[Sidenote: LUTHER'S APPEAL TO A GENERAL COUNCIL.] But duty obliged him to speak, in order to manifest the truth to the world. Rome has struck, and he will make it known how he receives the blow. The pope has put him under the ban of the Church, and he will put the pope under the ban of Christendom. Up to this hour the pope's word has been omnipotent. Luther will oppose word to word, and the world will know which is the more powerful of the two. "I am desirous," said he, "to set my conscience at rest, by making men aware of the danger to which they are exposed."[296] At the same time he prepares to renew his appeal to an universal council. An appeal from the pope to a council was a crime, and hence the mode in which Luther attempts to justify himself is a new act of hostility to papal authority. [296] "Ut meam conscientiam redimam." (Ibid., p. 522.) That I may redeem my conscience. On the morning of the 17th November, a notary and five witnesses, of whom Cruciger was one, met at ten o'clock, in one of the halls of the Augustin convent in which the doctor resided. There the public officer, Sarctor of Eisleben, having seated himself to draw up the minute of his protest, the Reformer, in presence of the witnesses, says, with a solemn tone: "Considering that a general Council of the Christian Church is above the pope, especially in all that concerns the faith; "Considering that the power of the pope is not above, but beneath Scripture, and that he has no right to worry the sheep of Christ, and throw them into the wolf's mouth: "I, Martin Luther, Augustin, doctor of the Holy Scriptures at Wittemberg, do, by this writing, appeal for myself, and for all who shall adhere to me, from the most holy Pope Leo, to a future universal Christian Council. "I appeal from the said Pope Leo, _first_, as an unjust, rash, tyrannical judge, who condemns me without hearing me, and without explaining the grounds of his judgment; _secondly_, as a heretic, a strayed, obdurate apostate, condemned by the Holy Scriptures, inasmuch as he ordains me to deny that Christian faith is necessary in the use of the sacraments;[297] _thirdly_, as an enemy, an antichrist, an adversary, a tyrant of the Holy Scripture,[298] who dares to oppose his own words to all the words of God; _fourthly_, as a despiser, a calumniator, a blasphemer of the holy Christian Church and a free Council, inasmuch as he pretends that a Council is nothing in itself. [297] "Ab erroneo, indurato, per Scripturas sanctas damnato, hæretico et apostata." (L. Op. Lat. ii, p. 50.) See also (L. Op. (L.) xvii, p. 332.) The German copy has a few paragraphs that are not in the Latin. [298] "Oppressore, totius sacræ Scripturæ." (Ibid.) [Sidenote: THE BULL BURNT BY LUTHER.]