The work is more a vindication of the Empire’s Catholic standpoint and of the honour of the Catholics against Luther’s foul suspicions and calumnies, than a personal defence of his own cause. It is couched in the language we might expect from a fighter and a sovereign pelted with filth before the eyes of his own subjects. It hails expressions of the roughest against Luther, the convicted “rebel against the Emperor and all authority,” the inventor of “slimy fabrications and palpable lies” not worth an answer, amongst which was the “downright false” assertion, that “the Papists are up in arms” against the Protestant Estates.[621] In order to understand its tone we must bear in mind Luther’s own method of belabouring all his foes with the coarsest language at his command. At the beginning of his writing the Duke says of Luther’s abuse: “If both Lutherans and Papists could be reformed by vituperation and abuse, cursing and swearing, then His Imperial Roman Majesty, Christian kings, princes and lords would have had no need of a scholar; plenty other people, for instance, worn-out whores, tipsy boors and loose knaves, might have done it just as well without any assistance or help of yours.”[622] The following, taken from the Duke’s writing, carries us back into the very thick of the excitement of those years: “Who is the man who, contrary to God, law, justice and all Scripture and knowledge, has sacrilegiously robbed, stolen and taken from Christ all the possessions bestowed upon Him hundreds of years ago by emperors, kings, princes, lords, counts, knights, nobles, burghers and peasants, all of whom, out of fervent love and appreciation for His sacred Passion, His rosy blood and guiltless death, gave their gifts for the establishment of monasteries, parish-churches, altars, cells, hospitals, mortuaries, guilds, roods, etc., etc.? Why, Squire Martin, Dr. Luther!--Who has plundered and despoiled the poor village clergy--who were true pastors of the Church, ministers of the Sacraments, preachers and guides of souls--of their blood and sweat, their hardly earned yearly stipend, nay, their sacred gifts such as tithes, rents, offerings and Church dues, and that without any permission of the Ordinaries and contrary to God, to honour and to justice? Why, Dr. Pig-trough Luther!--Who has robbed, plundered and deprived God during the last twelve years of so many thousand souls and sent them down with bloody heads to Lucifer in the abyss of hell? Who, but the arch-murderer of souls, Dr. Donkey-ear Mertein Luther!--Who has robbed Christ of His wedded spouses--many of whom (though perhaps not all) had served Him diligently day and night for so many years in a lovely, spiritual life--and has brought them down to a miserable, pitiable and wicked mode of life? Shame upon you, you blasphemous, sacrilegious man, you public bordeller for all escaped monks and nuns, apostate priests and renegades generally!--Who has