non Law made him, as early as March, 1519, brand the
pope as either Antichrist or Antichrist's apostle. He {70} applauded
Melancthon, a brilliant young man called to teach at Wittenberg in
1518, for denying transubstantiation. He declared that the cup should
never have been withheld from the laity, and that the mass considered
as a good work and a sacrifice was an abomination. His eyes were
opened to the iniquities of Rome by Valla's exposure of the Donation of
Constantine, published by Ulrich von Hutten in 1519. After reading it
he wrote:

Good heavens! what darkness and wickedness is at
Rome! You wonder at the judgment of God that such
unauthentic, crass, impudent lies not only lived but
prevailed for many centuries, that they were incorporated
into the Canon Law, and (that no degree of horror might
be wanting) that they became as articles of faith.

Like German troops Luther was best in taking the offensive. These
early years when he was standing almost alone and attacking one abuse
after another, were the finest of his whole career. Later, when he
came to reconstruct a church, he modified or withdrew much of what he
had at first put forward, and re-introduced a large portion of the
medieval religiosity which he had once so successfully and fiercely
attacked. The year 1520 saw him at the most advanced point he ever
attained. It was then that he produced, with marvellous fecundity, a
series of pamphlets unequalled by him and unexcelled anywhere, both in
the incisive power of their attack on existing institutions and in the
popular force of their language.

[Sidenote: _To the Christian Nobility_, 1520]

His greatest appeal to his countrymen was made in his _Address to the
Christian Nobility of the German Nation on the Improvement of the
Christian Estate_. In this he asserts the right of the civil power to
reform the spiritual, and urges the government to exercise this right.
The priests, says he, defend themselves against all outside
interference by three "walls," of {71} which the first is the claim
that the church is superior to the state, in case the civil authority
presses them; the second, the assertion, if one would correct them by
the Bible, that no one can interpret it but the pope; the third, if
they are threatened with a general council, the contention that no one
can convoke such a council save the pope. Luther demolishes these
walls with words of vast import. First, he denies