These
articles covered the following points. They asked the right to choose
their own pastors, who were to preach the word of God from the Bible;
the abolition of dues, except tithes to the clergy; the abolition of
vassalage; the rights of hunting and fishing, and of cutting wood in the
forests; reforms in rent, in the administration of justice, and in the
methods of application of the laws; the restoration of communal property
illegally seized; and several other matters of the same general
character.
They asked in vain. The princes ridiculed the idea of a court in which
Luther should sit side by side with the archduke. Luther refused to
interfere. He admitted the oppression of the peasantry, severely
attacked the princes and nobility for their conduct, but deprecated the
excesses which the insurgents had already committed, and saw no safety
from worse evils except in putting down the peasantry with a strong
hand.
The rejection of the demands of the rebellious peasants was followed by
a frightful reign of license, political in the south, religious in the
north.
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