Note 271 — Chapter IV · THE FOURTH VISITATION OF THE DISEASE.—1528, 1529.

“For all love hath grown cold in all nations; the axe lieth at the root of the tree, the rope is already applied, no one observeth it. For the world is stricken with thick blindness, faith is extinguished. All singleness and Godly fear hath withdrawn from the land for ever, and nothing but false hypocritical make-believe work is to be found among the Baptists, and at most a false, fictitious, fruitless, dead, tottering faith in the other sects, and yet the world thinks, notwithstanding, that she sees and sits in light. In short, for the one devil of the Baptists whom she has driven out, she is beset with seven more subtle and wickeder spirits, though she think that she be freed, and that they all be gone forth.” Franck, fol. 248, a. This same Chronicle contains a very lively description of the Peasant-war.