Nor must it be forgotten that no great leader ever flung about wild words in such a reckless way. Luther had the gift of strong smiting phrases, of words which seemed to cleave to the very heart of things, of images which lit up a subject with the vividness of a flash of lightning. He launched tracts and pamphlets from the press about almost everything,—written for the most part on the spur of the moment, and when the fire burned. His words fell into souls full of the fermenting passions of the times. They drank in with eagerness the thoughts that all men were equal before God, and that there are divine commands about the brotherhood of mankind of more importance than all human legislation. They refused to believe that such golden ideas belonged to the realm of spiritual life alone, or that the only prescriptions which denied the rights of the common man were the decrees of the Roman Curia. The successful revolts of the Swiss peasants, the wonderful victories of Zisca, the people’s leader, in the near Bohemian lands, were illustrations, they thought, of how Luther’s sledge-hammer words could be translated into corresponding deeds. Other teachings besides Luther’s were listened to. Many of the Humanists, professed disciples of Plato, expounded to friends or in their class-rooms the communistic dreams of the _Republic_, and published _Utopias_ like the brilliant sketch of the ideal commonwealth which came from the pen of Thomas More. These speculations “of the Chair” were listened to by the “wandering students,” and were retailed, with forcible illustrations, in a way undreamt of by their scholarly authors, to audiences of artisans and peasants who were more than ready to give them unexpected applications.(321) The influence of popular astrology must not be forgotten; for the astrologists were powerful among all classes of society, in the palaces of the princes, in the houses of the burghers, and at the peasant market gatherings and church ales. In these days they were busy pointing out heavenly portents, and foretelling calamities and popular risings.(322) The missionaries of the movement belonged to all sorts and conditions of men—poor priests sympathising with the grievances of their parishioners; wandering monks who had deserted their convents, especially those belonging to the Franciscan Order; poor students on their way from University to University; artisans, travelling in German fashion from one centre of their trade to another. They found their audiences on the village greens under the lime trees, or in the public-houses in the lower parts of the towns. They talked the rude language of the people, and garnished their discourse with many a scriptural quotation. They read to excited audiences small pamphlets and broadsides, printed in thick letters on coarse paper, which discussed the burning questions of the day.