Note 536 — Chapter XIV

W. Maurenbrecher, “Gesch. der kath. Reformation,” 1, Nördlingen, 1880, p. 257. Janssen, in his “Hist. of the German People,” has brought this point out clearly. See more particularly (Engl. trans.) volume iii.: “The populace inflamed by preaching and the press,” and volume iv.: “The social revolution,” where it is pointed out that even apart from Luther’s action and that of his followers, risings were imminent, but that the “social revolution first received the stamp of universal and inhuman ferocity from the conditions created or developed among the people by the religious disturbances.” Concerning the effect of the sermons and pamphlets on the people we read, in the original, vol. 218, p. 490, n. 5, in a letter of Archduke Ferdinand to the Pope, that the deluded people believed, “se Dei negotium agere in templis, cœnobiis, monasteriis diruendis,” etc. Johann Adam Möhler, in the Church History (ed. Gams), which appeared after his death, compares (3, p. 118) the effects of the preaching of the liberty of the children of God in the primitive Church, and describes the pure, virtuous life of self-renunciation which resulted, how the lower classes learnt to be content with their lot and the slaves became more faithful to their masters. “The contrast between the effects of the old gospel and the new evangel gave the most convincing proof of the difference between them.” “From the spirit of the flesh which combined with the religious in Luther’s writings to form one living whole, a tendency to revolt gradually spread over all Germany; ecclesiastical and secular, divine and human, spiritual and corporal, all ran riot together in the people’s minds; everywhere prevailed a fanatical, perverted longing for the liberty of the children of God” (p. 116). When Luther urged the Princes to severity in repressing the movement, his ruling idea was “to repress the opinion that elements dangerous to public order were embodied in his principles” (p. 118).