Church. Erasmus could assail the outworks, such as the follies of monkery, but the principles out of which these obnoxious practices had grown, he would touch only so far as it could be done without danger to himself and without disturbance. Luther had been himself a monk, not like Erasmus for a brief time and through compulsion, but of choice, with a profound inward consecration. He had personally tested, with all sincerity and earnestness, the prevailing system of religion, until he discerned the wrong foundations on which it rested. He saw that the tree must be made good before the character of the fruit could be changed. And there was still a vitality in the old system with which the weapons of Erasmus were quite insufficient to cope. It is humiliating to see him resorting to the Pope's legate, and then to the Pope himself, for leave to read the writings of Luther. It is safe to affirm that the Erasmian school would eventually have been driven to the wall by the monastic party, which sooner or later would have combined its energies; and that without the sterner battle waged by Luther, the literary reformers, with their lukewarm, equivocal position in relation to fundamental principles would have succumbed to the terrors of the Inquisition. There was certain to be an aroused, implacable earnestness on the papal side; a like spirit was required in the cause of reform. At the same time, justice to Erasmus requires that he should be judged rather by his relation to the preceding age, than by comparison with Luther.1 The forerunner is not to be weighed by the standards of the era which he has helped to introduce. It could not come from literature. As we have touched on the personal traits of Luther as a controversialist, it is well to add here that of all men he may most easily be misrepresented. A man of imagination and feeling, with intense convictions that burned 1 Strauss, Ulrich von Hutten, p. 481. THE PEASANTS' WAR. 133 for utterance, he never took pains to measure his language. He put forth his doctrine in startling, paradoxical forms, out of which a cold-blooded critic, or artful polemic could easily make contradictions and absurdities. In this respect, he was as artless and careless as the writers of the Bible. Like Paul, and on the same grounds, he has been charged with favoring an antinomian laxness and positive immorality. It is a charge which emanates from ignorance or malice. It is frequently made by plodders who are incapable of interpreting the fervid utterances, of entering into the profound conceptions of a man of genius, but are simply shocked by them.' One other event of which we have to speak is the Peasants' War. The preaching of Luther and his associates produced inevitably a ferment, in which tendencies to social disorder might easily acquire additional force. The discontent of the nobles or knights with the princes sought to ally itself with the new zeal in behalf of a pure Gospel; but this revolt was brought to an end by the defeat and death of Francis of Sickingen. The disaffection of the peasants, on account of the oppression under which they suffered, had long existed. It had led in several instances to open insurrection. Long before the Reformation there had been mingled with these political tendencies a religious element. But their discontent was fomented by the spread among them of the Lutheran doctrine of Christian liberty, from which they drew inferences in accord with their own aspirations, and by the popular excitement which the Reformation kindled. There was a secular and religious side to the revolt. Heavier burdens had been laid upon the laboring class by their lay and ecclesiastical masters. The forcible 1 The criticisms of Hallam upon Luther, together with the erroneous statements of Sir William Hamilton, are thoroughly answered by Archdeacon Hare, Vindication of Luther, etc. (2d ed., 1855). 2 Ranke, i. 127. repression of the evangelical doctrine was an added grievance. Their roll of complaints carries us forward to the days of the French Revolution; nor can it be questioned that many of them called loudly for redress.1 Luther had much sympathy with them; he advised mutual concessions; but he was inflexibly and on principle opposed to a resort to arms. He had counseled Sickingen and Hutten against it.2 In general he set his face against every attempt to remove the cause of reform from the arena of discussion to the field of battle. What would become of schools, of teaching, of preaching, he said, when once the sword was drawn? It was a part of his deliberate resolution to keep the minds of men upon the main questions in controversy, that there might be an intelligent, enlightened, free adoption of the truth. The peasants, he held, had no right to make an insurrection. Like the early Christians, he felt that it was a spiritual agency and not force that could give to the truth a real victory. He wanted to keep the cause of God clear of the entanglements of worldly prudence and worldly power. Hence, when their great rebellion broke out, in 1524 and 1525, he exhorted the princes to put it down with a strong hand. He saw, in the event of the success of it, nothing but the destruction of civil order and a wild reign of fanaticism. The abolition of all existing authority in Church and state, equality in rank and in property, were a part of the peasants' creed. If the fact of the revolt, evidently occasioned as it was, to some extent, by the Reformation, produced a temporary reaction 1 Häusser, Gsch. d. Zeitalt. d. Ref., p. 103 seq.; Ranke, Deutsche Gзch., i. 134. 2 Letter to Spalatin (January 16, 1521), De Wette, i. 543. But Ranke, Deutsche Gsch., i. 149. Waddington (ii. 154 seq.), and other writers, censure Luther with much severity for his denunciation of the peasants. Luther considered that there was a fearful crisis, in which the foundations of society were in peril. The insurrection was very formidable in numbers and strength. THE PEASANTS' WAR. 135 against it, this effect was diminished by the outspoken, strenuous opposition which Luther had made to the illfated enterprise. The Reformation is not responsible for the Peasants' War. It would have taken place if the Protestant doctrines had not been preached; and it was caused by inveterate abuses for which the ecclesiastical princes in Germany, by their extortions and tyranny, were chiefly accountable. CHAPTER V. THE GERMAN REFORMATION TO THE PEACE OF AUGS BURG, 1555: ZWINGLE AND THE SWISS (GERMAN) REFORMATION. AT the time when Luther was beginning to attract the attention of Europe, another reformatory movement, of a type somewhat peculiar, was springing up on a more contracted theatre. In the fifteenth century, the Swiss, whose military strength had been developed in their long and victorious struggle for independence, and who had done much to revolutionize the art of war by showing that infantry might be more than a match for cavalry, were employed in large numbers, as mercenary soldiers, in Italy. The Pope and the French King were the chief competitors in efforts to secure these valuable auxiliaries. The means by which this was accomplished were demoralizing in their influence upon the country. The foreign potentates purchased, by bribes and pensions, the coöperation of influential persons among the Swiss, and thus corrupted the spirit of patriotism. The patronage of the Church was used in an unprincipled manner, for the furtherance of this worldly interest of the Pope. Ecclesiastical discipline was sacrificed, preferments and indulgences lavishly bestowed, in order that the hardy peasantry might be enticed from their homes to fight his battles in the Italian peninsula. These brought home from their campaigns vicious and lawless habits. At the same time, in consequence of what they witnessed in |