Excerpt from Martin Luther, Vol. 2: His Life and Work The verdict of the Leipzig wiseacres, though endorsed extensively enough by priestly conclaves and University senates, was reversed by the public Opinion of Europe. Luther, and not Eck, proved to have spoken the word that the world was listening for. Few cared to note the details of the argumentative conflict; but Europe beheld in Eck the champion of Papal authority and tradition, and in Luther the advocate of freedom and the Bible. More distinctly than before, Luther was made con spicuous as the uplifter of a banner against Rome. European society had for many years been becoming alienated from, and suspicious of, the Roman Church. That vague, half-defined, latent sense of weariness with one order' of things and longing for another, which works below the social surface, and is the mightiest of forces in preparing the way for revolution, was in league with Luther. In these circumstances, the counsel of Ahitophel for the Papacy would have been to impose upon its friends a policy of silence. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.