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A HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS

By Thomas Armitage

1890

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[Table of Contents for "A History of the Baptists" by Thomas Armitage]

THE ERA OF THE REFORMATION

PEASANTS’ WAR -- MÜHLHAUSEN AND MÜNSTER

The Peasants’ War of A.D. 1525-26 shook Southern and Central Germany. The age was in a fever of political excitement, and this war was not an affair of religious doctrine but of political liberty and the natural rights of man. The first German conqueror took possession and then gave lands in fee to his officers or lords, and in turn these bound their dependants to servile occupancy. The citizens took rank as nobles and ‘villains,’ and all others were serfs, the serfs going with the soil on which they were born. They could not leave their master’s domain nor appeal from his authority, nor could he sell them. He took to himself the common pastures, the fish and game, exacting high rents or tithes, and they must submit or revolt. He also forced his religion upon them and made them act through the religious idea, their knowledge being narrowed down to a few notions on that subject. For ages Germany had boasted that liberty was the birthright of her people, boor and prince. Her primitive Teutonic population were farmers and graziers, who wandered without landmark or fixed habitation. Then, they formed themselves into little States under a kind of land ownership but with few conventional restrictions or claims to the perpetual right of property. In time, however, estates shaped themselves after the map of restricted society and revenue became hereditary. Thus feudal tenures sprang up, defense became necessary and authority grew. As wealth increased, military power and imperial rule followed, with all the exactions of blind obedience. Under this yoke the peasant was uneasy for ages, periodically waking up to his lost liberties, with new attempts to break the bond of ‘villanage’ and shake off his burdens.

As far back as A.D. 1073 the peasants of Thuringia and Saxony rebelled and Henry IV shed torrents of their blood. In 1476 there was a rebellion at Wurzburg; in 1491 another in Swabia; and in 1503 the peasants of Spire formed a confederacy, called the ‘League-shoe,’ from the device painted on their standard. The King of France stirred up a peasant outbreak in Belgium, and a rustic army 30,000 strong, with a loaf and a cheese on its banners, went forth to reduce the nobility to decency, but were themselves slain by Albert of Saxony. In 1514 ‘Poor Kuntze,’ a farmer of Wurtemberg, led a seditionary force which took several cities, threatening destruction to the clergy and nobility because of their avarice and tyranny; but the emperor and princes were alarmed and made concessions to avoid worse calamities. In Poland, Hungary and Transylvania there was another peasant revolt in 1515 against the oppressions of their rulers. Laurence, a Catholic presbyter, and Michael, a monk, were amongst their captains; 400 nobles perished, 13 bishops were impaled, only one escaping, and 70,000 people were slaughtered. In fact, the fiery waves of revolution seethed under the whole German Empire, discontent was universal and every peasant was ready to grasp the sword in revolt. But at this time, the people afterward called ‘Anabaptists’ were not known in Germany.

When rebellion burst forth in 1525-26, it was neither at Zwickau nor at Münster, but in the Black Forest. Church and State united to grind the faces of the poor peasants under the pretense of fighting the Turks, and they resolved to wear the iron collar no longer. John Müller, their chief, wore a red cap and cloak and carried the standard of revolt, a flag of black, white and red, through the forest region. Village after village was aroused, enthusiasm spread like wild-fire, new towns and cities threw open their gates and the people swelled the ranks from all quarters. They marched triumphantly everywhere. Nor was this uprising a mere blot upon the face of history, as is commonly represented. If it is right to rise in arms at all against tyrannical princes, this war was as holy as any that ever was waged. The peasants tell their story well in their immortal manifesto submitted to the reason and justice of mankind. They held public meetings everywhere, to express their grievances and petition for redress. They prayed for the Gospel of freedom, but no relief came, and at last they stated their case in Twelve Articles, of which instrument Voltaire said that ‘Lycurgus would have signed it.’ Luther declared to the princes that its several articles were ‘So just and right, that all feelings of consideration toward you, before God and the world, are removed.’ There has been much doubt as to the authorship of this noble State paper, but Prof. Pfleiderer attributes it to Hubmeyer.

