[594] Longo itinere, novus eques, fessus. (L. Ep. ii, p. 3.) After the violent combat which Luther had been obliged to maintain, God was pleased to conduct him to a peaceful resting place. After placing him on the brilliant theatre of Worms, where all the powers of the Reformer's soul had been so vigorously exerted, He gave him the obscure and humiliating retreat of a prison. From the deepest obscurity He brings forth the feeble instruments by which he proposes to accomplish great things, and then, after allowing them to shine for a short time with great lustre on an elevated stage, sends them back again to deep obscurity. Violent struggles and pompous displays were not the means by which the Reformation was to be accomplished. That is not the way in which the leaven penetrates the mass of the population. The Spirit of God requires more tranquil paths. The man of whom the champions of Rome were always in pitiless pursuit, behoved for a time to disappear from the world. It was necessary that personal achievements should be eclipsed in order that the revolution about to be accomplished might not bear the impress of an individual. It was necessary that man should retire and God alone remain, moving, by his Spirit, over the abyss in which the darkness of the middle age was engulphed, and saying,--"_Let there be light_." Nightfall having made it impossible to follow their track, the party carrying off Luther took a new direction, and about an hour before midnight arrived at the foot of a mountain.[595] The horses climbed slowly to its summit on which stood an old fortress surrounded on all sides, except that of the entrance, by the black forests which cover the mountains of Thuringia. [595] Hora ferme undecima ad mansionem noctis perveni in tenebris. (L. Ep. i, p. 3.) [Sidenote: LUTHER A CAPTIVE.]