like most political philosophers, only reduced to theory what had long been the practice of Princes.
This alliance of Lutheran State and Lutheran Church was based on mutual interest. Some of the peasant leaders had offered the Princes compensation for the loss of their feudal dues out of the revenues of the Church. The Lutherans offered them both , they favoured the retention of feudal dues and the confiscation of ecclesiastical property; and the latter could only be satisfactorily effected through the intervention of the territorial principle, for neither religious party would have tolerated the acquisition by the Emperor of the ecclesiastical territories within the Empire. Apart from the alleged evils inherent in the wealth of the clergy, secularisation of Church property was recommended on the ground that many of the duties attached to it had already passed to some extent under State or municipal supervision, such as the regulation of poor relief and of education; and the history of the fifteenth century had shown that the defence of Christendom depended solely upon the exertions of individual States, and that the Church could no longer, as in the days of the Crusades, excite any independent enthusiasm against the infidel. It was on the plea of the necessities of this defence that Catholic as well as Lutheran princes made large demands upon ecclesiastical revenues. With the diminution of clerical goods went a decline in the independence of the clergy and a corresponding increase in the authority of territorial Princes; and it was by the prospect of reducing his Bishops and priests to subjection that sovereigns like Margrave Casimir of Brandenburg were induced to adopt the Lutheran cause.
The Lutherans had need of every recruit, for the reaction which crushed the peasants threatened to involve them in a similar ruin. Duke Anthony of Lorraine regarded the suppression of the revolt in the light of a crusade against Luther, and many a Gospel preacher was summarily executed on a charge of sedition for which there was slender ground. Catholic Princes felt that they would never be secure against a recurrence of rebellion until they had extirpated the root of the evil; and the embers of social strife were scarcely stamped out when they began to discuss schemes for extinguishing heresy. In July, 1525, Duke George of Saxony, who may have entertained hopes of seizing his cousin's electorate, the Electors Joachim of Brandenburg and Albrecht of Mainz, Duke Henry of Brunswick-Wolfenbiittel, and other Catholic Princes met at Dessau to consider a Catholic League, and Henry of Brunswick was sent to Charles to obtain the imperial support. The danger produced a like combination of Lutherans, and in October, 1525, Philip of Hesse proposed a defensive alliance between himself and Elector John at Torgau; it was completed at Gotha in the following March, and at Magdeburg it was joined by that city, the Brunswick-Luneburg Dukes, Otto, Ernest, and Francis, Duke Philip of Brunswick-Grubenhagen,
