being, and which was now gathering strength, was with the reformer. The anathema was torn in pieces at Erfurt, and was ill received every where.[188] Politics again stood Luther’s friend. Frederick, the elector of Saxony, his cautious but constant protector, had laid the new emperor (Charles V.) under personal obligations, by declining the imperial crown for himself and transferring his interest to him;--here was a lion’s mouth stopped. Then Charles and Francis were rival monarchs, and in the midst of their rivalry, the Lutheran heresy (like the earthquake at Thrasymenæ, which rolled away unperceived by the combatants) did not rivet their exclusive attention amidst the intrigues of the cabinet, or the clashing of arms; and moreover the Lutheran party might be useful to either to turn a balance. Accordingly, Luther ventured to encounter the diet of Worms, and felt, what he exclaimed to the vast multitude who hailed him as he stepped out of his carriage, that “God was on his side.” He came out of that trial unharmed, however the smell of fire might have passed on him, and invested even with greater influence on public opinion than before. He found it necessary to submit to a friendly imprisonment in the castle of Wartburg, till the tyranny of the diet should be overpast; but he availed himself of this unacceptable leisure for the manufacture of his arms. On the one hand, he taught the people out of the Scriptures, giving them an admirable translation, first of the New, and then of the Old Testament, a translation which our own Cranmer kept ever by his side;[189] he laboured with still greater care his Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, a work containing wholesome doctrine and most necessary for those times, when (as in the days of St. Paul) faith in Christ was overlaid by ritual observances, and merit was pleaded where mercy should have been craved. On the other hand, he did not scruple to wield more ignoble implements of war; if the sword was not at hand, he could smite with the ox-goad. Coarse and grotesque caricatures of his opponents in a frontispiece, often recommended his works to his plebeian readers; a cardinal decorated with a fox’s brush which he trailed through the mire, and with which he bespattered his neighbours; a pope seated astride upon a sow, or furnished with a pair of ass’s ears, whilst a legion of imps, busy like the Rosicrucian gnomes, on mischief, would be crowning him with a nauseous mitre, or lowering him into an infernal abyss or preparing faggots for his burning.[190] To these and the like weapons of warfare did this intrepid and unceremonious assailant descend, partly excused by the grosser taste of the times in which he lived, and partly by that disregard for petty proprieties, which is felt in a degree by most men of masculine minds, and which is felt by all men in moments of excitement and when the cause which they have at heart is at stake. Melancthon it is true,