On the fifteenth of April, 1521, we reached Oppenheim, having crossed the Rhine, and being now only one stage from Worms. Time was pressing. On the sixteenth the safe-conduct expired and any failure to reach the Diet would leave Luther far from his sheltering Saxony, and in the very claws of the adversary. The shouting, the cheering, the perpetual “vivats” from the multitudes had been well, but I knew how much the fair words and sympathies of women, peasants, and students were worth against a file of imperial lanz-knechts despatched to seize their hero. Destruction seemed alike before and behind us now, but Dr. Martin had chosen the way, and I was past urging “turn back.” Yet many a good friend was not so convinced as was I that God was leading us, and at Oppenheim came a warning that would have made a very Hannibal quail. We were in the road winding up the steep crags toward the little city when a messenger in the Elector of Saxony’s livery rode up to us, and with him a Dominican friar, one Martin Bucer, a trusty friend and preacher of the Cause. I will not repeat all that they said; enough that they brought a letter from Spalatin, the Elector’s own confessor, warning against going any farther. All kinds of perils lurked at Worms. Aleander, the Papal Legate, was raging that “Luther had enough heresy in him to warrant burning a hundred thousand,” and that his following was the offscouring of Germany. As for the safe-conduct, let Luther remember Hus’s fate, and let him heed also the rumor[11] that the very influential Cardinal of Tortosa, the Emperor’s tutor, had written to his one-time pupil, urging earnestly “to hand the fellow over to the Pope for his deserts.” “What, then, is it advised that Dr. Luther do?” I asked, whereat Bucer answered that Von Sickengen’s formidable castle, the Ebernburg, was not far off. Let him take refuge there, and negotiate at leisure. I sat in my saddle moodily. The advice seemed good, the peril undoubted, yet I knew that if my master turned aside from Worms when almost at its portal his name and fame were marred through all Germany. But while Amsdorf and I were silent, Dr. Martin dispensed with our feeble wisdom. He shot his words right into the face of the courier. “Von Sickengen is a noble ritter. I thank him for his proffer. But he lives by the sword and will die by the sword. God’s cause can prosper without him. And as for me, _though there be as many devils in Worms as there are tiles on the housetops, yet will I go there_. Drive onward.”