as a quarrel of monks, and
allowed Luther to give his side of the story. He was induced to send a
certain cardinal legate, Cajetan, to Augsburg to bring this heretic
into submission, but the legate failed to bring Luther into subjection.
Luther then appealed to the pope, and when the pope issued a bull
approving of the sale of indulgences, Luther appealed to the council.

Thus far Luther had only protested against the perversion of the rules
of the church and of the papal doctrine, but there followed the public
disputations with Doctor John Eck, the vice-chancellor of the
University of Ingolstadt, in which the great subject under discussion
was the primacy of the pope. Luther held that the pope was not
infallible that he might err in matters of doctrine, and that the
general council, which represented the universal church, should decide
the case. Now Luther had already asserted that certain doctrines of
Huss were true, but the Council of Constance had condemned these and
burned Huss at the stake. Luther was compelled by his shrewd opponent
to acknowledge that a council also might err, and he had then to
maintain his position that the pope and the council both might err and
to commit himself to the proposition that there is no absolute
authority on the {384} face of the earth to interpret the will of God.
But now Luther was forced to go yet a step farther. When the papal
bull condemning him and excommunicating him was issued, he took the
bull and burned it in the presence of a concourse of people, and then
wrote his address to the German nobles. He thus set at defiance the
whole church government and authority. He had become an open
revolutionist.

The Catholic Church, to defend itself from the position it had taken
against Luther, reasoned in this way: "Where there is difference of
opinion, there is doubt; where there is doubt, there is no certainty;
where there is no certainty, there is no knowledge. Therefore, if
Luther is right, that there is room for difference of opinion about
divine revelation, then we have no knowledge of that revelation." In
this way did the Roman Church attempt to suppress all freedom of
religious belief.

For the opposition which Luther made, he was summoned to appear before
the Diet of Augsburg, which condemned him as a heretic. Had it not
been that Charles V, who presided, had promised him a safe-conduct to
and from the diet, Luther would have suffered the same fate as John
Hu