demanded the abolition of serfdom, however, as a test whether the Christianity of the lords was genuine. The peasants implied that their political liberty had been secured by Christ, and that the lords were withholding it from them. This argument Luther rejected as a carnal perversion of the Gospel. Articles IV-X submitted these demands: The poor man is to be accorded the right to fish and hunt; all wooded lands usurped by bishops or noblemen without making payment therefor are to revert to the community, and in case payment had been made, a settlement is to be effected by mutual agreement; burdensome exactions, services, taxes, and fines are to be rescinded; court trials are to be free from partiality and jealousy; meadows and lands which of right belong to the community are to be returned by their present owners. On these points Luther suggests that the opinions of good lawyers be obtained. Article XI deals with the right of heriot, or the death-tax imposed upon the widow or heir of a tenant. This was approved. In the last article the peasants express their readiness to withdraw any or all of these requests that are shown to be contrary to Scripture, and ask permission to substitute others for them. Luther was in a fair way of bringing about an amicable settlement of the differences. Philip of Hesse had at the same time come to a full agreement with the peasants in his domains, and peace seemed near, when the real genius of the whole peasant movement, Muenzer, interfered. Luther had suspected for some time that this unscrupulous agitator was spreading the teaching of unbridled license under pretense of preaching liberty, and that the mystical piety which he was reported as practising, his leaning towards the reform movement, and his references to Luther and the "new Gospel," were nothing but the angel's garment which a very wicked devil had borrowed for purposes of deception. When Muenzer at the head of hordes of men who through his inflammatory speeches had been turned into unreasoning brutes was spreading ruin and desolation along his path, wiping out in a few days the products of the patient labors of generations, subverting the fundamental principles of honesty, justice, and morality on which the organized public life of the community and the private life of the individual must rest, and rapidly changing even the well-meaning and reasonable among the peasants into frenzied madmen, Luther recognized that conciliatory measures and arbitration would not avail with these mobs. His duty as a teacher of God's Word and as a loyal subject of his government demanded prompt and stern action from him. However, back of the terrible mien with which Luther now faced the wild peasants there is a heart of love; in the appalling language which he now uses against men whose cause he had befriended there is discernible a note of pity for the poor deluded wretches who thought they were rearing a paradise when they were building bedlam.