If the triumph of the peasants in the fields of Thuringia might have been an irreparable misfortune to Germany and to Christianity, we cannot deny that Luther's appeal to the secular arm, to suppress the rebellion, may have thoroughly altered the character of the first Reformation. Till then it had been established by preaching; but from the moment of that bloody episode it required the civil authority to move it. The sword, therefore, took the place of the Word; and to perpetuate itself the Reformation was bound to exaggerate the theory of passive obedience. One of the distinguished historians of Heidelberg, Carl Hagen, has recently favored us with some portions of the political code in which Protestantism commands subjects to be obedient to the civil power, even when it commands them to commit sin. Thus the democratic element, first developed by the Reformation, was effaced to become absorbed in the despotic. It was no longer the people, but the prince, who chose or rejected the Protestant minister. When the Landgrave of Hesse consulted Melanchthon, in 1525, as to the line he should pursue in the appointment of a pastor, the doctor told him that he had the right to interfere in the election of the ministers, and that, if he surmounted the struggles in which the Word of God had involved him, he ought not to commit that sacred Word but to such preacher as seemed best to him; in other terms, observes the historian, to him whom the civil power thinks competent. And Martin Bucer contrived to extend Melanchthon's theory by constituting the civil power supreme judge of religious orthodoxy, by conferring on it the right of ultimate decision in questions of heresy, and of punishing, if necessary by fire and sword innovators, who are a thousand times more culpable, he says, than the robber or murderer, who only steal the material bread and slay the body, while the heretic steals the bread of life and kills the soul. Intolerance then entered into the councils of the Reformation. It was no longer with the peasants that Luther declared war. Whoever did not believe in his doctrines was denounced as a rebel; in the Saxon's eyes, the peasant was only an enemy to be despised; the real Satan was Karlstadt, Zwingli, and Krautwald. His disciples were no longer satisfied with plundering the monasteries--they desired to live in ease; they must have servants, a fine house, a well-supplied table, and plenty of money. The struggle then was no longer with piety and knowledge, but with power and influence. Every city and town had its own Lutheran pope. At Nuremberg, Osiander was a regular pacha. Those who among the Protestants endeavored to reprove his scandalous ostentation were abused and maligned. When he ascended the pulpit, his fingers were adorned with diamonds which dazzled the eyes of his hearers.