Luther's hands as early as March 4, 1518, and was probably answered by Luther on March 24, although the answer was not published until August. The Theses had been sent to Rome by the Archbishop of Mainz. The Pope, Leo X, thinking that they represented a merely monkish quarrel, contented himself with asking the General of the Augustinian Eremites to keep things quiet among his monks. But at Rome, Silvester Mazzolini, called Prierias (from his birthplace, Prierio), a Dominican, Papal Censor for the Roman Province and an Inquisitor, was profoundly dissatisfied with Luther's declarations, and answered them in a book entitled A Dialogue about the power of the Pope, against the Presumptuous Conclusions of Martin Luther. In April, 1518, the Augustinian Eremites held their usual annual chapter at Heidelberg, and Luther went there in spite of many warnings that his life was not safe out of Wittenberg. At these general chapters some time was always spent in theological discussion, and Luther at last heard his Theses temperately discussed. He found the opposition to his views much stronger than he had expected, but the real discussion so pleased him that he returned to Wittenberg much strengthened and comforted. On his return he began a general answer to his opponents. The book, Resolutlones, was probably the most carefully prepared of all Luther's writings. It was meditated over long and rewritten several times. It contains an interesting and partly biographical dedication to Staupitz; it is addressed to the Pope; it sets forth a detailed defence of the author's ninety-five conclusions on the subject of Indulgences.
If we concern ourselves with the central position in the attacks made on Luther's Theses it will be found that they amount to this; that Indulgences are simply a particular case of the use of the ordinary power placed in the hands of the Pope and are whatever the Pope means them to be, and that no discussion about the precise kind of efficacy which may be in their use is to be tolerated. The Roman Church is virtually the Universal Church, and the Pope is practically the Roman Church. Hence as the representative of the Roman Church, which in turn represents the Universal Church, the Pope, when he acts officially, cannot err. Official decisions are given in actions as well as in words, and custom has the force of law. Therefore whoever objects to such long-established customs as Indulgences is a heretic and does not deserve to be heard. Luther, in his Theses and still more in his Resolutiones, had repudiated all the additions made to the theory and practice of Indulgences founded on papal action during the three centuries past, and all the scholastic subtleties which had attempted to justify those practices. The answers of his opponents, and especially of Prierias, had barred all such discussion by declaring that ecclesiastical usages were matters of faith, and by interposing the official infallibility of the Bishop of Rome. Had the question been one of intellectual speculation only, it is probable that the Pope would not have placed himself behind his
