ligion, the effect was the same
as that of absorbing the Church in the State. In 1524 Muenzer published a
sermon, in which he besought the Lutheran princes to extirpate
Catholicism. "Have no remorse," he says; "for He to whom all power is
given in heaven and on earth means to govern alone."[247] He demanded
the punishment of all heretics, the destruction of all who were not of
his faith, and the institution of religious unity. "Do not pretend," he
says, "that the power of God will accomplish it without the use of your
sword, or it will grow rusty in the scabbard. The tree that bringeth not
forth good fruit must be cut down and cast into the fire." And
elsewhere, "the ungodly have no right to live, except so far as the
elect choose to grant it them."[248] When the Anabaptists were supreme
at Muenster, they exhibited the same intolerance. At seven in the morning
of Friday, 27th February 1534, they ran through the streets crying,
"Away with the ungodly!" Breaking into the houses of those who refused
their baptism, they drove the men out of the town, and forcibly
rebaptized the women who remained behind.[249] Whilst, therefore, the
Anabaptists were punished for questioning the authority of the
Lutherans in religious matters, they practically justified their
persecution by their own intolerant doctrines. In fact, they carried the
Protestant principles of persecution to an extreme. For whereas the
Lutherans regarded the defence of truth and punishment of error as
being, in part, the object of the institution of civil government, they
recognised it as an advantage by which the State was rewarded for its
pains; but the Anabaptists repudiated the political element altogether,
and held that error should be exterminated solely for the sake of truth,
and at the expense of all existing States.

Bucer, whose position in the history of the Reformation is so peculiar,
and who differed in important points from the Saxon leaders, agreed with
them on the necessity of persecuting. He was so anxious for the success
of Protestantism, that he was ready to sacrifice and renounce important
doctrines, in order to save the appearance of unity;[250] but those
opinions in which he took so little dogmatic interest, he was resolved
to defend by force. He was very much dissatisfied with the reluctance of
the Senate of Strasburg to adopt severe measures against the Catholics.
His colleague Capito was singularly tolerant; for the feeling of the
inhabita