The first fruit of this propaganda was the destruction St.Mary's Chapel in Mellerbach near Altstedt, according to the command of the Bible (Deut.7, 5): "Ye shall break down their altars, and dash in pieces their pillars, and hew down their Asherim, and burn their graven images with fire." The princes of Saxony came in person to Altstedt quell the upheaval, and they called Muenzer to the castle.There he delivered a sermon, which they had never heard from Luther, "that easy living flesh of Wittenberg,"Muenzer called him.He insisted that the ungodly rulers, especially the priests and monks who treated the Gospel heresy, must be killed; for confirmation he referred to the New Testament.The ungodly have no right to live, he said, save by the mercy of the chosen ones.If the princes would not exterminate the ungodly, he asserted, God would take their sword from them because the right to wield the sword belongs to the community.The source of the evil of usury, thievery and robbery, he said, were the princes and the masters who had taken all creatures into their private possession -- the fishes in the water, the birds in the air, the plants in the soil.And the usurpers, he said, still preached to the poor the commandment, "Thou shalt not steal," while they grabbed everything, and robbed and crushed the peasant and the artisan."When, however, one of the latter commits the slightest transgression," he said, "he has to hang, and Dr.Liar says to all this: Amen." The masters themselves created a situation, he argued, in which the poor man was forced to become their enemy.If they did not remove the causes of the upheaval, how could things improve in times to come? he asked."Oh, my dear gentlemen, how the Lord will smite with an iron rod all these old pots! When I say so, I am considered rebellious.
So be it!" (Cf.Zimmermann's Peasant War, II, p.75.)Muenzer bad the sermon printed.His Altstedt printer was punished by Duke Johann of Saxony with banishment.His own writings were to be henceforth subjected to the censorship of the ducal government in Weimar.But he paid no heed to this order.He immediately published very inciting paper in the imperial city of Muehlhausen, wherein he admonished the people "to widen the hole so that all the world may see and comprehend who our fools are who have blasphemously turned our Lord into a painted mannikin." He concluded with the following words: "All the world must suffer a big jolt.
The game will be such that the ungodly will be thrown off their seats and the downtrodden will rise." As a motto, Thomas Muenzer, "the man with the hammer," wrote the following on the title page: "Beware, I have put my words into thy mouth; I have lifted thee above the people and above the empires that thou mayest uproot, destroy, scatter and overthrow, and that thou mayest build and plant.A wall of iron against the kings, princes, priests, and for the people hath been erected.Let them fight, for victory is wondrous, and the strong and godless tyrants will perish."The breach between Muenzer and Luther with his party had taken place long before that.Luther himself was compelled to accept some church reforms which were introduced by Muenzer without consulting him.Luther watched Muenzer's activities with the nettled distrust of a moderate reformer towards an energetic far-aiming radical.Already in the spring of 1524, in a letter to Melanchthon, that model of a hectic stay-at-home Philistine, Muenzer wrote that he and Luther did not understand the movement at all.
They were seeking, he said, to choke it by adherence to the letter of the Bible,, and their doctrine was worm-eaten."Dear brethren," he wrote, "stop your delaying and hesitating.The time has come, the summer is knocking at our doors.Do not keep friendship with the ungodly who prevent the Word from exercising its full force.Do not flatter your princes in order that you may not perish 'With them.Ye tender, bookish scholars, do not be wroth, for I cannot do otherwise."Luther had more than once invited Muenzer to an open debate.The latter, however, being always ready to accept battle in the presence of the people, did not have the slightest desire to plunge into a theological squabble before the partisan public of the Wittenberg University.He had no desire "to bring the testimony of the spirit before the high school of learning exclusively." If Luther was sincere, he wrote, let him use his influence to stop the chicaneries against his, Muenzer's, printers, and to lift the censorship in order that their controversy might be freely fought out in the press.
When the above-mentioned revolutionary brochure appeared, Luther openly denounced Muenzer.In his "Letter to the Princes of Saxony Against the Rebellious Spirit," he declared Muenzer to be an instrument of Satan, and demanded of the princes to intervene, and drive the instigators of the upheaval out of the country, since, he said, they did not confine themselves to preaching their evil doctrine, but incited to insurrection, to violent lawless action against the authorities.
