Things were now coming to a crisis. Luther, who had been watching narrowly the progress of Tetzel, stepped forward; made his grand appeal to the common sense and to the conscience of the German people; nailed his theses to the church door at Wittemberg, and in ninety-five propositions challenged the whole Catholic church to defend Tetzel and the sale of indulgences.
The ax was now laid at the root of the tree. The germs of the Reformation were contained in these propositions. "The pope's indulgence," said Luther, "cannot take away sins; God alone remits sins, and He pardons those who are truly penitent without help from man's absolutions. The church may remit penalties which the church inflicts. But the church's power is in this world only, it extends not beyond death. Who is this man who dares to say that for so many crowns the soul of a sinner can be saved? Every true Christian participates in all the blessings of Christ, by God's grace, and without a letter of indulgence." Such was the style of Luther's noble protest, though mixed with much that still savored of Catholicism.
Luther had now entered the field against the doctrine and the abuses of the church of Rome. The university and the whole city of Wittemberg were in commotion. All read the theses; the startling propositions passed from mouth to mouth; pilgrims from all quarters then present in Wittemberg, carried back with them the famous theses of the Augustinian monk, circulating the news everywhere. "This was the first electric flash," says Pfizer, "from the torch that was kindled at the funeral pile of the Martyred Huss, and, reaching the remotest corner of the land, gave the signal of mighty future events." In less than fourteen days, it is said, these theses were read through every part of Germany; and, ere four weeks had elapsed, they had overspread the whole of Christendom, as if the angels of heaven had been the messengers to exhibit them to universal gaze.
Rome clamored for fire and fagot. "The religious houses all Germany over," says Froude, "were like kennels of hounds howling to each other across the spiritual waste. If souls could not be sung out of purgatory, their occupation was gone. But to the young laymen, to the noble spirits all
Europe over, Wittemberg became a beacon of light shining in the universal darkness." Had Luther not been guided by the wisdom of God, he might have been swept away by his sudden popularity; but of himself, through grace, he thought very little, and remained quietly at his post in the Augustinian church at Wittemberg, waiting till God in His own time and way called him forth.