or exercising true Christian liberty, and their
violent proceedings were nothing but carnal license. Everybody knows how
deeply Luther himself was interested in the abolition of the idolatrous
Mass and the spiritual peonage which Rome had created for men by means
of the confessional. Only a person who puts principles above policies
could have acted as Luther did in those turbulent days. He wanted for
his followers, not wanton rebels and frenzied enthusiasts, but men who
respect the Word of Cod, discreet and gentle men whose weapons of
warfare were not carnal. A man who is so cautious as not to approve the
putting down of acknowledged evils because he is convinced that the
attempt is premature and exceeds the limits of propriety, will not lend
his hand to abolishing the divine norm of right, the holy commandments
of God.

The second occasion on which Luther in a most impressive manner showed
his profound regard for the maintenance of human and divine laws was
during the bloody uprising of the peasants. While thoroughly in sympathy
with the rebellious peasants in their righteous grievances against their
secular and spiritual oppressors, the barons and the bishops, and
pleading the peasants' cause in its just demands before their lords, he
unflinchingly rebuked their extreme demands and their still extremer
actions. If by his preaching of the Gospel Luther had been the
instigator of the peasants' uprising, what a brazen hypocrite he must
have been in denouncing acts which he must have acknowledged to be
fruits of his teaching! Among the noblemen of Germany Luther counted not
a few frank admirers and staunch supporters of his reformatory work.
Their influence was of the highest value to him in those critical days
when his own life was not safe. Yet he rebuked the sins of the high and
mighty, their avarice and insolence, which had brought on this terrible
disturbance. In his writings dealing with this sad conflict Luther
impresses one like one of the ancient prophets who stand like a rock
amid the raging billows of popular passions and with even-handed justice
deliver the oracles of God to high and low, calling upon all to bow
before the supreme will of the righteous Lawgiver. Would the great lords
of the land have meekly taken Luther's rebuke if they had been able to
charge Luther with being an accessory to the peasants' crimes?

The third occasion on which Luther's innocence of the charges of
Romanists that he was an inst