In Germany to the Leipsic Disputation - James Aitken Wylie

The envoy now proceeded to business. His
touch was adroit and delicate. Tetzel, he said, had
gone beyond his commission; he had done the
thing scandalously, and he did not greatly wonder
that Luther had been provoked to oppose him.
Even the Archbishop of Mainz was not without
blame, in putting the screw too tightly upon Tetzel
as regarded the money part of the business. Still the
doctrine of indulgences was a salutary one; from
that doctrine the German people had been seduced,
and they had been so by the course which he,
Luther, had felt it his duty to pursue. Would he not
confess that herein he had erred, and restore peace
to the Church? — a matter, the envoy assured him,
that lay very much upon his heart.
Luther boldly answered that the chief offender
in this business was neither Tetzel nor the
Archbishop of Mainz, but the Pope himself, who,
while he might have given the pallium freely, had
put upon it a price so exorbitant as to tempt the
archbishop to employ Tetzel to get the money for
him by hook or by crook. "But as for a
retractation," said Luther in a very firm tone,
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