Tetzel executed his trust with the most shameless contempt of all decency. There was no sin, however monstrous (and some he named,) which he had not both the will and the power to remit. It was in vain for the German pastors to insist on penance; here was a papal missionary at hand ready to absolve from all pains and penalties. The indulgences were farmed; they were sold in the gross to the best bidders, and were by them dispersed amongst the retail pedlars of pardons, who resorted to the public houses, exhibited their wares, and picked the pockets of the credulous. Extravagance like this called up Luther, excited his honest indignation, and drove him to write. He had no notion where this first step was to lead him. In the simplicity of his heart he thought that the pope would be on his side, and condemn such flagrant excesses in his emissaries. Leo was as little aware as himself of the critical position of his affairs. “Brother Martin,” quoth he, “is a man of very fine genius;” and he regarded the whole matter as a battle of kites and crows. But Martin was in earnest, whatever Leo might be. Still he had little idea how much he would have to unlearn. He did not question, for instance, the pope’s supremacy, till Eckius, one of his indiscreet antagonists, provoked him to scrutinise the pretension, and then, like honest Latimer, he found himself hard to be persuaded that our Saviour said--“Peter, I do mean this by sitting in thy boat, that thou shalt go to Rome, and be bishop there five and twenty years after mine ascension, and all thy successors shall be rulers of the universal church after thee.”[183] On he went, feeling his way and light continued to break upon him. Two years later than the time when he wrote against indulgences (which was in 1517) he tells Spalatinus, the secretary of the Elector of Saxony, and his own confidential correspondent that he had no intention to separate from the apostolic see.[184] He examines the decretals; and then he whispers in his friend’s ear that he begins to suspect the pope to be antichrist. He ponders somewhat longer, and he now acquaints him that he has not much doubt of the fact;[185] and shortly after this (in 1520) he publishes his “Tract against the Popedom,” in which he draws the sword; and then his “Babylonish Captivity,” in which he throws away the scabbard. Measures are no longer kept by either party. On the 15th June, 1520, Leo issued his damnatory bull excommunicating Luther, delivering him over to Satan, requiring the secular princes to apprehend him, and condemning his books to be burned.[186] Luther, nothing dismayed, on the 10th December of the same year returns measure for measure, and raising a huge pile of wood without the walls of Wittenberg, commits decretals, canon law, and bull to the flames together.[187] Time was when this would have been frenzy; it was still perilous; but public opinion, which the art of printing had called into