The papal party rose up in a body, and shouted for vengeance on Luther; but the great body of the temporal princes judged rather that the moment had arrived when they might shake off the burden and the bondage of Rome under which they had so long groaned, and of which they had so often complained, but to no good purpose. Thus it was that, while contending for the doctrines of the Reformation, they prepared the memorial of "The Hundred Grievances," so celebrated in the annals of Germany.
The contrast between the temporal and the spiritual elements now became manifest in the great Reformation movement, though acting together for the humiliation and overthrow of the universal oppressor. It was no longer the friendless, the single-handed, monk meeting, in the power of God and His truth, the Goliath of popery, or the peaceful triumphs of Worms; but angry, political strife, and military enterprise. The light and truth of God in connection with the Reformation seem to have been arrested at this period of its history. We fail to discover any advancement in the farther apprehension of truth by the Reformers from the time that the princes came forward to extend it by the sword. Though Luther was a man of the most genuine faith, he failed to see the effects of the co-operation of the princes for their own selfish ends. But it wrought a spiritual blight on the results and triumphs of faith.
The "Grievances" need not be enumerated here; they were chiefly of an ecclesiastical character, and such as all other nations in Christendom groaned under. Oppressive taxation, perpetual levies of tenths under false pretenses, the intrusion of cardinals into the best benefices, the ignorance and entire incapacity of the resident pastors, the pernicious superabundance of festivals, the profusion of absolutions and indulgences, the exactions of the clergy for the administration of the sacraments; indeed the universal venality of things sacred, and the general immorality of the spiritual order. "But though the object of the princes," says Waddington, "was no more than to reform the externals of the church, while that of Luther was to regenerate the religion at any peril to the church, yet the diversity of their views might not at the moment be perceptible to either, through the ardor of a common hatred, and, to a certain extent, a common cause." Nevertheless, we may add, the results were ruinous to the progress of light and truth.