of course, to the bread which He was then distributing, He was not referring to the bread at all, but only to His own body, as He stood there. The inhabitants of the neighbouring town of Kahla were seized with the same spirit. These mystical ideas and phrases assumed strange forms of expression among the common people, who jumbled together in wild confusion the supernatural and the material. Carlstadt kept up also a secret correspondence with Münzer. The question of the authority of the Old Testament soon took a wider range. It seemed to be one of the authority of Scripture in general, which was contended for against the Papists. If the authority of God's Word in the Old Testament applied to the whole domain of civil life, should it not equally apply, as against particular regulations established by civil society? On these principles, for example, all taking of interest, as well as usury, was declared to be forbidden, just as it had been forbidden to God's people of old. A restoration of the Mosaic year of Jubilee was even talked of, when after fifty years all land which had passed into other hands should revert to its original owners. With eagerness the people took up these new ideas of social reform, so specious and so full of promises. The evangelical and earnest preacher, Strauss at Eisenach, worked zealously with word and pen in this direction. Even a court-preacher of Duke John, Wolfgang Stein at Weimar, espoused the movement. Meanwhile Münzer came again to Central Germany. He had succeeded, at Easter 1523, in obtaining the office of pastor at Allstedt, a small town in a lateral valley of the Unstrut. In him, more than in any other, the spirit of the Zwickau prophets fermented with full force, and was preparing for a violent outburst. Alone, in the room of a church tower, he held secret intercourse with his God, and boasted of his answers and revelations. He affected the appearance and demeanour of a man whose soul was absorbed in tranquillity, devoid of all finite ideas or aspirations, and open and free to receive God's Spirit and inner Word. More violently than even the champions of Catholic asceticism, he reproached Luther for leading a comfortable, carnal life. But his whole energies were directed to establishing a Kingdom of the Saints,--an external one, with external power and splendour. His preaching dwelt incessantly on the duty of destroying and killing the ungodly, and especially all tyrants. He wished to see a practical application given to the words of the Mosaic dispensation, commanding God's people to destroy the heathen nations from out of the promised land, to overthrow their altars, and burn their graven images with fire. Community of property was to be a particular institution of the Kingdom of God, the property being distributed to each man according to his need: whatever prince or lord refused to do this, was to be hanged or beheaded. Meanwhile, Münzer sought by means of secret emissaries in