So honorable and patriotic was this document in its demands and so temperately worded that it is simply a picture of their exhausted long-suffering. They asked for the pure word of God and the right to choose their own pastors; for their exemption from all tithes, except that of wheat, of which they would pay a tenth for the support of their pastors and the poor; for relief from bondage and from such obedience to the magistrates as it is not lawful for Christians to render; for justice administered fairly and firmly according to plain, written laws; and for permission to fish in the rivers and hunt in the forests. They back each article with a forceful passage of Scripture, because, in some way, they had come to believe that Christ intended men to possess rights of conscience. They say: ‘Christ bought and redeemed us by his precious blood, the shepherd as well as the noblest, none being excepted; wherefore, it accords with Scripture that we are and will be free.’ They close by promising that if any of these demands be unjust they shall have no force. These articles were read publicly in every place and adopted by the people. They marched triumphantly into Wurtzburg; and before long Spires, the Palatinate, Alsace, Hesse and other great centers adopted the articles. Many of the upper classes, Catholics and Reformers, put themselves at the head of the peasants. The general uprising took place by concert, January 1st, 1525; as a signal, the Convent of Kempton was captured, and from that moment the country was in a blaze from the Rhine to the frontier of Bohemia. Monasteries, castles and cities were destroyed, and every kind of excess was committed by 300,000 men in arms maddened by intolerable oppression to the desperation of despair. All this took place ten years before the madness of Münster, showing it to be but an incident in the long German uproar.

We see here how religion entered the contests of the Peasants’ War and by whom it was introduced. It is simply absurd to say that these peasants were ‘Anabaptists.’ Did they demand the right to choose their own pastors because their masters had forced unwelcome ‘Anabaptist’ shepherds upon them? The peasants were Catholics and Lutherans, and their enforced ministers were the same. Many of their masters were bishops and other clergy. The entire disturbance was simply the abnormal German mind forcing its way back in a crude manner to its native freedom, and the ‘Anabaptists’ cannot for any purpose be made a stalking-horse, in the face of historic truth, to force a false issue to the front. The chief actors in these scenes candidly lay before us the real facts. When the princes desired the Elector to aid them against the rebellion, he said to his brother, John: ‘Cause has been given for the poor people to make this uproar. . . . They have been dealt hardly with in many ways by us rulers, both spiritual and temporal.’ The deputies from Saxony and Hesse said in the Diet at Augsburg:

‘The rising of the peasants was the effect of impolitic and harsh usage.’ At first, Luther, being the son of a peasant, sympathized with his own race and said to the bishops: ‘It is your guilty oppression of the poor of the flock. which has driven the people to despair.’ To the princes he said: ‘My lords, it is not the peasants who have risen against you, it is God himself who is opposing your madness. Think not that you can escape the punishment reserved for you. For the love of God, calm your irritation; grant reasonable terms to these poor people, appease these commotions by gentle methods, lest they give birth to a conflagration which shall set all Germany in a flame.’ In his ‘Secular Magistracy’ he uses this strong language: ‘God Almighty has made our princes mad, so that they imagine they can act and command their subjects as they please. God delivers the princes to their reprobate senses. They wish even to govern souls, and thus they bring upon themselves God’s and all people’s hatred, and in this way they perish, with the bishops, priests and monks; one rascal with the other. The people wearied of your tyranny and iniquity can no longer bear it.’ He calls them ‘Blockheads, who wish to be called Christian Princes.’

His work on ‘Christian Liberty’ drew the peasants to him as a leader, and then many of them declared for the Reformation; but up to 1525 possibly nine tenths of them were not allowed to hear the Reformation preached. For some reason, which is not clear, he suddenly turned his back on them and in that year published his infamous pamphlet ‘Against the Rapacious, Murderous Peasants.’ They then charged him with being a fawning sycophant to the nobles. ‘From that day,’ says Beard, ‘he became harder, more dogmatic, less spiritual, less universal. He is no longer a leader of thought, but the builder up of a church, on conditions prescribed by the existing political constitution of Germany.’ After the war the rebels returned almost as a body to the Catholics, and Luther did more to drive them back than any other man. His bitterness and cruelty toward them were appalling. He denounces them as ‘faithless, treacherous, lying, disobedient, boobies and rascals, who deserved the death of soul and body.’ He declared them under the ban of the God and Emperor, and he who strangles them first does right well. He charged them with ‘three horrible crimes against God and man: rebellion against rulers, robbery of castles and convents, and the pretense that they fight under the Gospel.’ Yet, in 1524, when Erasmus wrote him that he feared ‘a bloody insurrection,’ he replied: ‘A common destruction of all monasteries and convents would be the best reformation, because they are useless.’ Many of the peasants destroyed these and he raved against them after this coarse fashion: ‘A wise man gives to his ass food, a pack-saddle and the whip; to the peasant oat straw. If they are not content, give the cudgel and the carbine, it is their due. Let us pray that they may be obedient; if not, show them no mercy. Make the musket whistle against them, or else they will be a thousand times more wicked.’ He exhorted the princes to hunt them down like ‘mad dogs. Strike! slay front and rear! Nothing is more poisonous, pernicious, devilish than a rebel. . . . So wonderous are the times now, that a prince can win heaven with blood more easily than others can by prayer. . . . Beat, strangle, hang, burn, behead and mutilate them.’

