Luther, in his retirement, heard of these follies; he perceived that fanaticism was spoiling his cause; and he resolved immediately, without heeding his own danger, to return to Wittenberg (1522). He rebuked Carlostadt, who retorted, calling him an idolater because he believed in the real presence in the sacrament, and a courtier for living on terms of intimacy with princes. At last they parted in anger : Carlostadt was banished from Saxony as a seditious person by the elector for inculcating the principles of natural equality, and he went to join Zuingli in Switzerland.
Luther was now the acknowledged leader and oracle of the reformers of Germany, and as such he continued to the end of his life. Tho doc trines which he gradually asaertod were expounded and fixed by his disciple Melanethon in the Confession of Augsburg, and are such as are generally recognised by the term Protestant. At the close of 1522 ho published his German version of the New Testament. In 1523 he preached against the meas. He had already replied, in his usually scurrilous style of polemics, to the treatise in defence of the sacraments written by Henry VIII. of England. It must be observed however that the coarse vituperations which shock the reader in Luther's con. troversial works were not peculiar to him, being commonly used tis scholars and divines of the middle ages in their disputations. The invectives of Valle, Filelfo, Pogglo, and other distinguished scholars against each other are notorious; and this bad taste continued it practice long after Luther down to the I7th century, and traces of are found in writers of the 18th, oven in some of the works of the polished and courtly Voltaire.
In 1521 Luther threw off his monastic dress, and definitively con demned monastic institutions. Convents both of men and womer were now rapidly suppressed throughout North Germany, and theii property was seized by the secular power : indeed there can be tie doubt that the hope of plunder contributed greatly to the encourage went which the princes and electors gave to the new doctrines. The insurrection of the Wiedertatifer,' or Anabaptists, led by a fanatic named Muutzer, which assumed the character of a peasant war against all property and law, gave great concern to Luther, who was taunted by many with being the source from which all those aberrations flowed. He preached against the fanatics, lie tried to mediate, he besought the peasants to lay down their arms, and at the same time he told the princes to redress the grievances of the poor ; but the insurgents were too far gone in their career of bloodshed and devastation, and nothing but the sword could put a stop to it. Luther was sorely grieved
throughout the rest of his life as the renewed disorders of the Ana baptists and other fanatics on one and ou the other at the selfish ness, worldliness, and corruption of all classes. He fancied at times that the end of the world must be nigh, for the world had fallen into decrepitude; avidity and self-interest were the ruling passions. (Luther's "Vable-Talk,' and his ` Letters?) In 1525 Luther married Catherine de Bora, a young nun who had left her convent the year before. Ile had long beforo condemned the obligation of cleries1 celibacy, as well as that resulting from monastic vows, as being human devices unknown to the original church. "Marriage in its purity," ho wrote, "is a state of simplicity and peace." When Luther married he was poor, for amidst the great change from the old to the new system of church discipline, his salary, which was charged upon the revenues of monastic property, was by no means regularly paid, and Luther was not a man to ask money of his friends. In the same year his steady and considerate patron Frederic of Saxony died ; but John, his successor, not only continued to favour Luther, but made open profession of his doctrines, and commissioned him to prepare a new church service for his domi nions, in addition to which Luther wrote a larger and a email catechism for the use of schools, in a style admirably suited to youth. Besides the Elector of Saxony, the Elector Palatine, the Landgrave of Hesse, the Duke of Deux Punts, the Margrave of Brandenburg and grand-master of Prussia, and also many cities in other parts of the empire, openly embraced Luther'a reformation. In Switzerland how ever unother reformer, Zuingli, who had begun, like Luther, by opposing indulgences, had also effected a reformation, but he incul cated tenets different, in some respects from those of Luther, especially on tho subject of the real presence in the sacrament, which Luther admitted, and Zuingli entirely denied. Luther was vexed at this division, especially as several towns of Germany, Strasbourg, Ulm, Meiningeu, Linden, Constance, and others, adopted Zuingli's tenets.