Luther likewise found comfort in the friendship of respectable laymen. Christopher Scheurl, the excellent secretary of the imperial city of Nuremberg, gave him gratifying marks of his friendship. We know how pleasant expressions of sympathy are to the man who feels himself assailed from all quarters. The secretary of Nuremberg did more; he tried to make friends to his friend. He urged him to dedicate one of his works to a then celebrated lawyer of Nuremberg, named Jerome Ebner:--"You have a high idea of my studies," modestly replied Luther; "but I have the poorest idea of them myself. Nevertheless, I was desirous to meet your wishes. I have searched ... ; but in all my store, which I never found so meagre, nothing presented itself which seemed at all worthy of being dedicated to so great a man by so little a man."[401] Striking humility! It is Luther who speaks thus, and the person with whom he contrasts himself is Doctor Ebner, who is altogether unknown to us. Posterity has not ratified Luther's judgment. [401] "Luther writes him:--"Literæ tuæ animum tuum erga meam parvitatem candidum et longe ultra merita benevolentissimum probaverunt." (Ibid., p. 79.) Your letter proves your candid opinion of me, and your most kind affection for me, both to a degree far exceeding my deserts. Luther, who had done nothing to circulate his theses, had not sent them to Scheurl any more than to the Elector and his courtiers. The secretary of Nuremberg expressed his surprise. "I had no intention," replies Luther, "to give my theses so much publicity. I wished only to confer on their contents with some of those who reside with us or near us;[402] intending, if they condemned, to destroy, and if they approved, to publish them. But now they are printed, reprinted, and spread far and wide, beyond my expectation; so much so that I repent of their production.[403] Not that I have any fear of the truth being known by the people, (for this was all I sought,) but this is not the way of instructing them. There are questions in the theses as to which I have still my doubts; and if I had thought that they were to produce such a sensation, there are things which I would have omitted, and others which I would have affirmed with greater confidence." Luther afterwards thought differently. Far from fearing he had said too much, he declared that he ought to have said still more. But the apprehensions which Luther expresses to Scheurl do honour to his sincerity. They show that he had nothing like a premeditated plan, had no party spirit, no overweening conceit, and sought nothing but the truth. When he had fully discovered the truth, his language was different. "You will find in my first writings," said he, many years after, "that I very humbly made many concessions to the pope, and on points of great importance; concessions which I now detest, and regard as abominable and blasphemous."[404]