soaked with this same doctrine and believed implicitly in it. The various sects in the Catholic Church reproached each other with it, their guilt with reference to it being very much in proportion to the light and heat of their evangelic faith. The Franciscans were probably the most inclined to believe with Joachim of Calabria, and although the old and the new sects were often bitter foes, there was at bottom a profound unity in the work of the Franciscans, the Lollards, the Beghards, and the Hussites. It was through their common influence that Germany was so saturated by a doctrine which was no other than that of the Eternal Gospel, and which after all is no misnomer.
For in reality this Eternal Gospel is but the quintessence of the Bible. And at this very moment (1522–3) Luther's translations of the New Testament and of the Pentateuch had appeared and were being widely made known to a people who, up till then, had only seen the "Biblia Pauperum," a sort of picture-book of Christian Doctrine.
When the seething heart of Germany heard, as something almost new, of the constitution and laws of the free Commonwealth which Moses founded, it must have responded to the cry of the Psalmist: "I rejoice at thy word as one that findeth great spoil." For it was great spoil indeed to find that God's Word gave them the right to a far happier and nobler society than that in which they groaned. The Pentateuch told them of a state of which the Author was no other than the Eternal Himself, where every man was free, and where each family had its inalienable right in the land.
In the New Testament they learnt that those among whom this divine commonwealth had been founded had proved unworthy, and another people had been chosen, taken from among all nations. No words could exceed in strength those of the New Testament when it spoke of the honour and privilege of this elect race. Foreknown, predestinated, regenerated, justified, a chosen generation, an holy nation, a peculiar people, kings and priests unto God, it was they who were finally to reign on the earth.
The writings of Luther and other of the reformers, disseminated far and wide in the form of little tracts or booklets illustrated with cuts by Cranach, had taught thousands of poor men that this high honour was assured to those who exercised repentance towards
