“His friends were anxious about his fate; for a dreadful sentence had been uttered against him by the emperor on the day when his safe-conduct expired, forbidding any one to sustain or shelter him, and ordering all persons to arrest and bring him into prison to await the judgment he deserved.”[204] To rescue him from this doom, the Elector of Saxony had sent these troops, who conveyed him secretly, but in safety, to the Castle of Wartburg. Thus, while it was generally supposed that he had been waylaid and slain, he was peacefully prosecuting his studies within the walls of the fortress, safe from his foes. The conflict between the reformers and the opponents of reform soon became the all-engrossing question of the age. Many were of the opinion that the end of the world was at hand. The whole continent of Europe was shaken by religions and political commotions. The religious question rallied powerful princes on the opposite sides. The Turks, in apparently overpowering numbers, were thundering at the gates of many of the Eastern cities. France was a maelstrom of excitement. Bigoted Spain declared “heresy” punishable with death. Terrible earthquakes shook the globe. A large portion of Lisbon in a moment was whelmed in ruin, burying thirty thousand of the inhabitants beneath the _débris_. An enormous ocean-wave swept the coast of Holland, consigning four hundred thousand people to a watery grave. In the year 1530, the Emperor Charles V. determined to enforce by military power the oppressive decrees adopted by the Diet at Worms. But the Reformation in Germany had made extraordinary progress. Many German princes had adopted its principles, and were ready to draw the sword in its defence. These princes united in a solemn protest against this papal intolerance. This protest was signed by such men as John, Elector of Saxony, George, Margrave of Brandenburg, two Dukes of Brunswick, the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, and the governors of twenty-four imperial cities. From this formidable protest, which was issued in the spring of the year 1529, the reformers took the name of Protestants, which they retain at the present day. The Emperor Charles V., alarmed by this protest, after several long interviews with the pope, assembled a new diet at Augsburg in April, 1530. Hoping by menaces or bribes to silence the voice of ♦Protestantism, he assumed the air of candor. “I have convened,” he said, “this assembly to consider the difference of opinion upon the subject of religion. It is my intention to hear both parties impartially, to examine their respective arguments, and to reform what requires to be reformed, that there may be in future only one pure and simple faith, and that, as all are the disciples of the same Jesus, all may form one and the same church.”