Note 10 — Chapter XII · THE REFORMATION AND FREETHOUGHT

Not only from such thoroughgoing heresy, but from the whole Anabaptist secession, and no less from the rising of the peasants, the main Lutheran movement kept itself utterly aloof; and, though the Catholics naturally identified the extremer parties with the Reformation, its official or “Centre” polity made little for intellectual or political as distinct from ecclesiastical innovation. Towards the Peasants’ Revolt, which at first he favoured, inasmuch as the peasants, whom he had courted, came to him for counsel, Luther’s final attitude was so brutal that it has to-day almost no apologist; and in this as in some of his other evil departures the “mild” Melanchthon went with him.10 Their doctrine was the very negation of all democracy, and must be interpreted as an absolute capitulation to the nobles, without whose backing they knew themselves to be ecclesiastically helpless. In the massacres to which Luther gave his eager approval a hundred thousand men were destroyed.11 “From this time onwards,” pronounces Baur, “Luther ceases to be the representative of the spirit of his time; he represents only one side of it.... Thenceforth his writings have no more the universal bearing they once had, but only a particular.... In the political connection we must date from Luther’s attitude to the Peasants’ War the Lutheran theory of unconditional obedience. Christianity, as Luther preached it, has given to princes unlimited power of despotism and tyranny; while the poor man, who, without right of protest, must submit to everything, will be compensated for his earthly sufferings in heaven.”12 Naturally the princes henceforth grew more and more Lutheran.