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A complete account of the introduction of the new ecclesiastical system will become possible only when impartial research has made known to us more fully than hitherto the proceedings in the different localities according to the records still extant.

Some districts were thrown open to the new Evangel without any difficulty because the inhabitants, or people of influence, believed they would thus be bringing about a reformation in the true sense of the word, i.e. be contributing to the removal of ecclesiastical abuses deplored by themselves and by all men of discernment.

In the opinion of many, to quote words written by Döllinger when yet a Catholic, “there was on the one side a large body of prelates, ecclesiastical dignitaries and beneficiaries who, too well-provided with worldly goods, lived carelessly, troubling themselves little about the distress and decay of the Church, and even looking with complacent indolence at the stormy attacks directed against her; on the other side stood a simple Augustinian monk, who neither possessed nor sought for what those men either enjoyed in plenty or were striving to obtain, but who, for that very reason, was able to wield weapons not at their command; to fight with spirit, irresistible eloquence and theological knowledge, with invincible self-confidence, steadfast courage, enthusiasm, yea, with the energy of a will called to dominate the minds of men and gifted with untiring powers for work. Germany was at that time still virgin soil; journalism was yet unknown; little, and that of no great importance, had as yet been written on subjects of public and general interest. Higher questions which might otherwise have engrossed people’s minds were not then mooted, thus people were all the more open to religious excitement, while at the same time the nation, as yet unaccustomed to pompous declamation and exaggerated rhetoric, was all the more ready to believe every word which fell from the lips of a man who, as priest and professor of theology at one of the Universities, had, at the peril of his life, raised the most terrible charges against the Church, charges too which on the whole met with comparatively little contradiction. His accusations, his appeals to a consoling doctrine, hitherto maliciously repressed and kept under a bushel, he proclaimed in the most forcible of language, ever appealing to Christ and the gospel, and ever using figures from the Apocalypse to rate the Papacy and the state of the Church in general, figures which could not fail to fire the imagination of his readers. Luther’s popular tracts, which discussed for the first time the ecclesiastical system as a whole, with all its defects, were on the one hand couched in biblical phraseology and full of quotations and ideas from Holy Scripture, while at the same time they were the work of a demagogue, well aware of the object in view, and perfectly alive to the weaknesses of the national character. His writings could equally well be discussed in the tap-rooms and market-places of the cities or preached from the pulpits. Even more efficacious than the methods employed in propagating it were the motives embodied in the system itself; the doctrines—brought before the people in so many sermons, hymns and tracts—on justification without any preparation, by the mere imputation of the sufferings and merits of Christ, were sweet, consoling and welcome. … Then there was the new Christian freedom … the abolition of the obligation to confess, to fast, etc. ‘Oh, what a grand doctrine that was,’ Wicel wrote at a later date, ‘not to be obliged to confess any more, nor to pray, nor to fast, nor to make offerings or give alms. … You ought surely to have been able to catch two German lands, not one only, with such bait, and to have dragged them into your net. For if you give a man his own way, it is easy to convert him.’ ”[929]