the peasantry and the landed classes: but in Germany matters were very much
worse. In England there had always been a tendency for the religious
reformers to associate their movements with demands for social reform; and
so it was now to an exaggerated degree in Germany. Social revolution was no
part of the scheme of Luther and his lieutenant Melanchthon; but in defying
the authority of Rome they had awakened the revolutionary spirit. Fired
with religious fanaticism, the demagogues acquired a new character, a
devouring zeal, a reckless courage. At last in 1524 the peasants rose
demanding redress for their grievances. What they asked was indeed bare
justice according to any intelligent modern view; yet the granting of their
demands would have been completely subversive of the existing social order.
The upper classes were united against them, Luther and his associates
denounced them. The fiercest passions broke loose: there were ghastly
massacres and ghastly reprisals, ending in the slaughter of scores of
thousands of peasants, and the complete suppression of the rising.

[Sidenote: Its effect in England]

The Lutherans proper had emphatically dissociated themselves from the
zealots who stirred up the "peasants' war," which did not alter the general
attitude of the Germans on the religious question. But in England, these
things had a serious effect. The Lutheran heresies were condemned as
heresies in this country before the outbreak, and a considerable number of
heretically inclined Englishmen took refuge in the German States, where
they looked to find countenance. Being for the most part men of extreme
tendencies, those tendencies were quickened; whence it resulted that in
importing the new religious doctrines from Germany they combined them more
or less with the doctrines of social revolution. Thus the distinction
between the two movements was lost sight of, and the profession of the new
doctrines was regarded as not merely heretical but in itself anarchical--a