n.

Many of the German princes now followed the example of John of Saxony,
and openly avowed their faith in the Lutheran doctrines. In the Austrian
States, notwithstanding all Ferdinand's efforts to the contrary, the new
faith steadily spread, commanding the assent of the most virtuous and
the most intelligent. Many of the nobles avowed themselves Lutherans, as
did even some of the professors in the university at Vienna. The vital
questions at issue, taking hold, as they did, of the deepest emotions of
the soul and the daily habits of life, roused the general mind to the
most intense activity. The bitterest hostility sprung up between the two
parties, and many persons, without piety and without judgment, threw off
the superstitions of the papacy, only to adopt other superstitions
equally revolting. The sect of Anabaptists rose, abjuring all civil as
well as all religious authority, claiming to be the elect of God,
advocating a community of goods and of wives, and discarding all
restraint. They roused the ignorant peasantry, and easily showed them
that they were suffering as much injustice from feudal lords as from
papal bishops. It was the breaking out of the French Revolution on a
small scale. Germany was desolated by infuriate bands, demolishing alike
the castles of the nobles and the palaces of the bishops, and sparing
neither age nor sex in their indiscriminate slaughter.

The insurrection was so terrible, that both Lutherans and papists united
to quell it; and so fierce were these fanatics, that a hundred thousand
perished on fields of blood before the rebellion was quelled. These
outrages were, of course, by the Catholics regarded as the legitimate
results of the new doctrines, and it surely can not be denied that they
sprung from them. The fire which glows on the hearth may consume the
dwelling. But Luther and his friends assailed the Anabaptists with every
weapon they could wield. The Catholics formed powerful combinations to
arrest the spread of evangelical views. The reformers organized
combinations equally powerful to diffuse those opinions, which they were
sure involved the welfare of the world.

Charles V., having somewhat allayed the troubles which harassed him in
southern Europe, now turned his attention to Germany, and resolved, with
a strong hand, to suppress the religious agitation. In a letter to the
German States he very peremptorily announced his determination,
declaring that he would exterminate