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and the devil." A little later he wrote: "It is better that all the peasants be killed than that the princes and magistrates perish, because the rustics took the sword without divine authority. The only possible consequence of their Satanic wickedness would be the diabolic devastation of the kingdom of God." And again: "One cannot argue reasonably with a rebel, but one must answer him with the fist so that blood flows from his nose." Melanchthon entirely agreed with his friend. "It is fairly written in Ecclesiasticus xxxiii," said he, "that as the ass must have fodder, load, and whip, so must the servant have bread, work, and punishment. These outward, bodily servitudes are needful, but this institution [serfdom] is certainly pleasing to God." Inevitably such an attitude alienated the lower classes. From this time, many of them looked not to {99} the Lutheran but to the more radical sects, called Anabaptists, for help. The condition of the Empire at this time was very similar to that of many countries today, where we find two large upper and middle-class parties, the conservative (Catholic) and liberal (Protestant) over against the radical or socialistic (Anabaptist). [Sidenote: The Anabaptists] The most important thing about the extremists was not their habit of denying the validity of infant baptism and of rebaptizing their converts, from which they derived their name. What really determined their view-point and program was that they represented the poor, uneducated, disinherited classes. The party of extreme measures is always chiefly constituted from the proletariat because it is the very poor who most pressingly feel the need for change and because they have not usually the education to judge the feasibility of the plans, many of them quack nostrums, presented as panaceas for all their woes. A complete break with the past and with the existing order has no terrors for them, but only promise. A radical party almost always includes men of a wide variety of opinions. So the sixteenth century classed together as Anabaptists men with not only divergent but with diametrically opposite views on the most vital questions. Their only common bond was that they all alike rejected the authoritative, traditional and aristocratic organization of both of the larger churches and the pretensions of civil society. It is easy to see that they had no historical perspective, and that they tried to realize the ideal
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