vengeance. He had delivered the people from the priests, but now he wanted to hand them over to the custody of the theologians. They cried out by the voice of the Anabaptists that they would have neither the one nor the other, but that they would be guided by the Spirit of God, for in that alone would there be liberty.
The founders of Anabaptism were Nicholas Storch and Max Thomas, variously described, but who probably were cloth-makers; Max Stubner, at one time a student lodging with Melanchthon, and Thomas Münzer.
Born exactly three centuries before the terrible year of Vengeance, Münzer is the Prophet of Revolution. As his birthplace, the Hartz Mountains, it is only when seen in the gathering storm, or when, the damp mist of fanaticism ascending, the great spectre of insurrection surged above a nature supposed to be the peculiar abode of diabolic influence, that Münzer appears grand. Yet this thorny, irritable, restless man had, as his native hills, a head of granite and a heart full of precious ore. He loved truth, justice, and the Cause of the Poor with a passionate vindictiveness which rendered him guilty of the very errors he most detested. His father had been hanged by the Graf von Stolberg, for what reason does not appear. Nor are we told how he came to be a priest and a reformer. He was at first a follower of the Wittenberg school, but finding Luther's doctrine of inspiration too narrow, he set up the standard of revolt The idea of a permanent inspiration led him to study the works of Joachim of Calabria, who in the Middle Age had been regarded as a prophet. They taught a doctrine which was afterwards mysteriously described as "the Eternal Gospel." It spoke of the reign of the Holy Spirit when the letter of human erudition would pass away and the Spirit would himself write His words on men's hearts, so that a true society of brothers and sisters would arise, the godly among men becoming the organ of the Spirit; such words as priests and clergy would no longer be heard. This doctrine worked on Münzer like the interior fires in a volcanic land. The mingled ore and dross soon burst forth in destructive lava. Münzer preached a social revolution.
And he was but a type of Germany itself, for the whole land was
