"because the light of the Holy Gospel had now shone brightly in the
electoral dominions for a hundred years, the Omnipotent keeping it
burning notwithstanding the raging and roaring of the hellish enemy and
all his scaly servants."

The doctors of divinity were still more emphatic in their phraseology.
They called on all professors and teachers of the true Evangelical
churches, not only in Germany but throughout Christendom, to keep the
great jubilee. They did this in terms not calculated certainly to smother
the flames of religious and party hatred, even if it had been 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