with death and forfeiture of all their goods.”  This was succinct and intelligible.  The bloody edict, issued at Worms, without even a pretence of sanction by the estates, was carried into immediate effect.  The papal inquisition was introduced into the provinces to assist its operations.  The bloody work, for which the reign of Charles is mainly distinguished in the Netherlands, now began.  In 1523, July 1st, two Augustine monks were burned at Brussels, the first victims to Lutheranism in the provinces.  Erasmus observed, with a sigh, that “two had been burned at Brussels, and that the city now began strenuously to favor Lutheranism.”

Pope Adrian the Sixth, the Netherland boat-maker’s son and the Emperor’s ancient tutor, was sufficiently alive to the sins of churchmen.  The humble scholar of Utrecht was, at least, no Borgia.  At the diet of Nuremberg, summoned to put down Luther, the honest Pope declared roundly, through the Bishop of Fabriane, that “these disorders had sprung from the Sins of men, more especially from the sins of priests and prelates.  Even in the holy chair,” said he, “many horrible crimes have been committed.  Many abuses have grown up in the ecclesiastical state.  The contagious disease, spreading from the head to the members—­from the Pope to lesser prelates—­has spread far and wide, so that scarcely any one is to be found who does right, and who is free from infection.  Nevertheless, the evils have become so ancient and manifold, that it will be necessary to go step by step.”

In those passionate days, the ardent reformers were as much outraged by this pregnant confession as the ecclesiastics.  It would indeed be a slow process, they thought, to move step by step in the Reformation, if between each step, a whole century was to intervene.  In vain did the gentle pontiff call upon Erasmus to assuage the stormy sea with his smooth rhetoric.  The Sage of Rotterdam was old and sickly; his day was over.  Adrian’s head; too; languishes beneath the triple crown but twenty months.  He dies 13th Sept., 1523, having arrived at the conviction, according to his epitaph, that the greatest misfortune of his life was to have reigned.

Another edict, published in the Netherlands, forbids all private assemblies for devotion; all reading of the scriptures; all discussions within one’s own doors concerning faith, the sacraments, the papal authority, or other religious matter, under penalty of death.  The edicts were no dead letter.  The fires were kept constantly supplied with human fuel by monks, who knew the art of burning reformers better than that of arguing with them.  The scaffold was the most conclusive of syllogisms, and used upon all occasions.  Still the people remained unconvinced.  Thousands of burned heretics had not made a single convert.