Luther was not intimidated by this explosion of disapprobation One of his leading arguments was, that the Greeks had never recognised the pope, and yet had never been declared heretics; that the Greek Church had subsisted, was subsisting, and would subsist without the pope, and was a Church of Christ as much as the Church of Rome. Eck, on the contrary, boldly affirmed that the Christian Church and the Roman Church were one and the same; that the Greeks and Orientals, by abandoning the Church, had also abandoned Christian faith, and unquestionably were heretics. "What!" exclaimed Luther, "Are not Gregory of Nanzianzen, Basil the Great, Epiphanius, Chrysostom, and an immense number of other Greek bishops in bliss? and yet they did not believe that the Church of Rome was superior to other churches!... It is not in the power of the pontiff of Rome to make new articles of faith. The Christian believer has no other authority than the Holy Scriptures--they alone constitute _divine law_. I pray the illustrious doctor to admit that the pontiffs of Rome were men, and have the goodness not to make gods of them."[115] [115] Nec potest fidelis Christianus cogi ultra Sacram Scripturam, quæ est proprie jus divinum. (L. Op. Lat. i, 252.) Nor can a Christian believer be forced beyond the Sacred Scripture, which is properly divine law. Eck had recourse to one of those witticisms which at small cost give a little air of triumph to the person employing them. "The reverend father," says he, "not being well versed in the culinary art, makes an odd mixture of Greek saints and heretics, so that the perfume of holiness in the one disguises the poison in the other."[116] [116] "At Rev. Pater, _artis coquinariæ_ minus instructus, commiscet sanctos græcos cum schismaticis et hæreticis, ut fuco sanctitatis Patrum, hæreticorum tueatur perfidiam." (Ibid.) But the Rev. Father, imperfectly skilled in the culinary art, confounds Greek saints with schismatics and heretics, that by the sanctity of the Fathers he may disguise the perfidy of the heretics. _Luther_--(_hastily interrupting Eck_.)--"The worthy doctor is impertinent. I do not hold that there is any communion between Christ and Belial." [Sidenote: THE COURT FOOL. LUTHER AT MASS.]