“Will Charles summon Luther to Worms?” Germany was asking. And the millions who at first said “He must,” presently began more confidently to say “He will.” But after that came another question, “Will Luther go to Worms?” And there was hesitation even among those who loved the Cause right well. For at Worms would be all the puissance and majesty of Church and State, every hostile influence that could be invoked to crush the heretic, every glitter and threat of power invoked to overawe the peasant’s son who had ventured to gainsay the dictates of the mighty. “If Luther goes to Worms,” so not one, but many men told me, “he will either be sent to the stake, or dazzled into a recantation. Better stay away, and let the ban of the Empire issue.” I knew that sober men were talking of carnal war. Franz von Sickengen, greatest of the Rhine ritters, and Hutten’s friend, who saw in Luther’s cause a noble pretext for warfare on the prince-bishops his soul hated, had long since written him, “My services, my lands, my person are at your summons.” And Hutten had written, urging recourse to “swords, bows, javelins, and bombs.” “The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force,” so ran a favorite text in many mouths, but not in Luther’s. I saw what he wrote to Spalatin, wise Frederick’s confessor, touching such mad counsellings. “I do not wish that we fight for the Gospel with fire and sword. By the Word the world has been subdued, by the Word the Church has been upheld, and by the Word it will be reformed.” And again touching the question of going to Worms, “I will be carried to Worms if I cannot go well. If they intend violence, and no doubt they do, my case is commended to the Lord. The same Lord lives and reigns who preserved the three youths in the furnace of the King of Babylon, and if He does not choose to preserve me, my head is a small thing in comparison with the slaying of Christ. Amen.” And now at last tidings came, ever more frequently, both from friends and foes in the Rhinelands, as to the fury of the legates when their hot demands met with no instant compliance, and the bitter counter-complaints of the assembled princes at the persistence of many confessed abuses in the Church, and of the endless negotiation and recrimination. Finally came the issue to it all; an imperial summons bidding Luther “come to Worms under safe-conduct, to give an account to the Emperor and the Diet of his books and his doctrines.” I was in Wittenberg when the imperial herald, Caspar Sturm, whose official style was “Deutschland,” a noble-minded and lordly man, arrived with the formal mandate. With many of Luther’s friends I stood in the little study whilst he unrolled the formidable parchment. At last Melanchthon spoke hesitantly. “Dear Doctor, what will you do?” “Do, Philip?” was the deep-voiced answer, “I will go!”