Clement VII., besieged in the castle of Saint Angelo, and fearful that the enemy would blow his asylum into the air with their mines, at last capitulated. He renounced every alliance against Charles the Fifth, and bound himself to remain a prisoner until he had paid the army four hundred thousand ducats. The evangelical Christians gazed with astonishment on this judgment of the Lord. "Such," said they, "is the empire of Jesus Christ, that the Emperor, pursuing Luther on account of the Pope, is constrained to ruin the Pope instead of Luther. All things minister unto the Lord, and turn against his adversaries."[60] [60] Ut Cæsar pro Papa Lutherum persequens, pro Luthero papam cogatur vastare.--(L. Epp. iii. p. 188.) [Sidenote: PROFITABLE CALM.] III. And in truth the Reform needed some years of repose that it might increase and gain strength; and it could not enjoy peace, unless its great enemies were at war with each other. The madness of Clement VII. was as it were the _lightning-conductor_ of the Reformation, and the ruin of Rome built up the Gospel. It was not only a few months' gain; from 1526 to 1529 there was a calm in Germany by which the Reformation profited to organize and extend itself. A constitution was now to be given to the renovated Church. The papal yoke having been broken, the ecclesiastical order required to be reestablished. It was impossible to restore their ancient jurisdiction to the bishops; for these continental prelates maintained that they were, in an especial manner, the Pope's servants. A new state of things was therefore called for, under pain of seeing the Church fall into anarchy. Provision was made for it. It was then that the evangelic nations separated definitely from that despotic dominion which had for ages kept all the West in bondage. Already on two occasions the diet had wished to make the reform of the Church a national work; the Emperor, the Pope, and a few princes were opposed to it; the Diet of Spire had therefore resigned to each state the task that it could not accomplish itself. But what constitution were they about to substitute for the papal hierarchy? They could, while suppressing the Pope, preserve the Episcopal order: it was the form most approximate to that which was on the point of being destroyed. They might, on the contrary, reconstruct the ecclesiastical order, by having recourse to the sovereignty of God's Word, and by re-establishing the rights of the christian people. This form was the most remote from the Roman hierarchy. Between these two extremes there were several middle courses. [Sidenote: PHILIP OF HESSE.] The latter plan was Zwingle's; but the reformer of Zurich had not fully carried it out. He had not called upon the christian people to exercise the sovereignty, and had stopped at the council of two hundred as representing the Church.[61] [61] _Supra_, Vol. III. b. xi. ch. x.