A similar artifice was made to serve his purpose in the matter of the Papal Brief of Aug. 23, 1518, in which Cardinal Cajetan received full powers to proceed against him. He insisted that this was a malicious fabrication of his foes in Germany; and yet he was well aware of the facts of the case; he cannot have doubted its authenticity, seeing that the Brief had been officially transmitted to him from the Saxon Court through Spalatin.[250] While, however, accusing others of deception, even occasionally by name, as in Eck’s case, he saw no wrong in antedating his letter to Leo X; for this neither he nor his adviser Miltitz was to be called to account; it sufficed that by dating it earlier the letter appeared to have been written in ignorance of the Excommunication, and thereby served Luther’s interests better.[251] In fact, right through the period previous to his open breach with Rome, we see him ever labouring to postpone the decision, though a great gulf already separated him from the Church of yore. Across the phantom bridge which still spanned the chasm, he saw with satisfaction thousands passing into his own camp. When on the very point of raising the standard of revolt he seemed at pains to prove it anything but an emblem of uprightness, probity and truth. * * * * * Passing now to the struggle of his later life, similar phenomena can scarcely escape the eyes of the unprejudiced observer. He was proposing untruth and deception when, in 1520, he advised candidates to qualify for major Orders by a fictitious vow of celibacy. Whoever was to be ordained subdeacon was to urge the Bishop not to demand continency, but should the Bishop insist upon the law and call for such a promise, then the candidates were quietly to give it with the proviso: “_quantum fragilitas humana permittit_”; then, says Luther, “each one is free to take these words in a negative sense, i.e. I do not vow chastity because human frailty does not allow of a man living chastely.”[252]