Certain writers never weary of attributing this bloody work to the ‘Anabaptists.’ But Bishop Jewel honestly lodges it where it belongs; while he would screen Luther, he says that the partners of this ‘conspiracy had for their watch-word the name of Our Lady, and in honor of her were bound to say five Ave Marias every day.’ Great concessions were made to the peasants for a time; during the war much church property was put to secular uses, many high privileges and taxes were abolished, all princes but the Emperor were brought down to the democratic level of citizens, free courts were established, the clergy were restricted to their individual churches, and uniformity was given to weights, measures and currency. But these were not secured until the war had cost possibly 150,000 lives, and the burning of several hundred castles, convents, hamlets and towns. Sometimes Luther attempted to wash his hands as innocent of the whole affair, and then again he was willing to bear the whole responsibility, but others laid the blame at his door. Erasmus said to him: ‘You disclaim any connection with the insurgents, while they regard you as the author and expounder of their principles.’ A controversial writer of 1532 says: ‘Luther first sounded the tocsin; he cannot clear himself from the rebellion, although he wrote that the common folks should not use force without the magistracy. The common people do not hear that, but they observe whatever part of Luther’s sermons and writings they please.’ Osiander writes: ‘When Luther saw the peasants attacking not only the bishops and clergy, but also his teaching and the princes, he preached their slaughter like that of wild beasts;’ and the enemies of the peasants were as bitter toward him as the rebels themselves. In 1525 Amerbach received a letter from Zasius, in which the latter says: ‘Luther this pest of peace, this most pernicious of all two-legged beings; has plunged the whole of Germany into such a fury that one must regard it as a sort of security if he be not killed at once.’ Sometimes, when looking round for a scape-goat, Luther attempted to throw the responsibility on ‘the prophets of murder,’ as he called the Zwickau men. But at other times he arrogated prerogatives to himself, for which, as Erasmus says, ‘no parallel can be found, scarcely distinguishable from madness,’ and for which no apology can be made, such as this: ‘I, Martin Luther, have slain all the peasants in the insurrection because I commanded them to be killed; their blood is upon my head. But I put it upon the Lord God, by whose command I spoke.’

These and many other facts sufficiently show why Gieseler says that ‘no traces of Anabaptist fanaticism were seen’ in the Peasants’ War. Some individual ‘Anabaptists’ were drawn into the contest, as at Mühlhausen, under the lead of Münzer, who was not in any proper use of the term an ‘Anabaptist’ himself. On the contrary, Keller, in his late work on the ‘Reformation’ (p. 370), says that Cornelius has shown that in the chief points Münzer was opposed to the Baptists. It seemed an inevitable result that religious fanaticism should be thrown into a contest in which politico-religious questions formed the chief element, and especially where such a fiery spirit was allowed to come to the front. Yet it is questionable justice, whether even he ought to be blackened from head to foot. The true story of Thomas Münzer appears to be this. He, was born in Stollberg, at the foot of the Hartz Mountains, A.D. 1490, and studied, some think at Wittenberg, others at Leipsic; that he took a degree as master of arts is clear, and that he had large knowledge of the Scriptures. After teaching in several places, he became a chaplain and confessor to the nuns at Bentitz, near Weissenfels. There he rejected transubstantiation and united himself with the Lutherans. In the following year he became one of their pastors at Zwickau. But soon he broke with the Wittenberg reformers on account of what he called Luther’s ‘halfness;’ for he demanded a pure Church on the mystic idea, yet, in direct contradiction therewith, that it should first be established by force, and then defended by divine and miraculous interposition. After leaving that city he fled from place to place and settled at Mühlhansen near the close of 1524. There he preached his gospel of the sword and of divine revelations, actually caring little about the true character of the gospel Church. His politics soon brought him into direct conflict with the city council, which he entirely overthrew. Here he diverged from the Baptists and drew from them a severe rebuke. Grebel, in the name of the Zurich Baptists, September 5th, 1524, addressed him as follows:

‘Is it true, as we hear, that you have preached in favor of an attack on the princes? If you defend war or any thing else not found in the clear word of God, I admonish you by our common salvation to abstain from these things now and hereafter. . . . Unless every thing is to be altered after the example of the Apostles it were better to alter nothing. If this radical and complete change cannot be made at once, teach, at least, what ought to be, for it is far better that a few should be rightly instructed by the word of God, than that many should believe through deception an adulterated doctrine.’

