which had shown itself spasmodically since the movement under Hans Böhm, had never been extinguished, and it was a symptom that a peasants’ war might not be far off. Very little was needed to kindle afresh the smouldering hatred of the peasant against the priests. When German patriots declaimed against the exactions of the Roman Curia, the peasant thought of the great and lesser tithes, of the marriage, baptismal, and burial fees demanded from him by his own parish priest. When Reformers and popular preachers denounced the scandals and corruptions in the Church, the peasant applied them to some drunken, evil-living, careless priest whom he knew. It should be remembered that the character _Karsthans_ was invented in 1520, not by a Lutheran sympathiser, but by Thomas Murner, one of Luther’s most determined opponents,(301) when he was still engaged in writing against the clerical disorders of the times. This virulent attack on priests and monks had other sources than the sympathy for Luther.(302) It was the awakening of old memories, prompted partly by an underground ceaseless Hussite propaganda, and partly, no doubt, by the new ideas so universally prevalent. Some of this coarse popular literature had a more direct connection with the Lutheran movement. A booklet which appeared in 1521, entitled _The New and the Old God_, and which had an immense circulation, may be taken as an example. Like many of its kind, it had an illustrated title-page, which was a graphic summary of its contents. There appeared as the representatives of the New God, the Pope, some Church Fathers, and beneath them, Cajetan, Silvester Prierias, Eck, and Faber; over-against them were the Old God as the Trinity, the four Evangelists, St. Paul with a sword, and behind him Luther. It attacked the ceremonies, the elaborate services, the obscure doctrines which had been thrust on the Church by bloody persecutions, and had changed Christianity into Judaism, and contrasted them with the unchanging Word of the Old God, with its simple story of salvation and its simple doctrines of faith, hope, and love. To the same class belong the writings of the voluminous controversialist, John Eberlin of Günzburg, whom his opponents accused of seducing whole provinces, so effective were his appeals to the “common” man. He began by a pamphlet addressed to the young Emperor, and published, either immediately before or during the earlier sitting of the Diet of Worms in 1521, a daring appeal, in which Luther and Ulrich von Hutten are called the messengers of God to their generation. It was the first of a series of fifteen, all of which were in circulation before the beginning of November of the same year.(303) They were called the “Confederates” (_Bundsgenossen_). The contents of these and other pamphlets by Eberlin may be guessed from their titles—_Of the forty days’ fast before Easter and others which pitifully oppress Christian folk._ _An exhortation to all Christians that they take