All this would have been without effect if Gustavus had continued to protect the liberty of the reformers. But he thought (this is at least our opinion) that he might take advantage of the animosity existing between the two parties for maintaining his own universal and absolute authority. Olaf was blinded by excess of zeal, and Anderson did not sufficiently subordinate the interests of religion to those of politics. A sharp lesson must be given to each of them. Olaf was accused of having delivered seditious sermons, and of having censured in a historical work the ancestors of the king. This was not enough. [Sidenote: Charges Against Olaf And Anderson.] Some still more serious charge must be made. For this they went back four years (1536), and it was given out that the project, formed by the German inhabitants of Stockholm, of favoring the attack by the Hanse Towns, had been confided to Olaf under the seal of confession—this institution was still in existence—and that he had not made it known. Even if this supposition had any foundation, was it not truer still that the hostility of the Germans was universally known, and especially by the vigilant Gustavus? But, in fact, there was little more in the case than rumors, no attempt whatever at execution of the plan having ever been made. To suppose that Olaf had intended to injure the king, his own benefactor and the saviour of Sweden, is a senseless hypothesis. Many other persons in Stockholm had learnt as much of the matter and more than he had. But the enemies of the Reformation wanted to get rid of the reformer; they must have some pretext, and this appeared to be sufficient. People asked, indeed, why Olaf had not been prosecuted for this offence four years before, and why since that time no inquiry had been set on foot about it. But all improbabilities were passed over. All the passions of men combined against Olaf. Men of lower degree felt the hatred of envy caused by the elevation of the son of the ironmaster of Orebro. The great felt the hatred of pride, a hatred which is seldom appeased. Worldly and bad men, such as were not wanting at the court, felt that irreconcilable hatred which is cherished against those who declare war on vice and worldliness. The king commanded that Olaf as well as Anderson should be brought to trial. The writer who recounts, in a not very authentic manner, the alleged offence of the reformers, was a zealous Roman Catholic, and besides this a very credulous man.[481] The archives of Lübeck, the town which played the leading part in the attack of which it was alleged that Olaf was an accomplice, are very complete for the history of this period; but they do not contain the slightest trace of any proceeding of the kind.[482] Men of peremptory character resemble each other; and, although Gustavus Vasa was infinitely superior to Henry VIII., the proceedings against Olaf and Anderson remind us of those instituted by the king of England against his wives, his most