They were not taught such things by me. If any engage in such proceedings and drag my name into it, what can I do to stop them? How many things are the papists doing in the name of Christ which Christ never commanded!" Luther begs all who glory in the name of Christians to conduct themselves as Paul demands 2 Cor. 6, 3: "Giving no offense in anything, that the ministry be not blamed." (10, 360 ff.) Whoever can, ought to treat himself to the reading of this fine treatise of the exiled monk of Wittenberg. The iconoclastic uprising which broke out in Wittenberg in the closing days of the month of February, 1522, finally decided Luther, at the risk of his life, to quit his exile and to fight the devil, who was trying to subvert his good doctrine by such wicked practises. The world knows that it was Luther who quelled the riot in his town. Luther's face was ever sternly set against those who wanted to wage the Lord's wars with the devil's weapons. No murder or sacrilege that was committed in those days can be laid at the door of Luther's teaching. The Catholics are trying to divert attention from their own unwarranted and violent proceedings by charging Luther with preaching a war of extermination against their hierarchy. How did they treat the just claims and reasonable demands of the German nation for measures that were admitted to be crying needs of the times? No German diet met but a long list of grievances was submitted by the suffering people. It was of no avail. The haughty clergy rode over the people's rights and prayers rough-shod. The tyrannous devices which their cunning had invented were executed with brazen impudence. How had they treated simple laymen in whose possession a Bible was found? What was their inquisitorial court but the anteroom to holy butchers' shambles, the legal vestibule to murder that had been sanctioned by the Popes? How had they treated Luther? If the papal nuncio at the Diet of Worms had had his way with the emperor and the princes, Luther would not have left that city alive. They openly declared to the emperor that he was not obliged to keep his plighted word for a safe-conduct to a heretic. These people come now at this late day prating about violence that they have suffered from this sacrilegious and bloodthirsty Luther. They themselves were the perpetrators of the most appalling violence against God and men: their whole system rests, as Johann Gerhard in his famous _Confessio Catholica_ rightly asserts, on _Fraus et Vis,_ that is, Fraud and Violence. 23. Luther, Anarchist and Despot All in One.