vast and sudden fame.

But not all was sunshine. Erasmus wittily said, Luther committed two
unpardonable sins: he touched the pope's crown and the monks' bellies.
Such effrontery would needs raise a mighty outcry.

Prierias, the master of the sacred palace, pronounced Luther a
heretic. Hochstrat of Cologne, Reuchlin's enemy, clamored for fire to
burn him. The indulgence-venders thundered their anathemas, promising
a speedy holocaust of Luther's body. The monasteries took on the form
of so many kennels of enraged hounds howling to each other across the
spiritual waste. And even some who pronounced the Theses scriptural
and orthodox shook their heads and sought to quash such dangerous
proceedings.

But Luther remained firm at his post. He honestly believed what he had
written, and he was not afraid of the truth. If the powers of the
world should come down upon him and kill him, he was prepared for the
slaughter. In all the mighty controversy he was ever ready to serve
the Gospel with his life or with his death.


TETZEL'S END.

Tetzel continued to bray and fume against him from pulpit and press,
denouncing him as a heresiarch, heretic, and schismatic. By Wimpina's
aid he issued a reply to Luther's sermon, and also counter-theses on
Luther's propositions. But the tide was turning in the sea of human
thinking. Luther's utterances had turned it. The people were ready to
tear the mountebank to pieces. Two years later he imploringly