y in destitution, and did not even pay the schoolmasters their
salaries. He mourned them, but it was too late. Sometimes the
chastisement of heaven fell, even in this life, on the spoiler; and
Luther has mentioned instances of several of those iron hands, who,
after having enriched themselves by the plunder of a monastery, church,
or abbey, fell into abject poverty. Besides, we will admit that Luther
never thought of consoling the plundered monks by asserting, like
Charles Villers, that "one of the finest effects of these terrible
commotions which unsettle all properties, the fruits of social
institutions, is to substitute for them greatness of mind, virtues, and
talents, the fruits of nature exclusively."

If the triumph of the peasants in the fields of Thuringia might have
been an irreparable misfortune to Germany and to Christianity, we cannot
deny that Luther's appeal to the secular arm, to suppress the rebellion,
may have thoroughly altered the character of the first Reformation. Till
then it had been established by preaching; but from the moment of that
bloody episode it required the civil authority to move it. The sword,
therefore, took the place of the Word; and to perpetuate itself the
Reformation was bound to exaggerate the theory of passive obedience. One
of the distinguished historians of Heidelberg, Carl Hagen, has recently
favored us with some portions of the political code in which
Protestantism commands subjects to be obedient to the civil power, even
when it commands them to commit sin.

Thus the democratic element, first developed by the Reformation, was
effaced to become absorbed in the despotic. It was no longer the people,
but the prince, who chose or rejected the Protestant minister. When the
Landgrave of Hesse consulted Melanchthon, in 1525, as to the line he
should pursue in the appointment of a pastor, the doctor told him that
he had the right to interfere in the election of the ministers, and
that, if he surmounted the struggles in which the Word of God had
involved him, he ought not to commit that sacred Word but to such
preacher as seemed best to him; in other terms, observes the historian,
to him whom the civil power thinks competent. And Martin Bucer contrived
to extend Melanchthon's theory by constituting the civil power supreme
judge of religious orthodoxy, by conferring on it the right of ultimate
decision in questions of heresy, and of punishing, if necessary by fire
and sword innovato