In his youth certain mystical writings had given a false direction to Münzer’s piety, which bent cleaved to him both as a Catholic and a Lutheran, and following only what he called the ‘inner light’ he fell into all sorts of vagaries. He was ambitious, eloquent, thirsted for fight and fame, and was ready to lead a faction whenever opportunity offered. At Alsted he headed a mob, broke into a church and destroyed its images; at Mühlhansen he put himself at the head of the city government, and when the Peasants’ War commenced there he led its whole population in revolt. After a fierce and fantastical captaincy on his part and the slaughter of his followers, he was captured May 15th, 1525, was put to brutal torture and then beheaded.

Most of the later writers agree with the author of Johnson’s ‘Cyclopaedia’ in saying that ‘He entertained peculiar ideas of infant baptism, similar to those of the Anabaptists, with whom, however, he had no direct connection.’ This point of similarity consisted in that he rejected infant baptism in theory, on the ground that the baptism of the Spirit, as he called it, was the only true baptism for any person, babe or adult. But, differing with the Baptists, he practiced infant baptism in form, twice a year christening all born in his congregation. In 1522 at Alstedt he threw aside the Latin liturgy and prepared one in German, in which he retained the formula for infant baptism. He also wrote against Luther’s view of baptism, but not on Baptist grounds. The Swiss Baptist leaders, in the letter just cited, express the hope that as he had spoken against infant baptism he would go further and take their ground, that ‘believers only are to be baptized ‘ and that ‘you decline to baptize infants,’ a thing which he had not then done. He spent eight weeks in Switzerland in the autumn of 1524, and had a conference with some of these leaders at Klettgau; but they seem not to have agreed either on this subject or on the use of the sword, and he never became one of them. On this journey, according to Herzog, he met Œcolampadius at Basel and uttered views to him in no wise Baptist; this was in harmony with his whole life. The fact that he was a Roman Catholic priest and a Lutheran pastor shows that he had been christened as a babe; and there is no evidence that he was ever baptized upon his own faith or that he baptized others on their faith who had been christened as infants. It is, therefore, a singular perversity that so many writers should have attempted to palm him off as a Baptist and the father of them. Dr. Rule in his ‘Spirit of the Reformation’ says: ‘He performed a ceremony on baptized persons which they mistook for baptism, and with his followers received the designation of Anabaptist.’ But Ulhorn says that he ‘did not practice rebaptism and did not form a congregation.’

The barbarities which accompanied the Peasants’ War so enraged the German princes that they followed the revolt with the most sanguinary and remorseless measures. They simply massacred their subjects with frigid callousness, as butchers would kill sheep. The atrocity of the imperial party was a perfect match for that of the peasants. These once crushed, the bishops and nobles found it their turn to glut themselves in the coarsest manner upon the tears and blood of these tillers of the soil. Their fury and brutal cruelties render it doubtful whether they were not superior to the rustics in the acts of bitter revenge. They shed blood wherever they could find a vein, and in the chill temper of steel they hanged their prisoners by companies on the roadside.

But when the peasants were beaten the spirit of revolt was not broken; they were more oppressed than ever and kept their rebellion smothered. The Catholic princes charged the Lutheran princes with fostering sedition, and they retorted that it was the result of Romish persecution. They all saw that if this violence was continued worse calamities must follow, and yet they dreamed that they could tear patriotism from the hearts of their subjects by main force. They sought to cure political revolution by religious strategy. But this drove the courage of the peasants into religious madness, under the delusion that they could now achieve a spiritual victory by the sword. Common sense would have prevented the sedition entirely, and then the religion of the peasants would have taken healthy care of itself; but this was not commanded. Catholic and Lutheran kept the outrages seething all over the land, and at last, ten years after Münzer, came Münster.

