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The Spirit of Prophecy Volume 4
and expel what has gained a place and influence by violence. I
would not resort to force against the superstitious and unbelieving.”
“Let there be no compulsion. I have been laboring for liberty of
conscience. Liberty is the very essence of faith.” Ascending the
pulpit, he with great wisdom and gentleness instructed, exhorted,
and reproved, and by the power of the gospel brought back the
misguided people into the way of truth.
Luther had no desire to encounter the fanatics whose course had
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been productive of so great evil. He knew them to be men of hasty
and violent temper, who, while claiming to be especially illuminated
from Heaven, would not endure the slightest contradiction, or even
the kindest admonition. Arrogating to themselves supreme authority,
they required every one, without a question, to acknowledge their
claims. But as they demanded an interview with him, he consented
to meet them; and so successfully did he expose their pretensions,
that the impostors at once departed from Wittemberg.
The fanaticism was checked for a time; but several years later
it broke out with greater violence and more terrible results. Said
Luther, concerning the leaders in this movement: “To them the Holy
Scriptures were but a dead letter, and they all began to cry, ‘The
Spirit! the Spirit!’ But most assuredly I will not follow where their
spirit leads them. May God in his mercy preserve me from a church
in which there are none but saints. I wish to be in fellowship with
the humble, the feeble, the sick, who know and feel their sins, and
who sigh and cry continually to God from the bottom of their hearts
to obtain his consolation and support.”
Thomas Munzer, the most active of the fanatics, was a man of
considerable ability, which, rightly directed, would have enabled
him to do good; but he had not learned the first principles of true
religion. He imagined himself ordained of God to reform the world,
forgetting, like many other enthusiasts, that the reform should begin
with himself. He was ambitious to obtain position and influence, and
unwilling to be second, even to Luther. He charged the Reformers
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with establishing, by their adherence to the Bible alone, a species of
popery. He considered himself called of God to remedy the evil, and
held that manifestations of the Spirit were the means by which this
was to be accomplished, and that he who had the Spirit possessed
the true faith, though he might never see the written word.