r, "You are now
going to burn a goose [Huss signifying goose in the Bohemian language];
but in a century you will have a swan whom you can neither roast nor
boil." Fox's Book of Martyrs. This was fulfilled in Martin Luther.

Henry Institorus, an inquisitor, uttered these remarkable words: "'All
the world cries out and demands a council, but there is no human power
that can reform the church by a council. The Most High will find other
means, which are at present unknown to us, although they may be at our
very doors, to bring back the church to its pristine condition.' This
remarkable prophecy, delivered by an inquisitor at the very period of
Luther's birth, is the best apology for the reformation."

Andrew Proles, provincial of the Augustines, used often to say: "Whence,
then, proceeds so much darkness and such horrible superstitions? O my
brethren! Christianity needs a bold and a great reform, and methinks I
see it already approaching.... I am bent with the weight of years, and
weak in body, and I have not the learning, the ability, and eloquence,
that so great an undertaking requires. But God will raise up a hero, who
by his age, strength, talents, learning, genius and eloquence, shall
hold the foremost place. He will begin the reformation; he will oppose
error, and God will give him boldness to resist the mighty ones of the
earth."

John Hilten censured the most flagrant abuses of the monastic life, and
the exasperated monks threw him into prison and treated him shamefully.
"The Franciscan, forgetting his malady and groaning heavily, replied: 'I
bear your insults calmly for the love of Christ; for I have said nothing
that can injure the monastic state: I have only censured its most crying
abuses.' 'But,' continued he (according to what Melancthon records in
his Apology for the Augsburg Confession of Faith), 'another man will
rise in the year of our Lord 1516: he will destroy you, and you shall
not be able to resist him.'"

In 1516 Luther held a public discussion with Feld-kirchen, in which he
upheld certain doctrines of truth that made a great stir among the
Romanists. Says D'Aubigne: "The disputation took place in 1516. This was
Luther's first attack upon the dominion of the sophists and upon the
Papacy, as he himself characterizes it." And again, "This disputation
made a great noise, and it has been considered as the beginning of the
reformation." Book I, Chap. 9. The next year, however, he entered
publicly upon