d the ducal sword,
drove before him all these rebel angels, and, at the gate of Wittenberg,
stationed an executioner to prohibit their entrance; driven back into
the provinces, the dissenters appealed to open force. Germany was then
inundated with the blood of her noble intelligences, who had been born
for her glory.

Munzer died on the scaffold, and the Anabaptists marched to punishment,
denying and cursing the Saxon who did violence to their faith.
Everything was perishing--painting, sculpture, poesy, letters. The
Reformation imitated Nero, and sang its triumphs amid ruins and blood.

In France it was destined soon to excite similar tempests. It had
already troubled the Church. It no longer, as before, sheltered itself
beneath the shades of night to propagate its doctrines. It erected, by
the side of the Catholic pulpit, another pulpit, from which its dogmas
were defended by its disciples; it led its partisans at court, among the
clergy, in the universities and in the parliaments. Calvin's book, _de
Clementia_, gained him a large number of proselytes: his disciples had
an austere air, downcast eyes, pale faces, emaciated cheeks--all the
signs of labor and sufferings. They mingled little with the world,
avoided female conversation, the court, and shows; the Bible was their
book of predilection; they spoke, like the Saviour, in apologues. They
were termed Christians of the primitive Church. To resemble these, they
only needed the very essence of Christianity; namely, faith, hope, and
charity.

To be convinced that their symbol was as diversified as their faces, it
was only necessary to hear them speak; some taught the sleep of the
soul, after this life, till the day of the last judgment; others, the
necessity of a second baptism. Among them there were Lutherans, who
believed in the real presence, and Zwinglians, who rejected it; apostles
of free-will, and defenders of fatalism; Melanchthonians, who admitted
an ecclesiastical hierarchy; Carlstadians, who maintained that every
Christian is a priest; realists, chained to the letter; idealists, who
bent the letter to the thought; rationalists, who rejected every
mystery; mystics, who lost themselves in the clouds; and
Antitrinitarians, who, like Servetus, admitted but two persons in God.
These doctors all carried with them the same book--the Bible.

Servetus,[43] a Spanish physician, had left his own country, and
established himself, in 1531, at Hagenau, where he had pu