THE WAR OF THE PEASANTS The hopes raised by the proposed plans for reform, by the new Pope Hadrian VI., were not realized. How often have men been deceived in their hopes, when they looked towards the city on the seven hills! The Diet in Nuremberg opened in a threatening manner, for the Pope and the Emperor insisted on severe measures, and the execution of the Edict of Worms. But it came to pass here, as the Elector Frederick the Wise is said to have remarked before the Diet: "In heaven it has been resolved far otherwise than in Nuremberg!" Already in the year 1523, death summoned Hadrian from the scene. True to the proverb, "The Pope does not die," another one, Clemens VII., of the same spirit as all the rest, ascended the throne. He insisted upon the execution of the Edict of Worms, and caused this opinion to be proclaimed during the Diet at Nuremberg, which had been opened again. The Emperor made the same demand by his ambassador. But all these violent measures were defeated by the action of the princes, who said "that they would do what they could." The more the Gospel began to penetrate to every quarter, to find good soil and to strike deep root, so much more the hostility of the Catholics increased. Persecutions arose, and martyrs began to bleed for the Lord's cause. Melanchthon took an especially deep interest in the terrible martyrdom of Henry von Zuetphen, who was burned at the stake towards the end of the year 1524.[9] The _war of the Peasants_, which commenced in Swabia as early as 1524, but took a new and dangerous turn in the beginning of 1525, still more increased the hate of the enemies of the pure Gospel, and gave them a plausible excuse forcibly to exterminate these ecclesiastical novelties and the innovators themselves. As when fire has been placed in the different quarters of a city, and it breaks out on every side, so that the inhabitants do not know where to begin to extinguish it, so was it in the peasants' war. Almost everywhere the peasants arose and threatened death and destruction to the authorities and existing laws. Nothing is more easy than, with preconceived opinions, either to proclaim this war a noble struggle for freedom, or, on the other hand, to trample under foot the just sighs of the deeply injured peasants. It is well known that no event in the days of the Reformation was more welcome to its enemies than this desperate and bloody rebellion of the peasants. They at once proclaimed this war to be a legitimate fruit of the new doctrine. It cannot be denied that this opinion has some appearance of truth, but then only if we look at the mere surface of things, and carry an evil-disposed heart within us. The peasants themselves have partly given occasion for this opinion, because in the well-known "twelve articles of the peasants," they mingled spiritual and temporal demands together. It is, however, not our purpose to give a history of the peasants' war, which still awaits a _true_