Note 18 — Chapter XII · THE REFORMATION AND FREETHOUGHT

The political outcome, as aforesaid, was a thoroughly undemocratic organization of Protestantism in Germany; and, though the ecclesiastical tyranny which resulted from the more democratic system of Calvin was not more favourable to progress or happiness, the final German system of cujus regio, ejus religio—every district taking the religion of its ruler—must be summed up as a mere negation of the right of private judgment. Save for the attempt of a Frenchman, François Lambert of Avignon, to organize a self-governing church, German Protestantism showed almost no democratic feeling.18 The one poor excuse for Luther was that the peasants had never recognized the need or duty of maintaining their clergy.19 And seeing how the wealth of the Church went to the nobles and the well-to-do, and how downtrodden were the peasants all along, it would be surprising indeed if they had. They were not the workers of the ecclesiastical Reformation, and it wrought little or nothing for them.