“With the Reformation another spirit arose and legends took a different form. In the Protestant world the orthodox magic of the Roman Church lost its saving power and was regarded as no less diabolic than all other black art. He was irretrievably lost who had once given over his soul to magic and the devil (and the devil was at this time, as we know, a very real personage—real enough to have an inkpot hurled at his head by Luther).”
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Faust-Legend and Goethe’s “Faust,” by H. B. Cotterill.
The Protestant Church didn’t have the spiritual authority to intercede because Protestantism doesn’t claim that power.