Many of the powers, indeed, assumed by the church of Rome, were very ancient, and were prior to almost every political government established in Europe: but as the ecclesiastics would not agree to possess their privileges as matters of civil right, which time might render valid, but appealed still to a divine origin, men were tempted to look into their primitive charter, and they could, without much difficulty, perceive its defect in truth and authenticity.
In order to bestow on this topic the greater influence, Luther and his followers, not satisfied with opposing the pretended divinity of the Romish church, and displaying the temporal inconveniences of that establishment, carried matters much further, and treated the religion of their ancestors as abominable, detestable, damnable; foretold by sacred writ itself as the source of all wickedness and pollution.

They denominated the pope Antichrist, called his communion the scarlet whore, and gave to Rome the appellation of Babylon; expressions which, however applied, were to be found in Scripture, and which were better calculated to operate on the multitude than the most solid arguments.

Excited by contest and persecution on the one hand, by success and applause on the other, many of the reformers carried to the greatest extremities their opposition to the church of Rome; and in contradiction to the multiplied superstitions with which that communion was loaded, they adopted an enthusiastic strain of devotion, which admitted of no observances, rites, or ceremonies, but placed all merit in a mysterious species of faith in inward vision, rapture, and ecstasy.

The new sectaries seized with this spirit, were indefatigable in the propagation of their doctrine, and set at defiance all the anathemas and punishments with which the Roman pontiff endeavored to overwhelm them.
That the civil power, however, might afford them protection against the ecclesiastical jurisdiction, the Lutherans advanced doctrines favorable in some respect to the temporal authority of sovereigns.

They inveighed against the abuses of the court of Rome, with which men were at that time generally discontented; and they exhorted princes to reinstate themselves in those powers, of which the encroaching spirit of the ecclesiastics, especially of the sovereign pontiff, had so long bereaved them.