Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/93

Rh LUTHER 79 as a corrective. The peasants declared their desire to uphold the injunctions of the gospel, peace, patience, and union. Like the Puritans in the following century, the peasants say that they raise their voice to God who saved the people of Israel ; and they believe that God can save them from their powerful oppressors, as he did the Israelites from the hand of Pharaoh. Luther evidently felt himself appealed to. The crisis was difficult, and, in spite of what has been said in his defence, he failed, as he failed afterwards in the conference with the Swiss deputies at Marburg. Had Luther thrown the weight of his in fluence into the peasants scale, and brought the middle classes, who would certainly have followed him, to the side of the peasants, a peaceful solution would in all probability have been arrived at, and the horrors of massacre averted. But Luther, bold enough against the pope or the emperor, never had courage to withstand thab authority to which he was constantly accustomed, the German prince. He began by speaking for the peasants in his address to the lords, and had courage enough to tell them some plain truths, as when he said that some of the twelve articles of the peasants are so equitable as to dishonour the lords before God and the world, when he told them that they must not refuse the peasants demands to choose pastors who would preach the gospel, and when he said that the social demands of the peasants were just, and that good govern ment was not established for its own interest nor to make the people subservient to caprice and evil passion, but for the interest of the people. &quot; Your exactions are intoler able,&quot; he said, &quot;you take away from the peasant the fruit of his labour in order to spend his labour upon your finery and luxury.&quot; He was courageous enough also in asking the peasants to refrain from violence, and in telling them that they would put themselves in the wrong by rebellion, But what Luther did not see was that the time for good advice had gone by, and that he had to take his stand on one side or the other. He trusted too much in fine language. His advice that arbiters should be chosen, some from the nobility and some from towns, that both parties should give up something, and that the matter should be amicably settled by human law, came ten months too late. The bloody struggle came ; the stream of rebellion and destruc tion rolled on to Thuringia and Saxony, and Luther apparently lost his head, and actually encouraged the nobles in their sanguinary suppression of the revolt, in his pamphlet entitled Against the Murdering, Robbing Rats of Peasants, where he hounds on the authorities to &quot; stab, kill, and strangle.&quot; The princes leagued together, and the peasants were routed everywhere. One army, with neither military arms nor leaders, was utterly routed at Franken- hausen, another in Wiirtemberg. Fifty thousand were slain or butchered by wholesale executions. Among this number many of the quietest and most moderate people were made victims in the general slaughter, because they were known or suspected to be friends of the Reformation and of Luther, which indeed all the citizens and peasants of Germany were at that time. None felt more deeply, when it was too late, this misery, and what it involved in its effects on the cause of the gospel in Germany, than Luther ; and he never recovered the shock. He thus unburdens his soul at the close of this fatal year, which crushed for centuries the rights and hopes of the peasants and labourers, and weakened the towns and cities, the seats of all that was best in the national life, &quot; The spirit of these tyrants is powerless, cowardly, estranged from every honest thought. They deserve to be the slaves of the people ;&quot; and in the next year &quot; I fear Germany is lost ; it cannot be otherwise, for they will employ nothing but the sword.&quot; The prospect was dark enough for the Reformer. tion. Ferdinand of Austria and the duke of Bavaria were imprisoning and slaying Christians on account of the gospel. The emperor, fresh from his victory at Pavia, and the pope were combining to crush the Reformation, and it was rumoured that the kings of France and England were to lend their aid. The convention of Ratisbon had resulted in a Roman Catholic league in which Duke George of Saxony, Albert elector-archbishop of Mainz, and the duke of Brunswick were the leaders. Luther also found that the war had demoralized the Protestant congregations, and that they were becoming ignorant and savage. And in May 1525 the elector Frederick died. It was under such auspices that Luther decided at last Luther s to take a wife, as he had long advised his friends among marriage, the priests and monks to do. He married Catherine von Bora, a lady twenty-four years of age, of a noble Saxon family, who had left her convent together with eight other sisters in order to worship Christ without the oppression of endless ceremonies, which gave neither light to the mind nor peace to the soul. The sisters had lived together in retirement, protected by pious citizens of Torgau. Luther married her on June 11, 1525, in the presence of Lucas Cranach and of another friend as witnesses. Catherine von Bora had no dowry, and Luther lived on his appoint ment as professor ; he would never take any money for his books. His marriage was a happy one, and was blessed with six children. He was a tender husband, and the most loving of fathers. In the close of the year 1525 Luther was engaged in controversy with Erasmus on the freedom of the will. The princes who were friendly to the Reformation Progress gradually gained more courage. The elector John of oftlie Saxony established the principle in his state that all rites should be abrogated which were contrary to the Scriptures, and that the masses for the dead be abolished at once. The young landgrave Philip of Hesse gained over the son of the furious Duke George to the cause of the Reforma tion. Albert, duke of Prussia, had established it at Konigsberg, as hereditary duke, abolishing the vows of the order whose master he had been, saying : &quot; There is only one order, and that is Christendom.&quot; At the request of the pope, Charles placed Albert under interdict as an apostate monk. The evangelical princes found in all these circumstances a still stronger motive to act at Augsburg as allies in the cause of the evangelical party ; and when the diet opened in December 1525 they spoke out boldly : &quot; It is violence which brought on the war of the peasants. If you will by violence tear the truth of God out of the hearts of those who believe, you will draw greater dangers and evils upon you.&quot; The Romanist party was startled. &quot; The cause of the holy faith &quot; was adjourned to the next diet at Spires. The landgrave and the elector made a formal alliance in February 1526 at Torgau. Luther, being consulted as to his opinion, felt helpless. &quot; You have no faith ; you put not your trust in God ; leave all to Him.&quot; The landgrave, the real head of the evangelical alliance, perceived that Luther s advice was not practical that Luther forsook the duty of self-defence and the obligation to do one s duty according to the dictates of reason, in religious matters as well as in other political questions. But the alliance found no new friends. Germany showed all her misery by the meanness of her princes and the absence of any great national body to oppose the league formed by the pope, the emperor,, and the Romanists throughout Europe. The archbishop of Treves preferred a pension from Charles to the defence of the national cause. The evangelically-disposed elector of the palatinate desired to avoid getting into trouble. The imperial city of Frankfort, surrounded by open