Here his religious standpoint induced him to take steps which a true German could only regret. We have already shown how the defence against the Turks was hampered by his action. He also appreciably degraded the Empire in the eyes of the Christian nations.[253] He not merely attacked the authority of the Emperor and thereby the power which held together the Empire, by his criticism of the edicts of the Diets, by the spirit of discord and party feeling he aroused amongst those who shared his opinions, and by his unmeasured and incessant abuse of the authorities, but, as years went by, he also came even to approve, as we have seen above (p. 53 ff.), of armed resistance to the Emperor and the Empire as something lawful, nay, praiseworthy, if undertaken on behalf of the new Evangel. “If it is lawful to defend ourselves against the Turk,” he writes, “then it is still more lawful to do so against the Pope, who is even worse. Since the Emperor has associated himself with the defenders of the Pope, he must expect to be treated as his wickedness deserves.” “Formerly I advised that we should yield to the Emperor [i.e. not undertake anything against him]; even now I still say that we should yield to these heathen tyrants when they—Pope, Cardinals, Bishops, Emperor, etc.—cease to appeal to the name of Christ, but acknowledge themselves to be what they really are, viz. slaves of Satan; but if, in the name of Christ, they wish to stone Christians, then their stones will recoil on their own heads and they will incur the penalty attached to the Second Commandment.”[254] He saw “no difference between an assassin and the Emperor,” should the latter proceed against his party—a course which, as a matter of fact, was imposed on the Emperor by the very laws of the Empire. How, he asks, “can a man sacrifice his body and this poor life in a higher and more praiseworthy cause” “than in such worship [resistance by violence] for the saving of God’s honour and the protection of poor Christendom, as David, Ezechias and other holy kings and princes did?”[255] Countless examples from the Old Testament such as the above were always at his command for the purpose of illustrating his arguments. In the “Warnunge an seine lieben Deudschen,” in 1531, he warns the Imperial power that God, “even though He Himself sit still, may well raise up a Judas Machabeus” should the Imperial forces have recourse to arms against the “Evangelicals”; their enemies would learn what their ancestors had learned in the war with Ziska and the Husites. Resistance to “bloodhounds” is, after all, mere self-defence. Whoever followed the Emperor against him and his party became guilty of all the Emperor’s own “godless abominations.” To instruct “his German people” on this matter was the object of the writing above referred to.[256]