THE REVOLT AT MÜNSTER

Few writers have treated this subject with greater care and clearness than Ypeig and Dermout in their History of the Netherland Church. They say of the Münster men that while they are known in history as ‘Anabaptists,’ they ought by no means to be known as Baptists. ‘Let the reader,’ they request, ‘keep this distinction constantly in mind in the statement which we now make respecting them. . . . Since the peculiar history of the Anabaptists and Baptists has exerted so powerful an influence on the Reformation of the Church in this country, the nature of our historical work requires that we present in its true light the whole matter from its origin.’

After speaking at great length of the Münster men and their excesses, especially of their leaders, they say of Mathiesen:

‘He laid as the foundation of his new system of doctrine that teaching respecting the holy ordinance of baptism which, in part, had long before been maintained by the Baptists. He considered infant baptism not to be of the least advantage to the religious interests of a Christian. In his opinion baptising should be delayed to years of discretion and after a profession of faith on the part of the baptized. Therefore every one who passed over to the community of which he was the head must first be baptized, even if he had been baptized in another society at an adult age. When he renounced his confession of faith he also renounced his baptism. . . . It can now be easily understood how the followers of the Münster leaders received the name of Anabaptists or re-baptizers. So far as their views of baptism are concerned, these could easily have been tolerated, and they need not have been hated by reasonable persons on account of these. But besides these they taught doctrines fraught with important errors, partly founded on old Pelagianism, partly on Unitarianism, partly on Mysticism and partly on other impure principles.

‘Yet, even with these opinions they could have been suffered to exist had they behaved themselves properly as members of society. But their peculiar notions of Christian freedom were extravagant in the highest degree, and with these were united all sorts of foolish ideas derived from an incorrect interpretation of the Apocalypse, ideas of a thousand years’ kingdom at hand, in which the saints shall reign with Christ and enjoy every kind of physical and spiritual pleasure. The community imbibed these opinions from Mathiesen, and by these their sensual feelings were so greatly excited that they united themselves to him, for the promotion of a happy life here upon earth, with impetuous ardor and sanguinary violence to overthrow entirely the thrones of princes, if it were possible, and of this they had no doubt. Mathiesen, like another Mohammed, sought through fire and sword to effect the downfall of all governments which were within the reach of his foolhardy undertakings, and to found an everlasting kingdom, which, under his royal administration, should spread itself over the whole earth. He should conquer the world and triumph over all the enemies of the kingdom of God. Then Christ should appear in the clouds of heaven and confirm him in his regal dignity, depose the pope as Antichrist, and solemnly place himself in the same situation as the highest ruler over the Church. . . . Since the enlisting of the rebel Anabaptists happened in this manner, it is sufficiently evident that the great majority cannot be supposed to have been Baptists in heart or belief. They were people of every variety of religious beliefs, and many of them of no religion at all in heart, although, they aided the Protestant cause.

‘From the nature of the case the majority of the Romanists knew no difference between the various Protestant parties and sects, and would make no distinction. Hence the abhorrence only deserved by some of the Anabaptists was bestowed upon all Protestants. The honest Baptists suffered the most severely from this prejudice, because they were considered by the people to be the same and were called by the same name. The fact that they agreed in their opinions in respect to the holy ordinance of baptism was the unfortunate occasion of this thing. On this account the Baptists in Flanders and in Friesland suffered the most terrible persecutions. In the next place the anger of the Romanists was excited against the Zwinglians, since these agreed most nearly with the Baptists in their simple religious rites, and had deviated most widely from the ancient Church. Besides these, the Lutherans also were compelled to undergo the most distressing persecutions on account of the indignation of the Romish government and priesthood at the wicked conduct of the Anabaptists. It is to these disturbances caused at Münster that we must ascribe the stringent measures against the Lutherans at Deventer in 1534-35. Lutheranism was considered the fruitful source of all manner of corruption in Church and State.’ [Ypeig and Dermout, History of the Netherland Church, Chap. on History of Dutch Baptists]

Here is a most important point brought out clearly. If the Lutherans and Zwinglians were confounded with the ‘wicked Anabaptists,’ as our authors call the Münster men, how much more easily did both Catholics and Protestants come to confound the ‘honest Baptists’ with these madmen.

