Things being thus, “prostrate before him,” he begs the Emperor to protect, not indeed one who lies “poor and helpless in the dust,” but, at least, the treasure of truth, since he, the greatest secular sovereign, has been entrusted with the temporal sword for the maintenance of truth and the restraint of wickedness; as for himself, he only desired to be called to account in a fair manner, and to see his teaching either properly refuted, or duly accepted by all. He was ready to betake himself to any public disputation, so he declares in the “Protestation,” and would submit to the decision of any unprejudiced University; he would present himself before any judges, saintly or otherwise, clerical or lay, provided only they were just, and that he was given state protection and a safe conduct. If they were able to convince him by proofs from Holy Scripture, he would become a humble pupil, and obediently relinquish an enterprise undertaken--this, at least, he would assert without undue self-exaltation--only for the honour of God, the salvation of souls and the good of Christianity, simply because he was a doctor, and without any hope of praise or profit. This manifesto was sufficient to satisfy the Elector Frederick. The growing esteem in which Luther was held and the delay in the settlement of his case served admirably Frederick’s purpose of making himself less dependent on the Emperor and Empire. Calculation and politics thus played their part in an affair which to some extent they shaped. At a later date, it is true, Luther asserted in the preface to his Latin works, that his success had been the result only of Heaven’s visible protection; that he had quietly “awaited the decision of the Church and the Holy Ghost”; only one thing, namely, the Catechism, he had been unable to see condemned by the interference of Rome; to deny Christ he could never consent. He was willing to confess his former weaknesses “in order that--to speak like Paul--men may not esteem me for something more than I am, but as a simple man.”[53]