“ You see that we are now reaping the fruits of what you sowed. You will not acknowledge the rebels; but they acknowledge you, and they know only too well that many of your disciples, who clothed themselves in the mantle of the Gospel, have been the instigators of this bloody rebellion. In your pamphlet against the peasants, you in vain endeavor to justify yourself. It is you who have raised the storm by your publications against the monks and the prelates, and you say that you fight for gospel liberty, and against the tyranny of the great! ”

“ Even should you have succeeded in destroying all these peasants, God is able from the very stones to raise up others to chastise your pride. If I desired revenge, I might laugh in my sleeve, and look on while the peasants were carrying on their work, or even increase their fury; but may God preserve me from such thoughts! My dear lords, put away your indignation, treat those poor peasants as a man of sense treats people who are drunk or insane. Quiet these commotions by mildness, lest a conflagration should arise and burn all Germany. ”

“ Henry briefly announced his resolve to live no longer in mortal sin. The Queen offered an appeal to Clement, and on the refusal of the legates to admit it flung herself at Henry's feet. "Sire," said Catharine, "I beseech you to pity me, a woman and a stranger, without an assured friend and without an indifferent counsellor. I take God to witness that I have always been to you a true and loyal wife, that I have made it my constant duty to seek your pleasure, that I have loved all whom you loved, whether I have reason or not, whether they are friends to me or foes. ”

“ Calvin's positive interpretation of the Christian religion: the Letter is learned, eloquent, elegant, dignified, the address of a subject to his sovereign, yet of a subject who knows that his place in the state is as legal, though not as authoritative, as the sovereign's. It throbs with a noble indignation against injustice, and with a noble enthusiasm for freedom and truth. It is one of the great epistles of the world, a splendid apology for the oppressed and arraignment of the oppressors. It does not implore toleration as a concession, but claims freedom as a right. ”

“ Luther, whose piercing glance had discerned the condition of the people, had already from the summit of the Wartburg addressed them in serious exhortations calculated to restrain their agitated minds:
"Rebellion," he had said, "never produces the amelioration we desire, and God condemns it. What is it to rebel, if it be not to avenge one's self? The devil is striving to excite to revolt those who embrace the Gospel, in order to cover it with opprobrium; but those who have rightly understood my doctrine do not revolt." ”

“ In books of every size they teach us, even at the present day, that the beast, the man of sin, the creature of Babylon, are the names which God has given in his Scriptures to the pope and the papacy! Can it be imagined that Christ, who died for our sins, and saved us by his blood, would have suffered that for ten or twelve centuries his church should be guided by such an abominable wretch? that he would have allowed millions of his creatures to walk in the shadow of death? and that so many generations should have had no other pastor but Antichrist? ”

“ The fate of Rome was no longer doubtful. Clement, who by his pennywise parsimony had left himself defenceless, made a feeble and wholly vain attempt to put the city in a state of defence. The corrupt and cowardly citizens could not have opposed any valid resistance to the ruffian hordes who were slowly but surely, like an advancing conflagration, coming upon them, even if they had been willing to do their best. But the trembling Pope's appeal to them to defend the walls fell on the ears of as sorely trembling men, each thinking only of the possible chances of saving his own individual person. ”

“ One must see that, with such humor and style, Calvin might have died forgotten, in some little benefice of Swabia, and that he was never formed for raising storms, but only for using them.
At this epoch the grand agitator of society was first, society itself, and then Luther, that great pamphleteer, "whose books are quite full of demons," who drove humanity into the paths of a revolution, for which all the elements had been prepared years before. Luther had sown the wind, Calvin came to reap the whirlwind. ”

“ When, shortly after winning the battle of Pavia, Bourbon went thither to meet Charles, and the Marquis of Villane was requested to lodge the victorious general in his palace, the haughty Spaniard told the Emperor that his house and all that he possessed were at his sovereign's disposition, but that he should assuredly burn it down as soon as Bourbon was out of it; since, having been sullied by the presence of a renegade, it could no longer be a fitting residence for a man of honor.
So low had Bourbon fallen! Every man's hand was raised against him, and his hand was against every man. ”

“ These disturbances left a lasting and deep impression on men's minds. The nations had been struck with dismay. The masses, who had sought in the Reformation nothing but political reform, withdrew from it of their own accord, when they saw it offered them spiritual liberty only. Luther's opposition to the peasants was his renunciation of the ephemeral favor of the people. A seeming tranquillity was soon established, and the noise of enthusiasm and sedition was followed in all Germany by a silence inspired by terror. ”

“ Every city and town had its own Lutheran pope. At Nuremberg, Osiander was a regular pacha. Those who among the Protestants endeavored to reprove his scandalous ostentation were abused and maligned. When he ascended the pulpit, his fingers were adorned with diamonds which dazzled the eyes of his hearers.
The religious disputes which disturbed men's minds in Germany retarded, rather than advanced, the march of intellect. Blind people who fought furiously with each other could not find the road to truth. These quarrels were only another disease of the human mind. ”

“ To endeavor to arrest the power of this religion now is like trying to arrest the current of the ocean. Nobles both great and small have become adherents of it. If you would exterminate this religion now, there is fear lest disturbances be created even among your own retainers. I am, therefore, of opinion that you should abandon your intention of destroying Nambanji.' Nobunaga in consequence regretted exceedingly his previous action with regard to the Christian religion, and set about thinking how he could root it out. ”

