ishes. I dislike these gospellers on many accounts, but chiefly, because through their agency literature everywhere languishes, disappears, lies drooping and perishes: and yet, without learning, what is a man's life? They love good cheer and a wife; for other things they care not a straw."[1] In a letter to Melanchthon he states that at Strasburg the Protestant party had publicly taught, in 1524, that it was not right to cultivate any science, and that no language should be studied except the Hebrew. In fact, who was to be blamed for this rapid decay of schools but the Reformers themselves? Carlstadt was not only a fanatic in his hatred of Catholic doctrines and customs, but also spoke with contempt of all human learning. He advised the students to return to their homes and resume the spade or follow the plough, and cultivate the earth, because man was to eat bread in the sweat of his brow. George Mohr, master of the boys' school at Wittenberg, carried away by a similar madness, called from his window to the burghers outside to come and remove their children. Where, indeed, was the use of continuing their studies, since a mechanic was just as well, nay, perhaps better qualified than all the divines in the world, to preach the Gospel.[2]
The Anabaptists in Münster decided that there was only one book necessary to salvation, the Bible, all others should be burned as useless or dangerous.
- ↑ Hallam, Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, vol. I, chapter VI, p. 189, note (Harper's ed. 1842). – Janssen, vol. III, p. 357. Döllinger, l. c., vol. I, p. 470 foll.
- ↑ See Archbishop Spalding's The Reformation in Germany, chap. XIII. Döllinger, Die Reformation, vol. I, p. 423.
