Extremes met, with most disastrous effect-so Catholic writers tell us-in Luther's views of the political rights of men. At one time he was so outspoken in his condemnation of the oppression which the common people were suffering from the clergy, the nobility, and their aristocratic governors that he incited them to discontent with their humble lot in life, to unrest, and to open rebellion against their magistrates. At another time he became the spokesman for the most pronounced absolutism and despotism. He turned suddenly against the very people whose cause he had so signally championed, and who hailed him as their prophet and leader. When the poor, downtrodden people needed him most, Luther cowardly deserted them, and by frenzied utterances excited the nobility to slay the common people without mercy in the most ruthless fashion, and even promised the lords whom he had denounced as tyrants heaven for enacting the barbaric cruelties to which he was urging them. This is the Catholic portrayal of Luther during the Peasants' War. The relation of the peasant uprising to Luther's preaching is grossly misrepresented when the impression is created that Luther had before this sad upheaval worked hand in glove with the malcontent rustics for the overthrow of the government. Disturbances of this kind had been periodical occurrences in Europe for many hundreds of years. The heavy taxes and tithes, and the forced labor which the lords exacted from their tenants, who were little better than serfs, the galling restrictions in regard to hunting, fishing, gathering wood in the forests which they had imposed on them, the foreign Roman law under which they tried cases in court, and, in general, their haughty and contemptuous bearing toward the common people had for many generations created strained relations between the upper and the lower classes. The estrangement which developed into open defiance existed among the peasants before Luther had begun to preach. Nor can Luther's teaching be said to have fanned the slumbering embers of discontent into a huge flame. The liberty of a Christian man which he had proclaimed was not such liberty as the peasants demanded and wrested to themselves when the revolt had reached its height. Luther had consistently taught that obedience to the government is a Christian duty. He had, as we have shown in the preceding chapter, warned with telling force against riot, tumult, and sedition. He had deprecated any allying of the cause of the Gospel and of spiritual freedom with the carnal strivings of disaffected men for mere temporal and secular advantages. He had reminded Christians that it was their duty to suffer wrong rather than do wrong.