The
Elector of Saxony reassured the eager young men. No harm
would befall Luther as long as he stayed on Saxon ground.
All this happened in the year 1520. Charles V was twenty
years old and as the ruler of half the world, was forced to
remain on pleasant terms with the Pope. He sent out calls
for a Diet or general assembly in the good city of Worms on
the Rhine and commanded Luther to be present and give an
account of his extraordinary behaviour. Luther, who now
was the national hero of the Germans, went. He refused to
take back a single word of what he had ever written or said.
His conscience was controlled only by the word of God. He
would live and die for his conscience
The Diet of Worms, after due deliberation, declared
Luther an outlaw before God and man, and forbade all Germans
to give him shelter or food or drink, or to read a single
word of the books which the dastardly heretic had written.
But the great reformer was in no danger. By the majority
of the Germans of the north the edict was denounced as a most
unjust and outrageous document. For greater safety, Luther
was hidden in the Wartburg, a castle belonging to the Elector
of Saxony, and there he defied all papal authority by translating
the entire Bible into the German language, that all the
people might read and know the word of God for themselves.
By this time, the Reformation was no longer a spiritual
and religious affair.
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