All this was, no doubt, most regrettable.
But it was unavoidable in view of the mental development of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
To describe the courage of leaders like Luther and Calvin, there exists only one word, and rather a terrible word, “colossal.”
A simple Dominican monk, a professor in a little tidewater college somewhere in the backwoods of the German hinterland, who boldly burns a Papal Bull and hammers his own rebellious opinions to the door of a church; a sickly French scholar who turns a small Swiss town into a fortress which successfully defies the whole power of the papacy; such men present us with examples of fortitude so unique that the modern world can offer no adequate comparison.
That these bold rebels soon found friends and supporters, friends with a purpose of their own and supporters who hoped to fish successfully in troubled waters, all this is neither here nor there.
When these men began to gamble with their lives for the sake of their conscience, they could not foresee that this would happen and that most of the nations of the north would eventually enlist under their banners.
But once they had been thrown into this maelstrom of their own making, they were obliged to go whither the current carried them.
Soon the mere question of keeping themselves above water took all of their strength. In far away Rome the Pope had at last learned that this contemptible disturbance was something more serious than a personal quarrel between a few Dominican and Augustinian friars, and an intrigue on the part of a former French chaplain. To the great joy of his many creditors, he temporarily ceased building his pet cathedral and called together a council of war. The papal bulls and excommunications flew fast and furiously. Imperial armies began to move. And the leaders of the rebellion, with their backs against the wall, were forced to stand and fight.
It was not the first time in history that great men in the midst of a desperate conflict lost their sense of proportion. The same Luther who at one time proclaims that it is “against the Holy Spirit to burn heretics,” a few years later goes into such a tantrum of hate when he thinks of the wickedness of those Germans and Dutchmen who have a leaning towards the ideas of the Anabaptists, that he seems to have lost his reason.
The intrepid reformer who begins his career by insisting that we must not force our own system of logic upon God, ends his days by burning an opponent whose power of reasoning was undoubtedly superior to his own.