“If you, dear Doctor, would indeed have sound council, you should assemble all your learned and discreet Wittenberg friends. We lack alike in years and wisdom.” But Luther laughed with a kind of irony. “A pest on learned and discreet friends! I will have friends who are bold and lusty, but not waxed over wise. A council of graybeards will buzz out as much wisdom as a wasps’ nest. Three councillors suffice for many princes, and they shall suffice for me. What think you, Philip?” Melanchthon stroked his thin beard. “I was reflecting upon what the Roman Hadrian said upon his death-bed, if Cassius Dio reports him aright, ‘Many physicians are the Emperor’s death.’ In numbers we are sufficient, but in sound judgment--” “Away with your classic anecdotes. We are not in the lecture hall. I have led you here for reasonable council, and where is a better place for it than under God’s blue heaven, where He can see and hear if all we say and think is aright? For no light matter methinks to go the road which we have undertaken. And if we are to traverse it, let it not be as blindfolded oxen goaded to the butcher.” “Proceed,” we said together. “Then let the king lay matters before his council. Our noble Walter von Regenstein here tells me, what is beyond peradventure true, that a Papal Bull has been prepared and approved, and since his departure from Italy it has been beyond doubt officially published. It declares me a heretic, and with me all my adherents and favorers. It orders the burning of my books. Rumor says that I and my friends are given sixty days wherein to recant our errors and to burn our books; in other words, to surrender up our castle with even the innermost keep. Failing thereof we are cut off as ‘withered branches not abiding in Christ,’ and to endure that law concerning heretics which has been from ages provided,--the tenor whereof you know right well. Good, then, my noble masters; on which horn of the dilemma shall I sit down? For I am not the first honest monk to whom the paternal father at Rome has spoken, ‘Turn or burn.’” He looked from Amsdorf to Melanchthon, from him to me. We looked sheepishly upon the water. There was nothing hesitant in Luther’s tone or manner, but we were reluctant to speak. “Dear Doctor,” at last I said, with a smile, “after the trumpet blast of your last pamphlet I do not see how we need seek for your answer.”