As I went to and fro, I knew that Luther’s pen had never been more active. In October the presses had begun to clang with the great _Babylonish Captivity_ pamphlet,--a true trumpet call to battle. Almost simultaneously came _The Freedom of a Christian Man_, wherein was set forth the peace, joy, liberty, possessed by him who had cast off the old Church and its bondage. Then pealed another clarion,--the last _Letter to the Pope_, wherein the peasant’s son spoke to the Holy Father in tones never heard by Pope before. Clearly he told Leo de’ Medici that it was not he in person, but the Vatican and the evils it perpetuated, against which he aimed. “The Church of Rome, one time most holy of all churches, has become the lawless den of thieves, the very kingdom of sin, death, and hell, so that not even Anti-Christ could devise addition to its wickedness. Meantime you, O Leo, are sitting as a lamb amid wolves,--what resistance can you alone make to these monstrous woes!” Violent? Most surely. But let those who would have had Luther speak softly and sweetly, tell whether the Monsignori have ever yielded jot or tittle for all the fair arguments in the world? When a battle is joined, strong men do not let blood with needles. Presently, after due rumors, the Papal Bull was published in Germany. Eck had brought it North with a kind of triumph. He had caused to be inserted in the Bull the names of several controversialists, who were his personal foes, some of whom were no intimate friends of Luther. To intrust the publication of the Bull to Eck, the most unpopular man in Germany, was simply another of those blunders whereby the Vatican spun its own skein of troubles. Where a prince-bishop or the Dominicans were influential it was published amid sullen silence, and in a few such towns Luther’s books, blazed in little bonfires lit by the common hangman (which bonfires added to the sale and reading of the heretical books exceedingly). But in North Germany many a duke or burghermaster let the mob pluck the offensive paper from the church door and rend it to pieces amid shrill curses. So it was actually treated by the students even in monk-ridden Leipzig. Yet everywhere men asked me, “How will the friar answer?” For answer was expected, and rightly. Early in December I received this letter, while passing through Dresden. _Martin Luther to his dear friend in Christ, the noble Graf Walter von Regenstein_:-- Come to Wittenberg by the 10th, without fail. I have a song to sing, and a deed to perform which you must hear and see. Farewell. I guessed the purpose of the summons. Little was the need again to urge my coming. I entered Wittenberg on the evening of the ninth, and almost as my horse went under the gate, a friendly student thrust in my hand a printed bill. I give it word for word. All Friends of Evangelical Truth