The bull of excommunication he met in the manner intimated to Spalatin from the first. He launched a short tract against it, 'On the new Bull and Falsehoods of Eck,' treating it as Eck's forgery. This he followed up with another tract in German and Latin, 'Against the Bull of Antichrist.' He was resolved to unmask the blindness and wickedness of the Roman evil-doers. He saw partly his own real doctrines perverted, partly the Christian and Scriptural truth that his doctrines contained, stigmatised as heresy and condemned. He declared that if the Pope did not retract and condemn this bull, no one would doubt that he was the enemy of God and the disturber of Christianity. He then solemnly renewed, on November 17, the appeal to a Council, which he had made two years before. But how was his attitude changed since then! He, the accused and condemned heretic, now himself proclaims condemnation and ruin to his enemy, the antichristian power that seeks to domineer the world. Nor is it only from a future Council, and one constituted as the previous great assemblies of the Church, that he expects and demands protection for himself and the Christian truth; again and again he calls upon the Christian laity to assist him. Thus in his appeal now published, he invites the Emperor Charles, the Electors and Princes of the Empire, the counts, barons, and nobles, the town councils, and all Christian authorities throughout Germany, to support him and his appeal, that so the true Christian belief and the freedom of a Council might be saved. Similarly, in the Latin edition of his tract against the bull, he calls upon the Emperor Charles, on Christian kings and princes and all who believe in Christ, together with all Christian bishops and learned doctors, to resist the iniquities of the Popedom. In his German version he defends himself against the charge of stirring up the laity against the Pope and priesthood; but he asks if, indeed, the laity will be reconciled, or the Pope excused, by the command to burn the truth. The Pope himself, he says, and his bishops, priests, and monks are wrestling to their own downfall, through this iniquitous bull, and want to bring upon themselves the hatred of the laity. 'What wonder were it, should princes, nobles, and laymen beat them on the head, and hunt them out of the country?' Hutten now followed with a stormy demand for a general rising of Germany against the tyranny of Rome, whose hirelings and emissaries were to be chased away by main force. When two papal legates, Aleander and Caraccioli, appeared on the Rhine to execute the bull and work upon the Emperor in person, he was anxious to strike a blow at them on his own account, little good as, on calm reflection, it was evident could have come of it. Luther, on hearing of it, could not refrain remarking in a letter to Spalatin, 'If only he had caught them!'