A word of power, proceeding from God, was at that time regenerating society. The people, or their leaders, would frequently invite some man celebrated for his faith to come and enlighten them; and instantly, for love of the Gospel, he abandoned his interests and his family, his country and friends.[216] The persecution often compelled the partisans of the Reformation to leave their homes: they reached some spot where it was as yet unknown; here they would enter a house that offered an asylum to poor travellers; there they would speak of the Gospel, read a chapter to the attentive hearers, and perhaps, at the request of their new friends, obtained permission to preach once publicly in the church......Upon this a vast uproar would break out in the city, and the greatest exertions were ineffectual to quench it.[217] If they could not preach in the church, they found some other spot. Every place became a temple. At Husum in Holstein, Hermann Tast, who was returning from Wittemberg, and against whom the clergy of the parish had closed the church doors, preached to an immense crowd in the cemetery, beneath the shade of two large trees, not far from the spot where, seven centuries before, Anschar had proclaimed the Gospel to the heathen. At Arnstadt, Gaspard Güttel, an Augustine monk, preached in the market-place. At Dantzic, the Gospel was announced on a little hill without the city. At Gosslar, a Wittemberg student taught the new doctrines in a meadow planted with lime-trees; whence the evangelical Christians were denominated the _Lime-tree Brethren_. [216] Multi, omissa re domestica, in speciem veri Evangelii, parentes et amicos relinquebant. Ibid. [217] Ubi vero aliquos nacti fuissent amicos in ea civitate......Ibid. 54. [Sidenote: UNLEARNED BELIEVERS.] While the priests were exhibiting a sordid covetousness before the eyes of the people, the new preachers said to them, "Freely we have received, freely do we give."[218] The idea often published by the new preachers from the pulpit, that Rome had formerly sent the Germans a corrupted Gospel, and that now for the first time Germany heard the Word of Christ in its heavenly and primal beauty, produced a deep impression on men's minds.[219] And the noble thought of the equality of all men, of a universal brotherhood in Jesus Christ, laid strong hold upon those souls which for so long a period had groaned beneath the yoke of feudalism and of the papacy of the Middle Ages.[220] [218] Mira eis erat liberalitas. Cochlœus, p. 53. [219] Eam usque diem nunquam Germane prædicatam. Ibid. [220] Omnes æquales et fratres in Christo. Ibid.