possible at that moment to suppress the fire. "The great God of Heaven,"
they said, "had caused the undertaking of His holy instrument Mr. Doctor
Martin Luther to prosper. Through His unspeakable mercy he has driven
away the Papal darkness and caused the sun of righteousness once more to
beam upon the world. The old idolatries, blasphemies, errors, and
horrors of the benighted Popedom have been exterminated in many kingdoms
and countries. Innumerable sheep of the Lord Christ have been fed on
the wholesome pasture of the Divine Word in spite of those monstrous,
tearing, ravenous wolves, the Pope and his followers. The enemy of God
and man, the ancient serpent, may hiss and rage. Yes, the Roman
antichrist in his frantic blusterings may bite off his own tongue, may
fulminate all kinds of evils, bans, excommunications, wars, desolations,
and burnings, as long and as much as he likes. But if we take refuge
with the Lord God, what can this inane, worn-out man and water-bubble do
to us?" With more in the same taste.

The Pope's bull for the Catholic jubilee was far more decorous and lofty
in tone, for it bewailed the general sin in Christendom, and called on
all believers to flee from the wrath about to descend upon the earth,
in terms that were almost prophetic. He ordered all to pray that the
Lord might lift up His Church, protect it from the wiles of the enemy,
extirpate heresies, grant peace and true unity among Christian princes,
and mercifully avert disasters already coming near.

But if the language of Paul V. was measured and decent, the swarm of
Jesuit pamphleteers that forthwith began to buzz and to sting all over
Christendom were sufficiently venomous. Scioppius, in his Alarm Trumpet
to the Holy War, and a hundred others declared that all heresies and
heretics were now to be extirpated, the one true church to be united and
re-established, and that the only road to such a consummation was a path