ns and were called churches, but
they were also political parties. The years following the Diet of {96}
Worms saw the crystallization of a new group, which was at first
liberal and reforming and later, as it grew in stability, conservative.
At Worms almost all the liberal forces in Germany had been behind
Luther, the intellectuals, the common people with their wish for social
amelioration, and those to whom the religious issue primarily appealed.
But this support offered by public opinion was vague; in the next years
it became, both more definite and more limited. At the same time that
city after city and state after state was openly revolting from the
pope, until the Reformers had won a large constituency in the Imperial
Diets and a place of constitutional recognition, there was going on
another process by which one after another certain elements at first
inclined to support Luther fell away from him. During these years he
violently dissociated himself from the extreme radicals and thus lost
the support of the proletariat. In the second place the growing
definiteness and narrowness of his dogmatism and his failure to show
hospitality to science and philosophy alienated a number of
intellectuals. Third, a great schism weakened the Protestant church.
But these losses were counterbalanced by two gains. The first was the
increasing discipline and coherence of the new churches; the second was
their gradual but rapid attainment of the support of the middle and
governing classes in many German states.

[Sidenote: The Radicals]

Luther's struggle with radicalism had begun within a year after his
stand at Worms. He had always been consistently opposed to mob
violence, even when he might have profited by it. At Worms he
disapproved Hutten's plans for drawing the sword against the Romanists.
When, from his "watchtower," he first spied the disorders at
Wittenberg, he wrote that notwithstanding the great provocation given
to the common man by the clergy, yet tumult was the work of {97} the
devil. When he returned home he preached that the only weapon the
Christian ought to use was the Word. "Had I wished it," said he then,
"I might have brought Germany to civil war. Yes, at Worms I might have
started a game that would not have been safe for the emperor, but it
would have been a fool's game. So I did nothing, but only let the Word
act." Driven from Wittenberg, the Zwickau prophets, assisted by Thomas
Muenzer, continue