We return to Luther and the close of the debate at Leipsic. Dr. Eck, the famous papal theologian, irritated by his defeat, and burning with rage against Luther, hurried away to Rome that he might obtain a bull of excommunication against his opponent. Unable to refute the earnest and fervent appeals of the Reformer to the word of God, he immediately sought his condemnation and destruction. Such has ever been the way of the emissaries of Rome.
Overcome by the clamorous and the importunate applications of Eck and his friends, especially the Dominicans, Pope Leo, most unwisely, as most think, issued the desired bull on the 15th of June, 1520. Luther's writings were condemned to the flames, and he himself delivered over to Satan as a wicked heretic, unless he recanted and implored the clemency of the pontiff within sixty days. But the time was past for Luther and his friends to be silenced by ecclesiastical thunders. Had such a thing happened fifty years before, it would have been widely different. But neither Leo, Charles, Henry, nor Francis, knew the state of the public mind in Germany, or the silent but sure effects of the printing press throughout Europe. He who saw Guttenberg pulling at his press, Columbus returning from the discovery of America, Vasco di Gama from having doubled the Cape of Storms, or the learned Greeks scattered over the nations of Europe after the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, saw events which revived learning, which expanded the human mind, and which aroused it from the lethargy into which it had fallen during the long dark night of the middle ages.
Before the bull of Leo reached Wittemberg, the best part of Germany was at heart with Luther, but especially the students, the artisans, and the tradesmen. He saw the ground on which he stood. The decisive step must now be taken. Open war must be proclaimed. He had written the most submissive and pacific letters to the pope, the cardinals, the bishops, the princes, and the learned men; he had appealed from the pontiff to the supreme tribunal of a general council, but all to no purpose. He now determined to withdraw from the church of Rome and publicly to resist her authority. On the 10th of December, 1520, at nine in the morning, public notice having been given, Luther took the bull, together with a copy of the pontifical canon law, and some of the writings of Eck and Emser, and in the presence of a vast crowd of spectators committed them to the flames. This being done without the city walls, Luther re-entered, accompanied by the doctors of the university, the students, and the people. Having thus thrown off the yoke of Rome, he addressed the people as to their duty with great energy. The public caught his fire and the whole nation rallied around him. Luther was now set at liberty. The tie which had so long bound him to Rome was broken. From this time he assumed the attitude of an open and uncompromising antagonist of the pope and of his emissaries. He also published many pamphlets against the Romish system and for the truth of God.