A lone man, whose days were spent in poverty; who could withstand the
mighty Vatican and all its flaming Bulls; whose influence evoked and
swayed successive Diets of the empire; whom repeated edicts from the
Imperial throne could not crush; whom the talent, eloquence, and
towering authority of the Roman hierarchy assailed in vain; whom the
attacks of kings of state and kings of literature could not disable;
to offset whose opinions the greatest general council the Church of
Rome ever held had to be convened, and, after sitting eighteen years,
could not adjourn without conceding much to his positions; and whose
name the greatest and most enlightened nations of the earth hail with
glad acclaim,--necessarily must have been a wonder of a man.[24]
To begin with a minority consisting of one, and conquer kingdoms with
the mere sword of his mouth; to bear the anathemas of Church and the
ban of empire, and triumph in spite of them; to refuse to fall down
before the golden image of the combined Nebuchadnezzars of his time,
though threatened with the burning fires of earth and hell; to turn
iconoclast of such magnitude and daring as to think of smiting the
thing to pieces in the face of principalities and powers to whom it
was as God--nay, to attempt this, _and to succeed in it_,--here was
sublimity of heroism and achievement explainable only in the will and
providence of the Almighty, set to recover His Gospel to a perishing
race.[25]