“ Thus began, at the midsummer of 1521, the siege of Stockholm, which was to last full two years, amid difficulties little thought of nowadays, after the lapse of ages; and the admiration which men so willingly render to the exertions in the cause of freedom have deprived events of their original colors. The path of Gustavus was not in general one of glittering feats, although his life is in itself one grand achievement. ”

“ He first addressed the princes, and more especially the bishops:
"It is you," said he, "who are the cause of this revolt; it is your clamors against the Gospel, your guilty oppressions of the poor, that have driven the people to despair. It is not the peasants, my dear lords, that rise up against you—it is God himself who opposes your madness. The peasants are but the instruments he employs to humble you. Do not imagine you can escape the punishment he is preparing for you. ”

“ Art, the friend of imagination, which delights only in heaven, finds there the most sublime creations—a St. John, a Cecilia, above all a Mary, that patroness of tender hearts, that virgin model to all mothers, that mediatrix of graces, placed between man and his God, that august and amiable being, of whom no other religion presents either the resemblance or the model. During the solemnities, the most costly stuffs, precious stones, and embroidery cover the altars, vessels, priests, and even the very walls of the sanctuary. ”

“ Why should governments rule only by force, when the Gospel preaches nothing but gentleness?" Unhappily, at a time when the religious reform was received with equal joy both by princes and people, the political reform, on the contrary, had the most powerful part of the nation against it; and while the former had the Gospel for its rule and support, the latter had soon no other principles than violence and despotism. ”

“ The violence of Luther's writings, the intrepidity of his actions and language, the harsh truths that he spoke, not only to the Pope and prelates, but also to the princes themselves, must all have contributed to inflame minds that were already in a state of excitement. Accordingly, Erasmus did not fail to tell him, "We are now reaping the fruits that you have sown." And further, the cheering truths of the Gospel, at last brought to light, stirred all hearts and filled them with anticipation and hope. ”

“ But on that occasion the great abilities of Louise, the regent, saved the kingdom which the violence of her passions had more than once exposed to the greatest danger. Instead of giving herself up to such lamentations as were natural to a woman so remarkable for her maternal tenderness, she discovered all the foresight and exerted all the activity of a consummate politician. She assembled the nobles at Lyons, and animated them, by her example no less than by her words, with such zeal in defence of their country as its present situation required. ”

“ And it is easy to conceive what must have been his tone of mind and feeling, as he led on his mutinous robber-rout to Rome, while men of all parties looked on in panic-stricken horror. Thus Bourbon led his unpaid and mutinous hordes to a deed which, none knew better than he, would shock and scandalize all Europe, as a man who, having fallen already so low as to have lost all self-respect, cares not in his reckless despair to what depth he plunges. ”

“ The famous artist Da Vinci died at his court, in his arms, legend says. Artists, literary men, flocked to his service. Paris became the intellectual centre of Europe. France snatched from Italy the supremacy of thought, of genius.
Alas for the fickleness of untried youth! Henry seemed to promise his country freedom and he gave it tyranny. Francis promised his people glory—that is, honor and splendor. In the end he brought them shame and suffering. Charles V of Germany, youngest of this mighty trio, seemed by his wisdom to promise his subjects at least protection ”

“ He lived and died teaching that horrible doctrine, which the most illustrious of his disciples—among others, Melanchthon and Matthew Albert of Reutlingen—condemned. "How rich is the Christian!" repeated Luther; "even though he wished it, he cannot forfeit heaven by any stain; believe, then, and be assured of your salvation: God in eternity cannot escape you. Believe, and you shall be saved: repentance, confession, satisfaction, good works, all these are useless for salvation; it is sufficient to have faith." ”

“ It was impossible to strike blow after blow at the Church without rousing wild hopes in the party who sympathized with the work which Luther was doing oversea. Few as these "Lutherans" or "Protestants" still were in numbers, their new hopes made them a formidable force; and in the school of persecution they had learned a violence which delighted in outrages on the faith which had so long trampled them under foot. At the very outset of Cromwell's changes, four Suffolk youths broke into a church at Dovercourt, tore down a wonder-working crucifix, and burned it in the fields. ”

“ People who were anywhere else but where we were could not have formed the least imagination of what it was.
T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE
The combined force of Bourbon and Frundsberg was in all respects more like a rabble-rout of brigands and bandits than an army, and was assuredly such as must, even in those days, have been felt to be a disgrace to any sovereign permitting them to call themselves his soldiers. Their pay was, as was often the case with the troops of Charles V, hopelessly in arrear, and discipline was of course proportionably weak among them. ”

“ His reply to Luther's attack upon the King sank to the level of the work it answered; and though that of Bishop Fisher was calmer and more argumentative, the divorce of the New Learning from the Reformation seemed complete.
But if the world of scholars and thinkers stood aloof from the new movement it found a warmer welcome in the larger world where men are stirred rather by emotion than by thought. There was an England of which even More and Colet knew little, in which Luther's words kindled a fire that was never to die. ”

“ On his way into the hall where the diet was assembled, tradition tells us how the famous warrior, George von Frundsberg, clapped him on the shoulder and said: "My poor monk! my poor monk! thou art on thy way to make such a stand as I and many of my knights have never done in our toughest battles. If thou art sure of the justice of thy cause, then forward in the name of God, and be of good courage—God will not forsake thee." The Elector had given Luther as his advocate the lawyer Jerome Schurf, his Wittenberg colleague and friend. ”