s of primitive Christianity, as they
understood it, without reckoning the vast changes in culture and other
conditions, and yet it is impossible not to have a deep sympathy with
the men most of whose demands were just and who sealed their faith with
perpetual martyrdom. {100} [Sidenote: Spread of radicalism]
Notwithstanding the heavy blow to reform given in the crushing of the
peasants' rising, radical doctrines continued to spread among the
people. As the poor found their spiritual needs best supplied in the
conventicle of dissent, official Lutheranism became an established
church, predominantly an aristocratic and middle-class party of vested
interest and privilege.

It is sometimes said that the origin and growth of the Anabaptists was
due to the German translation of the Bible. This is not true and yet
there is little doubt that the publication of the German version in
1522 and the years immediately following, stimulated the growth of many
sects. The Bible is such a big book, and capable of so many different
interpretations, that it is not strange that a hundred different
schemes of salvation should have been deduced from it by those who came
to it with different prepossessions. While many of the Anabaptists
were perfect quietists, preaching the duty of non-resistance and the
wickedness of bearing arms, even in self-defence, others found sanction
for quite opposite views in the Scripture, and proclaimed that the
godless should be exterminated as the Canaanites had been. In ethical
matters some sects practised the severest code of morals, while others
were distinguished by laxity. By some marriage was forbidden; others
wanted all the marriage they could get and advocated polygamy. The
religious meetings were similar to "revivals," frequently of the most
hysterical sort. Claiming that they were mystically united to God, or
had direct revelations from him, they rejected the ceremonies and
sacraments of historic Christianity, and sometimes substituted for them
practices of the most absurd, or most doubtful, character. When
Melchior Rink preached, his followers howled like dogs, bellowed like
cattle, neighed like horses, and brayed like asses--some of them very
{101} naturally, no doubt. In certain extreme cases the meetings ended
in debauchery, while we know of men who committed murder in the belief
that they were directed so to do by special revelation of God. Thus at
St. Gall one brother cut another's thro