But there was no other mystery than the imprudence of the partisans of Rome. They hastened to take advantage of the edict of Worms, to strike a decisive blow at the Reformation; and Luther, condemned, under the ban of the empire, and a prisoner in the Wartburg, undertook to defend the sound doctrine, as if he were still victorious and at liberty. It was especially at the tribunal of penance that the priests endeavoured to rivet the chains of their docile parishioners; and accordingly the confessional was the object of Luther's first attack. "They bring forward," said he, "these words of St. James: _Confess your faults to one another_. Singular confessor! his name is _One Another_. Whence it would follow that the confessors should also confess themselves to their penitents; that each Christian should be, in his turn, pope, bishop, priest; and that the pope himself should confess to all!"[40] [40] Und der Pabst müsse ihm beichten. L. Opp. xvii. 701. [Sidenote: REPLY TO LATOMUS--LUTHER'S PROMENADES.] Luther had scarcely finished this tract when he began another. A theologian of Louvain, by name Latomus, already notorious by his opposition to Reuchlin and Erasmus, had attacked the reformer's opinions. In twelve days Luther's refutation was ready, and it is a masterpiece. He clears himself of the reproach that he was wanting in moderation. "The moderation of the day," said he, "is to bend the knee before sacrilegious pontiffs, impious sophists, and to say to them: Gracious lord! Excellent master! Then, when you have so done, you may put any one you please to death; you may even convulse the world, and you will be none the less a man of moderation......Away with such moderation! I would rather be frank and deceive no one. The shell may be hard, but the kernel is soft and tender."[41] [41] Cortex meus esse potest durior, sed nucleus meus mollis et dulcis est. Ibid. Lat. ii. 213.