Luther returned to Wittenberg full of dejection. The time at Leipzig had only been wasted; the disputation had been unworthy of the name; Eck and his friends there had cared nothing whatever about the truth. Eck, he said, had made more clamour in an hour than he or Carlstadt could have done in a couple of years, and yet all the time the question at issue was one of peaceful and abstruse theology. His disappointment, however, did not refer, as people perhaps might have imagined, to the treatment his thesis on the Papal primacy had met with, or to any embarrassment occasioned him on that account. On the contrary, while complaining of the unworthy character of the disputation, he excepted that particular thesis. He alluded rather to the superficiality and want of interest with which such important questions as justification by faith, and the sinfulness attaching even to the best works of man, were passed over or evaded. On all the points which he had wished to contend for and expound at Leipzig, he now published further explanations. And with regard to the Councils, he declared in still stronger terms than at Leipzig, that they certainly might err and had erred even in the most important matters; one had no right to identify either them or the Pope with the Church. From this he proceeded to explain his true relations with the Bohemians. The theologian Jerome Emser, a friend of Eck, and a favourite of Duke George, contributed in his own way to this end. He had had a hot discussion with Luther before the disputation at Leipzig, in which he reproached him with causing trouble in the Church. He now prepared a remarkable public letter to a high Catholic ecclesiastic at Prague, of the name of Zack. Whilst asserting in it that the Bohemian schismatics appealed to Luther and had actually offered prayers and held services for him during the disputation, he announced, with feigned kindness to Luther, that the latter, on the contrary, had eagerly repudiated at Leipzig any fellowship with them, and had denounced their apostasy from Rome. Luther detected in all this, mere trickery and malice, and we also can only recognise in it a crafty attempt to ruin Luther's position all round. If, says Luther, he were to accept in silence the praise here meted out to him, he would seem to have retracted his whole teaching, and laid down his arms before Eck; if, on the other hand, he were to disclaim it, he would be cried down at once as a patron of the Bohemians, and charged with base ingratitude to Emser. Accordingly, in a small pamphlet, he broke out, full of wrath and bitterness, against Emser, who replied to him in a similar tone. But he represented the case with great clearness. If his doctrines had pleased the Bohemians, he would not retract them on that account. He had no desire to screen their errors, but he found on their side Christ, the Scriptures, and the sacraments of the Church, and therewith a Christian hatred of the worldliness, immorality, and