Thus, then, the seed sown by Luther began to germinate throughout the whole of Germany. The number of Lutheran preachers increased, and requests were made in many places for their services. Even Cochlaeus had to confess that, however bad were their ultimate objects, they showed a remarkable unselfishness and industry in their calling, and that they avoided even the appearance of pushing themselves forward in an irregular and arbitrary manner, waiting rather for their appointment in due course by the nobles or the various congregations. Among the treatises and other writings on ecclesiastical and religious questions which inundated Germany at that time, at least ten were written on the Lutheran, one on the Romish side. The complaint was that there were not more numerous and better qualified printers for the work.
Among the nobles who espoused the cause of Luther, the support of Albert of Mansfeld, one of the Counts of Luther's native place, was particularly grateful. It was mainly by the nobles that the movement was represented in Austria.
But the gospel gained most ground in German towns, especially among the burgher class in the free cities of the Empire. Preachers were invited hither, where none already existed, and the mass was publicly abolished. This took place during 1523 and 1524 at Magdeburg, Frankfort-on-the-Main, Schwäbish Hall, Nüremberg, Ulm, Strasburg, Breslau, and Bremen. On Saxon territory also, Lutheran congregations were formed in various towns, such as Zwickau, Altenburg, and Eisenach. In many cases Luther's personal friends took part in the movement, and thus cemented more closely their friendship with the Reformer. He had already some trusted fellow-labourers at Nüremberg. At Magdeburg his friend Amsdorf was pastor. Hess, the first evangelical pastor of Breslau, had formed some years earlier a warm friendship with him and Melancthon. Link, his old friend, and the successor of Staupitz as Vicar-General of the Augustines, held office as a preacher at Altenburg, whence he was recalled, for the same purpose, in 1525, to Nüremberg, his former place of residence. Wherever Luther heard of evangelical communities who seemed to need especial help for their strengthening or consolation under trouble, he addressed to them letters, which were afterwards circulated in print. These were sent, for instance, to Esslingen, Augsburg, Worms; also to his 'beloved friends in Christ' at Wittenberg, who had been harassed by the Romanists, and whose cause he pleaded to the Archbishop Albert. With particular joy he sent greetings to the 'chosen and dear friends in God' in the distant towns of Riga, Reval, and Dorpat; and he sent them also an exposition of the 127th Psalm.
The Word, rejected and condemned as it had been by bishops and priests in Germany, met with singular success beyond the eastern boundary of the Empire, among the Order of Teutonic Knights in Prussia. The Grand Master of the Order, Albert of Brandenburg, brother of the Elector of Brandenburg, and cousin of Albert, the Archbishop and Cardinal, had kept up communication with Luther, both orally and by letter, and had been advised by him and Melancthon to make himself familiar with the gospel and the principles of the Evangelical Church. And, above all, there were here two bishops who espoused the new teaching, and who were anxious to tend the flocks committed to their charge as true evangelical bishops or overseers, in the sense insisted on by Luther, and particularly to minister to the Word by preaching and by the care of souls. These were George of Polenz, Bishop of Samland since 1523, and Erhard of Queiss, Bishop of Pomerania since 1524. The members of the Order, almost without exception, were on their side: they resolved to establish a temporal princedom in Prussia and to renounce their vows of 'false chastity and spirituality.' The King of Poland, under whose suzerainty the country had long been, solemnly invested the hitherto Grand Master on April 10, 1525, as hereditary Duke of Prussia. Thus Prussia became the first territory that collectively embraced the Reformation, whilst as yet, even in the Electorate of Saxony, no general measures had been taken in its support. It became, in short, the first Protestant country. Luther wrote to the new Duke: 'I am greatly rejoiced that Almighty God has so graciously and wondrously helped your princely Grace to attain such an eminent position, and further my wish is that the same merciful God may continue His blessing to your Grace through life, for the benefit and godly welfare of the whole country.' And to the Archbishop Albert he held the new Duke up as a shining example, in saying of him, 'How graciously has God sent such a change, as, ten years ago, could not have been hoped for or believed in, even had ten Isaiahs and Pauls announced it. But because he gave room and honour to the gospel, the gospel in return has given him far more room and honour—more than he could have dared to wish for.'
The gospel now received its first testimony in blood. With joyful confidence Luther beheld what God had done, but could not refrain from lamenting, with sorrowful humility, that he himself had not been found worthy of martyrdom. In the Imperial hereditary lands, where for some years missionaries, chiefly members of Luther's own Augustine Order, had been actively labouring in the strength of the convictions derived from Wittenberg, two young Augustine monks, Henry Voes and John Esch, were publicly burnt, on July 1, 1523, as heretics. Luther thereupon addressed a letter to 'the beloved Christians in Holland, Brabant, and Flanders,' praising God for His wondrous light, that He had caused again to dawn. He spoke out even stronger in some verses in which he celebrated the young martyrs; they were published no doubt originally as a broadsheet:
A new song will we raise to Him
Who ruleth, God our Lord;
And we will sing what God hath done,
In honour of His Word.
At Brussels in the Netherlands,
It was through two young lads,
He hath made known His Wonders, &c.
They conclude as follows:—
So let us thank our God to see
His Word returned at last.
The Summer now is at the door,
The Winter is forepast,
The tender flowerets bloom anew,
And He, who hath begun,
Will give His work a happy end.
He was, later on, deeply grieved by the death of his brother-Augustine and friend Henry Moller of Zütphen, who, after having been forced to fly from the Netherlands, had begun a blessed work at Bremen, and was now murdered in the most brutal manner on December 11, 1524, by a mob instigated by monks, near Meldorf, whither he had gone in response to an invitation from some of his companions in the faith. Luther informed his Christian brethren in a circular of the end of this 'blessed brother' and 'Evangelist.' He mentions, with him, the two martyrs of Brussels, as well as other disciples of the new doctrine; one Caspar Tauber, who was executed at Vienna, a bookseller named Georg, who was burnt at Pesth, and one who had been recently burnt at Prague. 'These and such as these,' he adds, 'are they whose blood will drown the popedom, together with its god, the devil.'
With regard to his work of reformation, which had now spread so widely and found so many coadjutors, Luther at present thought as little about the outward constitution of a new Church as he had thought about any outward organisation of the war itself, or an external alliance of his adherents, or of a cleverly devised propaganda. Just as here the simple Word was to achieve the victory, so his whole efforts were devoted solely to restoring to the congregations the possession and enjoyment of that Word in all its purity, that they might gather round it, and be thereby further edified, sustained, and guided.