"Therefore, whosoever can should smite, strangle, and stab, secretly or publicly, and should remember that there is nothing more poisonous, pernicious, and devilish than a rebellious man [much more devilish in Luther’s judgment than an oppressive prince!] Just as when one must slay a mad dog; fight him not and he will fight you, and a whole country with you. * * * * * "If the civil government thinks proper to smite and punish those peasants without previous consideration of right or fairness, I do not condemn such action, though it is not in harmony with the Gospel, for it has good right to do this. * * * * * "Therefore let him [a prince or lord] not sleep, nor shew mercy and compassion. Nay, this is the time of sword and wrath, not the time of mercy. * * * * * "Such wonderful times are these that a prince can more easily win heaven by shedding blood than others with prayers." He even makes the extraordinary statement, "In 1525 the elector John of Saxony asked me whether he should grant the peasants their twelve articles. I told him, not one," (Michelet, p. 448)--revealing a callousness which can only be characterized as brutal.[#] [#] "The Lutheran Reformation, from its inception in 1517 down to the Peasants’ war of 1525, at once absorbed, and was absorbed by, all the revolutionary elements of the time. Up to the last-mentioned date it gathered revolutionary force year by year. But this was the turning-point. With the crushing of the Peasants’ revolt and the decisively anti-popular attitude taken up by Luther, the religious movement associated with him ceased any longer to have a revolutionary character. It henceforth became definitely subservient to the new interests of the wealthy and privileged classes, and as such completely severed itself from the more extreme popular reforming sects."--Bax; Peasants’ War, pp. 28, 29. Luther completed the severance of the new faith from the proletariat when he deliberately handed over his new Church to the control of the princes. In his complete distrust of the common people, it seemed to him that there was no other authority that could replace that of the bishops. So, despite the remonstrances of Melanchthon, a more oppressive tyranny was imposed on the Lutheran Church in Germany than had been exercised by the bishops, and the foundation was laid for that estrangement of the proletariat from the Church which has had such fatal results on both proletariat and Church in our time. On Luther rests the responsibility of converting the German Church into a branch of an autocratic government, as such distrusted and detested by the laborer in the country and the worker in the town, and of thus bringing about a condition of things which has earned for Protestant Prussia the reproach of being the least religious country of Europe.