and the
devil." A little later he wrote: "It is better that all the peasants
be killed than that the princes and magistrates perish, because the
rustics took the sword without divine authority. The only possible
consequence of their Satanic wickedness would be the diabolic
devastation of the kingdom of God." And again: "One cannot argue
reasonably with a rebel, but one must answer him with the fist so that
blood flows from his nose." Melanchthon entirely agreed with his
friend. "It is fairly written in Ecclesiasticus xxxiii," said he,
"that as the ass must have fodder, load, and whip, so must the servant
have bread, work, and punishment. These outward, bodily servitudes are
needful, but this institution [serfdom] is certainly pleasing to God."

Inevitably such an attitude alienated the lower classes. From this
time, many of them looked not to {99} the Lutheran but to the more
radical sects, called Anabaptists, for help. The condition of the
Empire at this time was very similar to that of many countries today,
where we find two large upper and middle-class parties, the
conservative (Catholic) and liberal (Protestant) over against the
radical or socialistic (Anabaptist).

[Sidenote: The Anabaptists]

The most important thing about the extremists was not their habit of
denying the validity of infant baptism and of rebaptizing their
converts, from which they derived their name. What really determined
their view-point and program was that they represented the poor,
uneducated, disinherited classes. The party of extreme measures is
always chiefly constituted from the proletariat because it is the very
poor who most pressingly feel the need for change and because they have
not usually the education to judge the feasibility of the plans, many
of them quack nostrums, presented as panaceas for all their woes. A
complete break with the past and with the existing order has no terrors
for them, but only promise.

A radical party almost always includes men of a wide variety of
opinions. So the sixteenth century classed together as Anabaptists men
with not only divergent but with diametrically opposite views on the
most vital questions. Their only common bond was that they all alike
rejected the authoritative, traditional and aristocratic organization
of both of the larger churches and the pretensions of civil society.
It is easy to see that they had no historical perspective, and that
they tried to realize the ideal