct correspondence with them. He had constantly a near view of what the bishops learned only by unfaithful reports. If the bishops failed him, God did not fail him. The Head of the Church, who sits in heaven, and to whom has been given all power upon the earth, had himself prepared the ground, and deposited the grain in the hands of his servant. He gave wings to the seed of truth, and sent it in an instant over the whole length and breadth of his Church. Nobody appeared at the university next day to attack the propositions of Luther. The traffic of Tezel was too much in discredit, and too disgraceful for any other than himself, or some one of his creatures, to dare to take up the gauntlet. But these theses were destined to be heard in other places than under the roof of an academical hall. Scarcely had they been nailed to the door of the castle church of Wittemberg, than the feeble strokes of the hammer were followed throughout Germany by a blow which reached even to the foundations of proud Rome, threatening sudden ruin to the walls, the gates, and the pillars of the papacy, stunning and terrifying its champions, and at the same time awakening thousands from the sleep of error.[369]