href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@40971@[email protected]#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">[27]......But wait......He will turn round; with one blow will he break their jaws, and all Germany will be but one wide ruin."

These works had a very great sale.[28] It was not only the peasants and townspeople who read them, but nobles also and princes. Leaving the priests alone at the foot of the altar, they threw themselves into the arms of the new Gospel.[29] The necessity of a reform of abuses was proclaimed on the 1st of August by a general committee.

Then Rome, which had appeared to slumber, awoke. Fanatical priests, monks, ecclesiastical princes, all beset Ferdinand. Cunning, bribery, nothing was spared. Did not Ferdinand possess the instructions of Seville? To refuse their publication was to effect the ruin of the Church and of the empire. Let the voice of Charles oppose its powerful veto to the dizziness that is hurrying Germany along, said they, and Germany will be saved! Ferdinand made up his mind, and at length, on the 3d August, published the decree, drawn up more than four months previously in favour of the edict of Worms.[30]

The persecution was about to begin; the reformers would be thrown into dungeons, and the sword drawn on the banks of the Guadalquivir would pierce at last the bosom of Reform.

The effect of the imperial ordinance was immense. The breaking of an axle-tree does not more violently check the velocity of a railway train. The Elector and the Landgrave announced that they were about to quit the diet, and ordered their attendants to prepare for their departure. At the same time the deputies from the cities drew towards these two princes, and the Reformation appeared on the brink of entering immediately upon a contest with the Pope and Charles the Fifth.

But it was not yet prepared for a general struggle. It was necessary for the tree to send out its roots deeper, before the Almighty unchained the stormy winds against it. A spirit of blindness, similar to that which in former times was sent out upon Saul and Herod,[31] then seized upon the great enemy of the Gospel; and thus was it that Divine Providence saved the reform in its cradle.