Is not the Catholic party far more numerous, able, and powerful? A unanimous decree of this assembly will enlighten the simple, give warning to the imprudent, determine those who are hesitating, and confirm the feeble.... But if the axe is not laid to the root of this poisonous shrub, if the fatal stroke is not given to it, then.... I see it covering the heritage of Jesus Christ with its branches, changing the vineyard of the Lord into a howling forest, transforming the kingdom of God into a den of wild beasts, and throwing Germany into the frightful state of barbarism and desolation to which Asia has been reduced by the superstition of Mahomet." [422] "Quod idem erat, ac revincti legati brachiis et lingua solum soluta." (Ibid. p. 109.) [423] Dass 100,000 Ketzer ihrenthalben verbrannt werden. (Seckend. p. 332.) [Sidenote: EFFECT OF ALEANDER'S ADDRESS.] The nuncio ceased. He had spoken for three hours. The torrent of his eloquence had moved the assembly. "The princes shaken and alarmed," says Cochlœus, "looked at each other; and murmurs were soon heard from different quarters against Luther and his partisans."[424] Had the mighty Luther been present, had he been permitted to answer the discourse, had he, availing himself of the concession forced from the Roman orator by the remembrance of his old master, the infamous Borgia, been permitted to show that these arguments, designed to defend Rome, constituted her condemnation, and that the doctrine which gave proof of her iniquity was not invented by him, as the orator said, but was the very religion which Christ had given to the world, and which the reformation was establishing in its primitive lustre, could he have presented an exact and animated picture of the errors and abuses of the papacy, and shown how it had perverted the religion of Jesus Christ into an instrument of aggrandisement and rapine,--the effect of the nuncio's harangue would have been neutralised at the moment of its delivery; but nobody rose to speak. The assembly remained under the impression of the address, and, excited and carried away, showed themselves ready violently to eradicate the heresy of Luther from the soil of the empire.[425] [424] Vehementer exterriti atque commoti, alter alterum intuebantar, atque in Lutherum ejusque fautores murmurare cœperunt (Cochl., p. 28.) [425] Lutheranam hæresin esse funditus evellendam. (Pallavicini, i, p. 101, Roscoe's Life of Leo X, p. 50.)