From the Diet of Worms to the Augsburg Confession - James Aitken Wylie

eformation, and the Diet felt the more justified in
favoring Adrian with their own ideas of what that
measure ought to be. First of all they told Adrian
that to think of executing the Edict of Worms
against Luther would be madness. To put the
Reformer to death for denouncing the abuses
Adrian himself had acknowledged, would not be
more unjust than it would be dangerous. It would
be sure to provoke all insurrection that would
deluge Germany with blood. Luther must be
refuted from Scripture, for his writings were in the
hands and his opinions were in the hearts of many
of the population. They knew of but one way of
settling the controversy–a General Council,
namely; and they demanded that such a Council
should be summoned, to meet in some neutral
German town, within the year, and that the laity as
well as the clergy should have a seat and voice in
it. To this not very palatable request the princes
appended another still more unpalatable–the
"Hundred Grievances," as it was termed, and which
was a terrible catalogue of the exactions, frauds,
oppressions, and wrongs that Germany had
endured at the hands of the Popes, and which it had
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