At Wittenberg the Disputation called forth enthusiastic applause among both professors and students, and the defender was unanimously (“_uno consensu dominorum_”) proclaimed a Bachelor. So deeply was Luther concerned in this manifesto, that he expressed to Lang his readiness to go to Erfurt and there personally to conduct the defence of all the theses. He scoffs at those who had called them not merely paradoxical but kakodoxical and even kakistodoxical (execrable).[824] “To us,” he says, “they can only be orthodox.” He was very zealous in distributing them far and wide, and asked Christoph Scheurl, the Humanist of Nuremberg, to whom he sent some, to forward a copy to “our Eck ... who is so learned and intellectual”; such was then his opinion of his future adversary.[825] Scheurl, and no doubt Luther’s other friends also, took care to spread the bold theses. This Humanist, who was prejudiced in favour of Luther, ventured to prophesy a great revolution in the domain of Divinity. At the commencement of his reply to Luther’s letter he greets him with the wish, that “the theology of Christ may be reinstated, and that we may walk in His Law!”[826] This Disputation at Wittenberg has been described by Protestants as a “decisive blow struck at mediæval doctrine.”[827] That it was an open challenge admits of no doubt. Reticence and humility were not among Luther’s qualities. It would be to misrepresent him completely were we to assign to him, as special characteristics, bashfulness, timidity and love of retirement; however much he himself occasionally claims such virtues as his. On the other hand, he also assures us that no one can say of him that he wished the theses of this Disputation to be merely “whispered in a corner.” With this impulse to bring his new doctrines boldly before the world may be connected his taking, about this time, in one of his letters the name Eleutherius, or Free-spirited. This was his way of rendering into Greek his name Luther, agreeably with the customs of the time. Only a few weeks after the second Disputation which we have been considering, he came forward with his Indulgence theses against Tetzel, of which the result was to be another great Disputation. Disputations seemed to him a very desirable method of arousing sympathy for his ideas; these learned encounters with his opponents gave him a good opportunity for displaying his fiery temper, his quick-wittedness, his talent as an orator, his general knowledge, and particularly his familiarity with the Bible. But this is not yet the place to discuss the Indulgence theses against Tetzel.