“Worshipful Magister von Eck, you have asked me touching my books, and now I will make answer. In my day I have written many books (with a gesture to the volumes piled on a table below the dais), and much do they differ in kind. For the first kind, they are books of pure edification, nor has the bitterest foe found aught in them amiss. How therefore dare I condemn the good words which they contain by retracting them?” (“A skilful retreat,” I heard a prince-bishop whisper; “he will save a part of his writings by sacrificing the rest.”) “Touching a second part, in them I have attacked that tyranny of the Pope beneath which all Germany groans. And what man not blinded by gold or the devil can deny that the whole land is most miserably ensnared and vexed by these doctrines of the Papalists, to the casting away of many souls. If therefore I should revoke these books, would I not but add force to the former tyranny, yea, open not merely the doors but the windows to destroying sin. In that case--holy God! what a cover to wickedness would I not become! How may I recant them?” “This sounds little like retreating,” a magnate under a ducal cap whispered back to the bishop, but Emperor, prince, and prelate, all kept silence while on spoke Luther. “Finally, noble Sovereign and princes, I come to the third order of my books. In these I have assailed divers persons who have sprung to the defence of the Papal tyranny. Here I deny not I have perchance shown frailty. Doubtless I have sometimes written over-harshly of certain persons. A God I am not, but only a man, and prone to err, through lack of charity, ill becoming the name of Christ, which I do bear. Nevertheless I cannot retract even these books, lest in recalling the harsh words against the Papalists I seem to soften my attacks upon the tyranny and impiety itself, and thereby work greater harm than that which I would fain undo.” “He will not retract! The fiend curse him!” burst between the teeth of the aforementioned bishop, but I could see his ducal companion smiling broadly. The scene was desperately tense. “Inasmuch, my Lord Emperor,” the friar’s voice still sounded, “as I am charged with direful heresies, my books burned in many cities, even my poor body threatened with the flames, I do remember in this hour the word of my Master, even Christ, when the Jews haled him before Annas, accusing him falsely of many crimes, ‘If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil.’ For I am here not in my own pride, but in the name of God and His Gospel; and I do assure your Majesty and you noble lords that the moment I am proved to have written or said aught against the Holy Scriptures, in that same moment I am the first to cast my books upon the fire.” “Blasphemer,” snarled the bishop. “Has not Rome spoken already against him? Wherefore does he prate thus of ‘the Gospel’?” “Because, Reverend Father,” spoke back the Duke, “a few of us sinners are impiously preferring the Word of God to the word of Leo.”