been for Luther’s interference.  He made some lifelong enemies by insisting that the reformatory movement must be conservative.  He held that before men’s consciences had been liberated by the teaching of Christ, they were not qualified for exercising true Christian liberty, and their violent proceedings were nothing but carnal license.  Everybody knows how deeply Luther himself was interested in the abolition of the idolatrous Mass and the spiritual peonage which Rome had created for men by means of the confessional.  Only a person who puts principles above policies could have acted as Luther did in those turbulent days.  He wanted for his followers, not wanton rebels and frenzied enthusiasts, but men who respect the Word of Cod, discreet and gentle men whose weapons of warfare were not carnal.  A man who is so cautious as not to approve the putting down of acknowledged evils because he is convinced that the attempt is premature and exceeds the limits of propriety, will not lend his hand to abolishing the divine norm of right, the holy commandments of God.

The second occasion on which Luther in a most impressive manner showed his profound regard for the maintenance of human and divine laws was during the bloody uprising of the peasants.  While thoroughly in sympathy with the rebellious peasants in their righteous grievances against their secular and spiritual oppressors, the barons and the bishops, and pleading the peasants’ cause in its just demands before their lords, he unflinchingly rebuked their extreme demands and their still extremer actions.  If by his preaching of the Gospel Luther had been the instigator of the peasants’ uprising, what a brazen hypocrite he must have been in denouncing acts which he must have acknowledged to be fruits of his teaching!  Among the noblemen of Germany Luther counted not a few frank admirers and staunch supporters of his reformatory work.  Their influence was of the highest value to him in those critical days when his own life was not safe.  Yet he rebuked the sins of the high and mighty, their avarice and insolence, which had brought on this terrible disturbance.  In his writings dealing with this sad conflict Luther impresses one like one of the ancient prophets who stand like a rock amid the raging billows of popular passions and with even-handed justice deliver the oracles of God to high and low, calling upon all to bow before the supreme will of the righteous Lawgiver.  Would the great lords of the land have meekly taken Luther’s rebuke if they had been able to charge Luther with being an accessory to the peasants’ crimes?