He had a report of his conference with Caietan printed, with a justification of himself to the readers. And in this he advanced propositions against the Papacy which entirely shook its whole foundation. Already, in the solutions to his theses, he had incidentally, and without attracting further notice by the remark, spoken of a time when the Papacy had not yet acquired supremacy over the Universal Church, thereby contradicting what the Romish Church maintained and had made into a dogma, namely, that the Papal see possessed this primacy by original institution through Christ, and by means of immutable Divine right. He now expressed this opinion as a positive proposition. The Papal monarchy, he declared, was only a Divine institution in the sense in which every temporal power, advanced by the progress of historical development, might be called so also. 'The kingdom of God cometh not with observation.' Without waiting for an answer direct from Rome, Luther now abandoned all thoughts of success with Leo X. On November 28 he formally and solemnly appealed from the Pope to a General Christian Council. By so doing he anticipated the sentence of excommunication which he was daily expecting. With Rome he had broken for ever, unless she were to surrender her claims and acquisitions of more than a thousand years. After once the first restraints of awe were removed with which Luther had regarded the Papacy, behind and beyond the matter of the indulgences, and he had learned to know the Papal representative at Augsburg, and made a stand against his demands and menaces, and escaped from his dangerous clutches, he enjoyed for the first time the fearless consciousness of freedom. He took a wider survey around him, and saw plainly the deep corruption and ungodliness of the powers arrayed against him. His mind was impelled forward with more energy as his spirit for the fight was stirred within him. Even the prospect that he might have to fly, and the uncertainty whither his flight could be, did not daunt or deter him. His thought was how he could throw himself with more freedom into the struggle, if no longer hampered by any obligations to his prince and his university. Writing at that time to his friend Link, to inform him of his new publications and his appeal, he invited his opinion as to whether he was not right in saying that the Antichrist of whom St. Paul speaks (2 Thess. ii.), ruled at the Papal court. 'My pen,' he went on to say, 'is already giving birth to something much greater. I know not whence these thoughts come. The work, as far as I can see, has hardly yet begun, so little reason have the great men at Rome for hoping it is finished.' Again, while informing Spalatin, through whom the Elector always urged him to moderation, of new Papal edicts and regulations aimed against him, he declared, 'The more those Romish grandees rage and meditate the use of force, the less do I fear them. All the more free shall I become to fight against the