The Dutch historians go on to state that:

‘The Baptists suffered the most, yet the entire mass of the Protestants were more or less injured. This will appear if attention be directed to the edicts which since that time have been issued by the Emperor for the purpose of retarding the work of the Reformation. In these all Christians who separated from the Romish Church were called Anabaptists. . . . The Emperor and all his statesmen knew that the Baptists generally had, both by word and deed, testified that their peace-loving hearts abhorred the seditious conduct of the Anabaptists. . . . In this manner the attempt was made to throw sand in the eyes of the superficial thinkers among the Romanists. It was no very difficult task to do this. Since the government comprehended all the Protestants under the general name of Anabaptists, the shortsighted Romanists confiding in its superior discernment, could easily be brought to the same unfavorable point of view. . . . The Anabaptists seemed to them to be a lawless people, consisting partly of Baptists, partly of Zwinglians, partly of Lutherans -- men who formerly adhered to the old Catholic faith, but who had now entirely renounced religion. . . . They would not see that which they might have seen. How evident it was that although the Baptists appeared to agree with the Anabaptists in respect to the baptismal question, the former entirely disapproved of the course pursued by the latter. For it had been, and continued to be, a doctrine of the Baptists, that the bearing of arms was very unbecoming to a Christian. Did not the Anabaptists pursue a course directly the opposite of this? . . . Who could have imagined that such a purpose prevailed among the Baptists, who were the meekest of Christians? And yet the Romanists, without dissent, agree in ascribing these things to all the Baptists. We have nowhere seen clearer evidences of the injurious influence of the prejudice, nowhere have we met with a more obstinate unwillingness to be correctly informed, and a more evident disposition to silence those who better understood the truth of the matter. Prejudice, when once deeply imbibed, blinds the eye, perplexes the understanding, silences the instincts of the heart and destroys the love of truth and rectitude.

‘We shall now proceed more at length to notice the defense of the worthy Baptists. The Baptists are Protestant Christians entirely different from the Anabaptists in character. They were descendants from the Ancient Waldenses, whose teachings were evangelical and tolerably pure, and who were scattered by severe persecutions in various lands, and long before the time of the Reformation of the Church were existing in the Netherlands. In their flight they came thither in the latter part of the twelfth century. In this country and in Flanders, in Holland and Zealand they lived as quiet inhabitants, not intermeddling with the affairs of Church and State, in the villages tilling the land, and in the cities working at some trade or engaged in traffic, by which means each one was well supplied and in no respect burdensome to society. Their manner of life was simple and exemplary. No great crime was known among them. Their religious teaching was simple and pure, and was exemplified in their daily conduct.’ [Ypeig and Dermout, History of the Netherland Church, Chap. on History of Dutch Baptists]

In 1524-25 Münster had risen and been subdued with the other cities of Southern and Central Germany, and things flowed once more in the old channel. Then, in 1532, Rothmann, a very powerful Lutheran pastor of Münster, stirred it so effectually that six entire parishes fell into the hands of the Lutherans, and nothing was left to the Catholics but the monastery and cathedral. The Lutherans took possession of the city government, drove away the Catholic bishop and clergy, and equipped troops to protect the Lutheran religion. The spirit of insurrection spread and the two prevailing sects were drawn into the movement, when, in 1532, Rothmann, whose influence was sweeping all before him, suddenly avowed himself an ‘Anabaptist’ and ran into every kind of wild vagary. He taught an illumination of the Spirit which superseded the need of the written word of God, and afforded new revelations by visions and dreams; that rank and station should be abolished; a community of goods established; that Christ was about to return to the earth; and that it must be conquered to him by force of arms, that he might reign here a thousand years.

Others flocked about him, amongst them Bockhold and Mathiesen. These soon outran Rothmann, and each in turn became prophet and king. They called Münster ‘Mount Zion,’ and proclaimed it the center of the world, for there Christ would right the wrongs of all the peasants, and establish the millennial kingdom of God. They proclaimed a theocratic government, put many to death and confiscated the estates of the citizens. The population soon became a rabble of all religious sects and none. Bockhold, the sham monarch, inaugurated a reign of terror, in which every vile passion was let loose and every crime was committed without decency or limit. The horrible violence which reigned for about a year threw common humanity to the winds, so frantic and sanguinary was the madness; and the cause of virtue is best served by avoiding the monstrous recital in detail. Münster fell completely under that general law of political, moral and fanatical epidemics which always works out such results, where superstition first makes men cruel, and then fiery passions sway their whole being. The town was taken June 24th 1535, and in the following January the ringleaders were put to death. Violence has ever been the natural consequence of soulless oppression, and yet any attempt to excuse the outrages of Münster is itself a crime. The wrongs of these people lived long after the Peasants’ War, and could not die in their revengeful memories. Both the oppressors and the oppressed acted more like demons than men, and the result was seen in that desperation of all subject races when brought to bay after long degradation.