rs, who are a thousand times more culpable, he says,
than the robber or murderer, who only steal the material bread and slay
the body, while the heretic steals the bread of life and kills the soul.

Intolerance then entered into the councils of the Reformation. It was no
longer with the peasants that Luther declared war. Whoever did not
believe in his doctrines was denounced as a rebel; in the Saxon's eyes,
the peasant was only an enemy to be despised; the real Satan was
Karlstadt, Zwingli, and Krautwald.

His disciples were no longer satisfied with plundering the
monasteries--they desired to live in ease; they must have servants, a
fine house, a well-supplied table, and plenty of money. The struggle
then was no longer with piety and knowledge, but with power and
influence. Every city and town had its own Lutheran pope. At Nuremberg,
Osiander was a regular pacha. Those who among the Protestants endeavored
to reprove his scandalous ostentation were abused and maligned. When he
ascended the pulpit, his fingers were adorned with diamonds which
dazzled the eyes of his hearers.

The religious disputes which disturbed men's minds in Germany retarded,
rather than advanced, the march of intellect. Blind people who fought
furiously with each other could not find the road to truth. These
quarrels were only another disease of the human mind. Although printing
served to disseminate the principles of the reformers, the sudden
progress of Lutheranism, and the zeal with which it was embraced, prove
that reason and reflection had no part in their development.

Villers has drawn a brilliant sketch of the influence which the
Reformation exercised over biblical criticism. "It may be said that
criticism of the Scripture text was unknown previous to the time of
Luther; and if by this is meant that captious, whimsical, and shuffling
criticism which DeWette has so justly condemned--certainly so. But that
which relates to languages, antiquities, the knowledge of times, places,
authors--in a word, hermeneutics--was known and practised in our schools
before the Reformation, as is proved by the works of Cajetan and
Sadoletus, and a multitude of learned men whom Leo X had encouraged and
rewarded. We have seen besides, in the history of the Reformation, what
that vain science has produced. It was by means of his critical
researches that, from the time of Luther, Karlstadt found such a meaning
of '_Semen immolare Moloch_,' as made his disciples s