During the troublous times of the war of the peasants, the progress of the Reformation was checked, and the circulation of the Lutheran publications, in the districts affected by the uprising, was for the time brought to a close. As one of the historians expresses it, “The bloody crushing out of the revolting peasants cut through the vital nerve of the Lutheran movement towards the creation of a national Church.... Luther showed, however, the capacity to meet the crisis.... Fortunately for the nation, he now possessed the influence which enabled him to direct.... Repressing, on the one hand, the tumultuous contentions of his followers among the peasants, using his influence, on the other, to temper the fierce indignation of the noble class, he was in a position to do much to further the final settlement, and was able, finally, to save from the ruin that had seemed imminent the beginnings of the Lutheran Church.”[131] The active leadership of the Reform movement had fallen upon Luther, who, while quite conscious of the power of argument, of which he made full use, was by nature a fighter, and whose very arguments, in their forcible and trenchant and sometimes brutal character, had the effect of verbal cudgels. One characteristic, in fact, of the literature, or perhaps it is more accurate to say of the controversial literature, of the sixteenth century, was the tendency to coarseness of expression, and the frequent use of libels and lampoons. When great scholars like Erasmus and Reuchlin permitted themselves to indulge in satirical invective, of which, judged by the standard of to-day, the coarseness was often more apparent than the wit, it is not surprising that fighters like Luther and Hutten should be ready to indulge in verbal onslaughts which seem more akin to brutal horse-play than to reasonable argument. Luther’s last publication, issued in 1545, was a series of theses written in reply to a fresh condemnation pronounced against him by the theologians of Louvain, in which series he included a final paper against the Zwinglians. His death occurred in 1546. Enormous as was the circulation of Luther’s writings at the time, and important and far-reaching as was their influence, they have not taken a place in the world’s literature, and but few of them would to-day find readers except among special students of the period. It is to be borne in mind, however, that while the writings of Luther have not lived as books, the teachings and doctrines presented in them have formed the basis of an enormous mass of doctrinal and religious literature, and have continued to direct, or at least to influence, the thought and the faith of a very large division of the Christian world. Luther as an author may be dead, but three hundred and fifty years after his death, his thoughts and teachings are still, through the books of his followers, reaching thousands of readers, and on both sides of the Atlantic his spirit is still preaching in thousands of pulpits.