In 1518 Eckius, a professor of divinity at Ingolstadt, took up the controversy against Luther, who answered him, and thus increased his popularity and the number of his adherents, whilst at the same time the warmth of debate carried him beyond his original propositions and led hire to touch on the abstruse subjects of free-will and the means of justification. Still it appears that Luther bad as yet no intention of separating from the Roman Catholic Church. In May 1518 he addressed a submissive letter to Leo X., in which he says, "I throw myself prostrate at your feet, most holy father ; call or recall me, approve or condemn me as you please; I shall acknowledge your voice as the voice of Christ, who presides and speaks in your person." Leo summoned Luther to appear at Rome in sixty days, and there to plead his own cause; but the elector of Saxony interposed, and obtained permission for Luther to be examined within the bounds of the empire, and to be judged by its ecclesiastical laws. Cardinal Caietano, of the order of Dominicans, and papal legate at the diet of Augabnrg, was ordered to examine him. Luther, accompanied by Staupitz and another friend, repaired to Augsburg in October 1518, and was received by the cardinal with courtesy ; but instead of arguing the point with him, the cardinal assumed an imperious tone, and com manded him to retract because the pope so willed it, and how could he (Luther), a single monk, expect to be able to cope with the pope I (Luther's ' Letter' to Spalatin, chaplain to the elector, and his friend, dated Augsburg, 14th of October.) Luther replied that neither the legate nor the pope could pretend to infallibility, and that St. Peter himself had erred. In one of these interviews however the cardinal was insensibly drawn out from his high ground, and entered the field of controversy, but it would appear with little success. He rejected with scorn what be considered the novel doctrine of justification by faith and by faith alone. In the end, Luther, thinking perhaps of the fate of John Hues, suddenly quitted Augsburg, leaving behind an appeal to the pope, "better informed." In November of the same year Leo issued a bull, declaratory of the doctrine of indulgences, asserting that the pope, as Christ's Vicar on earth, had the power of delivering from all the punishments due to sin those who had repented and were iu a state of graco, whether they be alive or dead. On the 28th of November Luther appealed from the pope to a general council of the church.
Meantime the cardinal legate was urging the Elector of Saxony to expel Luther from his dominions. But the elector, who considered Luther as the pride and ornament of his newly-founded university of Wittenberg, would not consent, and the Emperor Maximilian I. having died just at this moment, Frederick, as hereditary vicar of the empire during the vacancy, was a person too important for even Rome to dictate to. Leo commissioned a new legate, a Saxon, named Miltitz, a man of sagacity and prudence, to endeavour to bring Luther to a reconciliation. Miltitz had a conference with Luther at Altenburg, in the beginning of 1519, in which he agreed with Luther in con demning the abuse made by Tetzel of the indulgences, threw the whole blame of it on that monk's ignorance and profaneness, and so far conciliated the warm but geuerous spirit of his antagonist as to induce him to write a submissive letter to Leo, dated 13th of March 1519, in which Luther acknowledged that he had carried his zeal and animosity too far, and promised to observe in future a profound silence upon the matter iu debate, provided his adversaries would observe an equal temperance ; further proteating that be never meant to deny the power of the pope, which was inferior only to that of Christ, and that he would always exhort the people to honour the Roman see, which he had in his writings endeavoured to clear from the impious exaggeration of the quwators. " This letter," says Beausobre, "is a sad monument of human weakness," for Luther had already appealed from the pope to the council. Luther's vacillation
however may be easily accounted for by reference to the old esta blished reverence for the papal see, the reminiscence of his own early impressions and education, and of his solemn monastic vows, and also to the cordiality and convivial familiarity of his intercourse with Miltitz. It appears that Leo himself wrote to Luther a very mild and conciliatory epistle, published by Loscher in his Unschuld Nachricht; 1742. Miltitz had other conferences with Luther at Leibenwerd and Lichtenberg, which gave great hopes of a full reconciliation, when the polemic intemperance of Luther's personal adversaries widened the rupture and brought the dispute to a crisis. (Seckendorf, Com mentarius Histor. de Lutheraniarno.') Eckius challenged Carlostadt, one of Luther's disciples, to a public disputation at Leipzig, concerning free-will. Carlostadt maintained that since the fall of our first parents our natural liberty is not strong enough to lead us in the path of good without the intervention of divine grace. EckiOs asserted that our natural liberty co-operates with divine grace, and that it is in the power of man to consent to the divine impulse or resist it. Eckius seemed to have the beat of the argument on his side, when Luther, who had repaired to Leipzig, entered the lists against Eckius, by preaching in the chapel of Duke George's castle a sermon calculated to draw the hostility of Eckius against himself. Eckius, in fact, immediately selected from Luther's works thirteen propositions, which he met by as many counter propositions. One was concerning the supremacy of the Roman see. Eckius maintained that the church was a monarchy with a head of divine appointment. Luther admitted this, but contended that the head was no other than Jesus Christ. The long acknowledged supremacy of the pope, he observed, extended only to the Western church, and he maintained that it was not jure divine, but founded on reasons of policy and tacit consent. Then came the subjects of purgatory,, and of indulgences, iu which Luther had decidedly the advantage, and partly drew his antagonist to his side. Next were discussed the questions of absolution, grace, free-will, and good works, in which the Catholic divine appeared to prevail in point of argu ment. Hoffman, the rector of the University of Leipzig, who had been appointed judge of the disputation, refused to declare to whom the victory belonged, and the decision of the matter was referred to the universities of Paris and of Erfurt. Luther however went on publishing several works, ' On Babylonian Captivity," On Christian Liberty,' &c., in which he openly attacked the doctrines and the authority of the church of Rome. Leo now assembled a congregation of cardinals, before whom the works of Luther were laid, and by whose advice a bull of condemnation was drawn up against Luther, and published on the 15th of June 1520, in which forty-one propo sitions, extracted from his writings, were declared heretical, and as such solemnly condemned ; his writings were ordered to be publicly burnt; and Luther himself was summoned to confess and retract within the space of sixty days, under pain of excommunication. Luther having again appealed to the geueral council of the church, publicly separated himself from the communion of Rome, by burning on a pile of wood, without the walls of Wittenberg, in presence of a vast multitude of people, Leo's bull, and alio the decretals and canons relating to the pope's supreme jurisdiction. This was done on the 10th of December 1520, and on the 6th of the following January the pope launched a second bull against him, by which Luther was expelled from the communion of tho church for having disowned the supremacy of the Roman Pontiff Luther having now irrevocably separated from Rome, gave way to the violence of his temper in several vehement and scurrilous pamphlets, full of coarse vituperation against the pope, whom he openly styled Antichrist.