impression. The devils on the roofs of the houses at Worms were really rather friendly to Luther than otherwise, and the renowned Edict itself was not so much an expression of settled national policy as an expedient, recommended by the temporary exigencies of the Emperor's foreign relations, and only extorted from him by Leo's promise to cease from supporting Charles' foes. Probably Charles himself had no expectation of seeing the Edict executed, and certainly the Princes who passed it had no such desire. They were much more intent on securing redress of their grievances against the Church than on chastising the man who had attacked their common enemy; and the fact that the Diet which condemned Luther's heresy also solemnly formulated a comprehensive indictment against the Roman Church throws a vivid light upon the twofold aspect which the Reformation assumed in Germany as elsewhere.
The origin of the whole movement was a natural attempt on the part of man, with the progress of enlightenment, to emancipate himself from the clerical tutelage under which he had laboured for centuries, and to remedy the abuses which were an inevitable outcome of the exclusive privileges and authority of the Church. These abuses were traced directly or indirectly to the exemption of the Church and its possessions from secular control, and to the dominion which it exercised over the laity; and the revolt against this position of immunity and privilege was one of the most permanently and universally successful movements of modern history. It was in the beginning quite independent of dogma, and it has pervaded Catholic as well as Protestant countries. The State all over the world has completely deposed the Church from the position it held in the Middle Ages; and the existence of Churches, whether Catholic or Protestant, in the various political systems, is due not to their own intrinsic authority but to the fact that they are tolerated or encouraged by the State. No ecclesiastic has any appeal from the temporal laws of the land in which he lives. In 1521 clerical ministers ruled the greater part of Europe, Wolsey in England, Adrian in Spain, Du Prat in France, and Matthew Lang to no small extent in Germany; to-day there is not a clerical prime minister in the world, and the temporal States of the Catholic Church have shrunk to the few acres covered by the Vatican. The Church has ceased to trespass on secular territory and returned to her original spiritual domain.
This was, roughly speaking, the main issue of the Reformation; it was practically universal, while the dogmatic questions were subsidiary and took different forms in different localities. It was on this principle that the German nation was almost unanimous in its opposition to Rome, and its feelings were accurately reflected in the Diet at Worms. Even Frederick of Saxony was averse from Luther's repudiation of Catholic doctrine, but, if the Reformer had confined himself to an attack on the Church in its temporal aspect, Pope and Emperor together would
