From the Diet of Worms to the Augsburg Confession - James Aitken Wylie

proclaiming the new doctrines to immense crowds,
in the market-place, in burial-grounds, on
mountains, and in meadows. At Goslar a
Wittenberg student preached in a meadow planted
with lime-trees, which procured for his hearers the
designation of the "Lime-tree Brethren."
The world's winter seemed passing rapidly
away. Everywhere the ice was breaking up; the
skies were filling with light; and its radiance was
refreshing to the eyes and to the souls of men! The
German nation, emerging from torpor and
ignorance, stood up, quickened with a new life, and
endowed with a marvellous power. A wondrous
and sudden enlightenment had overspread it. It was
astonishing to see how the tastes of the people were
refined, their perceptions deepened, and their
judgments strengthened. Artisans, soldiers–nay,
even women–with the Bible in their hand, would
put to flight a whole phalanx of priests and doctors
who strove to do battle for Rome, but who knew
only to wield the old weapons. The printing-press,
like a battering-ram of tremendous force, thundered
night and day against the walls of the old fortress.
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