because God had revealed the truth unto babes (Matt. 11:25), and advised the students to take to
agriculture, and earn their bread in the sweat of their face (Gen. 3:19). He cast away his priestly
and academic robes, put on a plain citizen’s dress, afterwards a peasant’s coat, and had himself
called brother Andrew. He ran close to the border of communism. He also opposed the baptism of
infants. He lost himself in the clouds of a confused mysticism and spiritualism, and appealed, like
the Zwickau Prophets, to immediate inspirations.
In the beginning of November, 1521, thirty of the forty monks left the Augustinian convent
of Wittenberg in a rather disorderly manner. One wished to engage in cabinet making, and to marry.
The Augustinian monks held a congress at Wittenberg in January, 1522, and unanimously resolved,
in accordance with Luther’s advice, to give liberty of leaving or remaining in the convent, but
required in either case a life of active usefulness by mental or physical labor.
The most noted of these ex-monks was Gabriel Zwilling or Didymus, who preached in the
parish church during Luther’s absence, and was esteemed by some as a second Luther. He fiercely
attacked the mass, the adoration of the sacrament, and the whole system of monasticism as dangerous
to salvation.
About Christmas, 1521, the revolutionary movement was reinforced by two fanatics from
Zwickau, Nicolaus Storch, a weaver, and Marcus Thomä Stübner.^479 The latter had previously
studied with Melanchthon, and was hospitably entertained by him. A few weeks afterwards Thomas
Münzer, a millennarian enthusiast and eloquent demagogue, who figures prominently in the Peasants’
War, appeared in Wittenberg for a short time. He had stirred up a religious excitement among the
weavers of Zwickau in Saxony on the Bohemian frontier, perhaps in some connection with the
Hussites or Bohemian Brethren, and organized the forces of a new dispensation by electing twelve
apostles and seventy-two disciples. But the magistrate interfered, and the leaders had to leave.
These Zwickau Prophets, as they were called, agreed with Carlstadt in combining an inward
mysticism with practical radicalism. They boasted of visions, dreams, and direct communications
with God and the Angel Gabriel, disparaged the written word and regular ministry, rejected infant
baptism, and predicted the overthrow of the existing order of things, and the near approach of a
democratic millennium.
We may compare Carlstadt and the Zwickau Prophets with the Fifth Monarchy Men in the
period of the English Commonwealth, who were likewise millennarian enthusiasts, and attempted,
in opposition to Cromwell, to set up the "Kingdom of Jesus" or the fifth monarchy of Daniel.
Wittenberg was in a very critical condition. The magistrate was discordant and helpless.
Amsdorf kept aloof. Melanchthon was embarrassed, and too modest and timid for leadership. He
had no confidence in visions and dreams, but could not satisfactorily answer the objections to infant
baptism, which the prophets declared useless because a foreign faith of parents or sponsors could
not save the child. Luther got over this difficulty by assuming that the Holy Spirit wrought faith in
the child.
The Elector was requested to interfere; but he dared not, as a layman, decide theological
and ecclesiastical questions. He preferred to let things take their natural course, and trusted in the
overruling providence of God. He believed in Gamaliel’s counsel, which is good enough in the
(^479) Marcus (Marx) Thomä and Stübner are not two distinct persons, but identical. See Köstlin’s note, vol. I. 804 sq.