Catholics complain about the rudeness and nastiness of these cartoons and others that followed.  Luther is supposed to have furnished the rhymes and descriptive matter which accompanied them.  Lather is also cited as uttering most repulsive and scurrilous sentiments about the Pope.

What are we to say about this antipapal violence of Luther?  Certainly, it is not a pleasant subject.  We are in this instance facing essentially the same situation as that which confronted us when we studied Luther’s “coarseness” (chap. 5), and all that was said in that connection applies with equal force to the subject now before us.  One may deplore the necessity of these passionate outbursts ever so much, but when all the evidence in the case has been gathered and the jury begins to sift the evidence and weigh the arguments on either side, there is at the worst a drawn jury.  All who have truly sounded “the mystery of iniquity” which has been set up in the Church by the papacy will affirm Luther’s sentiments about the Pope as true.

It is necessary, however, to point out certain facts that may be regarded as additional argument to what was said in chap. 5.  In the first place, the cartoon is a recognized weapon in polemics.  The struggle of the Protestants against the Pope was not altogether a religious and spiritual one; political matters were discussed together with affairs of religion at every German diet in those days.  The age was rude and largely illiterate.  Many who could never have made any sense out of a page of printed matter, very easily understood a picture.  It conveyed truthful information, though in a form that hurt, as cartoons usually do, and it roused a healthy sentiment against a very malignant evil in the Church and in the body politic.  If the Popes would keep out of politics, they and their followers would enjoy more quiet nerves.

In the second place, it should be borne in mind that the claim of papal supremacy is no small and innocent matter.  The Popes wrested to themselves the supreme spiritual and temporal power in the world.  They pretended to be the custodians of heaven, the directors of purgatory, and the lords of the earth.  Across the history of the world in the era of Luther is written in all directions the one word ROME.  It is Rome at the altar swinging the censer, Rome in the panoply of battle storming trenches and steeping her hands in gore, Rome in the councils of kings, Rome in the halls of guilds, Rome in the booth of the trader at a town-fair, Rome in the judge’s seat, Rome in the professor’s chair, Rome receiving ambassadors from, and dispatching nuncios to, foreign courts, Rome dictating treaties to nations and arranging the cook’s menu, Rome labeling the huckster’s cart and the vintner’s crop, Rome levying a tax upon the nuptial bed, Rome exacting toll at the gate of heaven.  Out of the wreck of the imperial Rome of the Caesars has risen papal Rome.  Once more, though through different agents, the City of the Seven