of the University, who afterwards scattered themselves through all Saxony, but some of the Professors, and even some of the clergy, secular and regular, became his disciples. Leo X. seeing his party every day gaining strength, and ho hope of his retraction, then published in Rome his famous Bull, "Exurge Domine," in which he condemned forty-one of his principal errors as heretical (see Third Part of this history), and sent his Commissaries to publish it in Germany, ordering, at the same time, his books to be publicly burned in Rome. His Holiness, however, even then exhorts Luther and his followers to return to the fold, and promises to receive with clemency whoever returns before the expiration of two months, at the expiration of which, he orders his Commissaries to excommunicate the perverse, and hand them over to the secular power. The two months being passed, he published another Bull, declaring Luther a heretic, and also that all who followed or favoured him incurred all the penalties and censures fulminated against heretics[1]. Luther, as soon as he heard of the publication of the first Bull of 1520, and the burning of his books in Rome, burned in the public square of Wittemberg the Bull, and the Book of the Decretals of the Canon Law, saying: "As you have opposed the saints of the Lord, so may eternal fire destroy you;" and then, in a voice of fury, exclaimed: "Let us fight with all our strength against that son of perdition, the Pope, the Cardinals, and all the Roman sink of corruption; let us wash our hands in their blood[2]." From that day to the day of his death, he never ceased writing against the Pope and the Catholic Church, and from the year 1521 to 1546, when he died, he brought to light again, in his works, almost every heresy of former ages. Cochleus, speaking of Luther's writings, says[3]: "He thus defiled everything holy; he preaches Christ, and tramples on his servants; magnifies faith, and denies good works, and opens a license to sin; elevates mercy, depresses justice, and throws upon God the cause of all evil; finally, destroys all law, takes the power out of the hands of the magistrate, stirs up the laity against the clergy, the impious against the Pope, the people against princes."
SEC. II.—THE DIETS AND PRINCIPAL CONGRESSES HELD CONCERNING THE HERESY OF LUTHER.
