The intolerance shown to Catholics and their systematic oppression in Saxony stands in blatant contrast with the claim made, that Luther by his preaching had won religious freedom for the German lands. Banishment was the punishment incurred by those who chose to remain steadfast in their attachment to the Catholic faith. Thus, in 1527, it was expressly laid down in the regulations for the Saxon Visitation, that: “Whoever is suspected in the matter of the Sacraments, or of any other error in the faith” is to “be summoned and questioned, and, if necessary, witnesses against him are also to be called.” “Such an ‘inquisition’ is also to be instituted by the Visitors in the case of the laity.”[824] If they refuse to abjure their “errors” they are to be given a certain time to sell their possessions and to quit the land, with a “warning of the severe penalties” with which any ecclesiastic or layman will be visited who is again found in the country.[825] Bearing in mind the difficulty emigration presented at that time, particularly in the case of the people on the land, one can appreciate the injustice of the measure. Luther and his followers frequently enough appealed to theological grounds in support of such measures, above all to the Old Testament enactments against blasphemers and contemners of religion. One-sidedly they simply applied to their own day and to their own controversial purposes, the exceptional regulations of the Mosaic dispensation which sought to preserve the religion of the chosen people in the midst of a heathen world. In this connection Luther appeals to Moses without the slightest hesitation though, as a rule, armed with the New Testament, he is ready enough to assail the Mosaic Law; he also set up the pious “Kings of Juda and Israel” as patterns. Wenceslaus Link did much the same when he summoned the Altenburg Town-Council to make a stand against Catholicism and abrogate the “lies and fond inventions of the idolaters”;[826] nor did Spalatin hesitate to point out to the Saxon Elector the commendation the pious rulers of the Jews had earned from God for their bloody repression of idolatry.[827]