The haughty pontiff, however, instead of embracing the golden opportunity, and receiving readily and kindly his rebellious, but now repentant son, had recourse to the very opposite mode of proceeding. He fulminated his anathemas against him, had him solemnly excommunicated, declared an enemy to the church, and even to the holy Roman empire. Luther having now no alternative, was obliged to make virtue of necessity; and it is easy to see that he was actually forced to take that course which he afterwards pursued, and in the pursuit of which he displayed such wonderful address, and such extraordinary talents as have really immortalized his name. But as to real virtue, it seems hard to see or say how much of that there was in his opposition to the pope and church of Rome, except what is implied in the law of selfpreservation. _Cromwell_ too, had that law on his side, to the full as much, perhaps, as Luther, even while engaged in what has been deemed the most criminal parts of his conduct, the dethronement of the king and attainment of the supreme power. But which of these two men was the most virtuous or most vicious, was the better or worse man, is a point that will not be presumed or attempted to be made here a subject of investigation. They certainly had, both of them, great talents and great defects. Lutheran and other protestant writers have appeared not a little anxious to have Luther acquitted from the imputation of having opposed Tetzel out of spite to the Dominicans, or from resentment for the preference shewn them in the distribution or traffick of indulgences. We pretend not to say that that was the _sole_ cause of his opposition; but that it might be _partly_ the cause seems not at all improbable from what he himself has owned on other occasions. Thus he acknowledges that he had tried to persuade himself of there being no real presence of Christ in the sacrament, “on purpose _to spite the pope_, but that the words of scripture were too plain in favour of it.” Likewise, in his letter to the Vaudois, he says, “I have hitherto thought it of small consequence whether the bread remains in the sacrament or not, but now, _to spite the papists_, I am determined to believe that it does remain.” Thus also, writing against those who had presumed to alter the public service without his authority, he says, “I knew very well that the elevation of the sacrament was idolatrous, but 1 retained it _out of pure spite to that devil Carlostadius_.” {634} A very glaring and most odious trait in Luther’s character was the ungentlemanly and foul language in which he used to address his opponents, than which nothing could be more unbecoming in one who pretended to be engaged in, or anxious for the reformation of mankind, and the revival or restoration of genuine and primitive christianity. We have just now seen in what style he could speak of his quondam friend Carlostadius: “that _devil_ Carlostadius:”