was approved. In the last article the
peasants express their readiness to withdraw any or all of these
requests that are shown to be contrary to Scripture, and ask permission
to substitute others for them.

Luther was in a fair way of bringing about an amicable settlement of the
differences. Philip of Hesse had at the same time come to a full
agreement with the peasants in his domains, and peace seemed near, when
the real genius of the whole peasant movement, Muenzer, interfered.
Luther had suspected for some time that this unscrupulous agitator was
spreading the teaching of unbridled license under pretense of preaching
liberty, and that the mystical piety which he was reported as
practising, his leaning towards the reform movement, and his references
to Luther and the "new Gospel," were nothing but the angel's garment
which a very wicked devil had borrowed for purposes of deception. When
Muenzer at the head of hordes of men who through his inflammatory
speeches had been turned into unreasoning brutes was spreading ruin and
desolation along his path, wiping out in a few days the products of the
patient labors of generations, subverting the fundamental principles of
honesty, justice, and morality on which the organized public life of the
community and the private life of the individual must rest, and rapidly
changing even the well-meaning and reasonable among the peasants into
frenzied madmen, Luther recognized that conciliatory measures and
arbitration would not avail with these mobs. His duty as a teacher of
God's Word and as a loyal subject of his government demanded prompt and
stern action from him. However, back of the terrible mien with which
Luther now faced the wild peasants there is a heart of love; in the
appalling language which he now uses against men whose cause he had
befriended there is discernible a note of pity for the poor deluded
wretches who thought they were rearing a paradise when they were
building bedlam. Above all, the great heart of Luther is torn with
anguish over the shame that is now being heaped on the blessed Gospel of
his dear Lord. Luther did not desert the peasants, but they deserted
him; they were the traitors, not he.

There is a diabolical streak in the character of Thomas Muenzer. He
parades as the People's Man, and the German people in the sixteenth
century never had a worse enemy. His fluent speech and great oratory
seemed honey to the peasants, but they were the veriest poison.