n-resistance theory as regards the civil power, and the clearing of
the way for its extremest expression in the doctrine of the Divine
Right of Kings, a theory utterly alien to the belief and practice of
the Mediaeval Church.

The Reichstag of Worms, by cutting off all possibility of
reconciliation, rather gave further edge to the popular revolutionary
side of the movement than otherwise. The whole progress of the change
in public feeling is plainly traceable in the mass of ephemeral
literature that has come down to us from this period, broadsides,
pamphlets, satires, folk-songs, and the rest. The anonymous literature
to which we more especially refer is distinguished by its coarse
brutality and humour, even in the writings of the Reformers, which
were themselves in no case remarkable for the suavity of their
polemic.

Hutten, in some of his later vernacular poems, approaches the
character of the less-cultured broadside literature. To the critical
mind it is somewhat amusing to note the enthusiasm with which the
modern Dissenting and Puritan class contemplates the period of which
we are writing--an enthusiasm that would probably be effectively
damped if the laudators of the Reformation knew the real character of
the movement and of its principal actors.

The first attacks made by the broadside literature were naturally
directed against the simony and benefice-grabbing of the clergy, a
characteristic of the priestly office that has always powerfully
appealed to the popular mind. Thus the "Courtisan and Benefice-eater"
attacks the parasite of the Roman Court, who absorbs ecclesiastical
revenues wholesale, putting in perfunctory _locum tenens_ on the
cheap, and begins:--

I'm fairly called a Simonist and eke a Courtisan,
And here to every peasant and every common man
My knavery will very well appear.
I called and cried to all who'd give me ear,
To nobleman and knight and all above me:
"Behold me! And ye'll find I'll truly love ye."

In another we read:--

The Paternoster teaches well
How one for another his prayers should tell,
Thro' brotherly love and not for gold,
And good those same prayers God doth hold.
So too saith Holy Paul right clearly,
Each shall his brother's load bear dearly.

But now, it declares, all that is changed. Now we are being taught
just the opposite of God's teachings:--

Such doctrine hath the priests increased,
Whom men as maste