These words produced no effect; Rome was hastening onward to scaffolds and to bloodshed. The Reformation, like Jesus Christ, did not come to bring peace, but a sword. Persecution was necessary in God's purposes. As certain objects are hardened in the fire, to protect them from the influence of the atmosphere, so the fiery trial was intended to protect the evangelical truth from the influence of the world. But the fire did still more than this: it served, as in the primitive times of Christianity, to kindle in men's hearts a universal enthusiasm for a cause so furiously persecuted. When man begins to know the truth, he feels a holy indignation against injustice and violence. A heaven-descended instinct impels him to the side of the oppressed; and at the same time the faith of the martyrs exalts, wins, and leads him to that doctrine which imparts such courage and tranquillity. [Sidenote: DUKE GEORGE'S EXERTIONS.] Duke George took the lead in the persecution. But it was a little thing to carry it on in his own states only; he desired, above all, that it should devastate electoral Saxony, that focus of heresy, and spared no labour to move the Elector Frederick and Duke John. "Merchants from Saxony," he wrote to them from Nuremberg, "relate strange things about that country, and such as are opposed to the honour of God and of the saints: they take the sacrament of the Lord's Supper with their hands!......The bread and wine are consecrated _in the language of the people_; Christ's blood is put into common vessels; and at Eulenburg, a man to insult the priest entered the church riding on an ass!......Accordingly, what is the consequence? The mines with which God had enriched Saxony have failed since the innovating sermons of Luther. Would to God that those who boast of having uplifted the Gospel in the electorate had rather carried it to Constantinople. Luther's strain is sweet and pleasing, but there is a poisoned tail, that stings like that of the scorpion. Let us now prepare for the conflict! Let us imprison these apostate monks and impious priests; and that too without delay, for our hair is turning gray as well as our beards, and shows us that we have but short time left for action."[301] [301] Wie ihre Bärt und Haare ausweisen. Seckend. p. 482. Thus wrote Duke George to the elector. The latter replied firmly but mildly, that any one who committed a crime in his states would meet with due punishment; but that for what concerned the conscience, such things must be left to God.[302] [302] Müsse man solche Dinge Gott überlassen. Ibid. p. 485. [Sidenote: THE ANTWERP CONVENT.]