violent outrage (ein Frevel und Gewalt), and preached passive obedience to any and every established authority.  “Even if all the demands of the peasants were Christian,” he said, “the uprising of the peasants would not be justified; and that because God commands obedience to the authorities.”  Luther’s attitude was much the same.  Though a son of a peasant, and evidently realising that the demands of the peasants were just and moderate, and “not stretched to their advantage,” he at first assumed a somewhat neutral attitude, which, however, he soon relinquished; and in a pamphlet to which his greatest admirers must wish he had never put his name, and which shocked even his own times and many of his own immediate followers, he proclaimed that to put down the revolt all “who can shall destroy, strangle, and stab, secretly or openly, remembering that nothing is more poisonous, hurtful and devilish than a rebellious man.”

The rulers did not fail to better his instruction.  In defence of their privileges, the German princes, spiritual and temporal, catholic and evangelical, united their forces, and the uprising was put down in a sea of blood.  The peasants, comparatively unarmed, were slaughtered by thousands, and the yoke of serfdom was firmly re-fastened on the necks of the people, until, some three hundred years later, in 1807, the Napoleonic invasion compelled the ruling classes voluntarily to relinquish some of their most cherished privileges.  From a popular and religious, the Reformation in Germany degenerated into a mere political movement, and fell almost entirely into the hands of princes and politicians to be exploited for their own purposes.  The reorganisation of the Churches, which the Reformation rendered necessary in those States where it was maintained, was for the most part undertaken by the secular authorities in accordance with the views of the temporal rulers, whose religious belief their unfortunate subjects were assumed to have adopted.  The activities of the Lutheran Reformers were soon engrossed weaving the web of a Protestant scholasticism, strengthening and defending their favourite dogma of justification by faith, abusing and persecuting such as differed from them on some all-important question of dogma or doctrine, framing propositions of passive obedience, and other such congenial pursuits.

Of the moral effect of the Reformation, of its effect on the general character of the people who came under its influence, which is the one test by which every such movement can be judged, we need say but little.  To put it as mildly as possible, it must be admitted, to use the words of one of its modern admirers,[10:1] that “the Reformation did not at first carry with it much cleansing force of moral enthusiasm.”  In the hands of men more logical or of a less healthy moral fibre, Luther’s favourite dogma, of justification by faith alone, led to conclusions subversive of all morality.  However this may be, enemies and friends