portions of it were read to groups at the market-cross and the fireside; there was no other theme upon the tongue of noble or peasant. The New Testament was followed, as by a living exposition, in the Theological Common-Places of Melancthon, which passed through sixty-seven editions in about as many years.

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As if to magnify the renown of Luther in confronting him with every dignity and throne of the civilized world, a royal champion now stood forth to meet him in the person of Henry VIII. An unchaste love had not as yet led that monarch to become his own Pope, but envying the titles of Most Christian and Catholic set to the names of the kings of France and Spain, he too longed to perform some signal service for his Holiness to win for himself an honorable epithet. His "Defence of the Seven Sacraments against Martin Luther by the Most Invincible King, &c.," is little more than a mere tissue of contemptuous epithets. His ambassador presented the book to the Pontiff, promising that his master would follow up with his sword what he had begun with his pen. The Pope repaid the service by conferring on Henry the title of "Defender of the Faith," still borne by the sovereigns of England. The book was received with the grossest adulation "the most learned work that ever the sun saw -"it can only be compared with the works of St. Augustine" "He is a Constantine, a Charlemagne, nay more, he is a second Solomon." Luther smiled over its perusal; but what sort of smiles kindled his features we may learn from the language in which he expressed his determination to reply to the book, in spite of the earnest remonstrances of his friends. "I won't be gentle toward the King of England. I know it is useless to humble myself, to compromise, entreat, and try peaceful methods. I will show these wild beasts, who are every day running at me with their horns, how terrible I can be; I will turn upon my pursuers, I will provoke and exasperate my adversary, until exhausting all his strength he falls and is forever annihilated. 'If this heretic does not retract,' says the new Thomas, Henry VIII., he must be burnt!' Such are the weapons which are now employed against me; the fury and the faggots of stupid asses, and hogs of the Thomas Aquinas brood. Well, then, be it so! Let these swine come on, if they dare; aye, let them even burn me here I am awaiting them. My ashes, after death, though cast into a thousand seas, shall rise VOL. XXXII. 3D S. VOL. XIV. NO. I.

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up in arms, and pursue, and swallow up their abominable troop. Living, I will be the enemy of the Papacy—and burnt, I will be its ruin! Go then, swine of St. Thomas, do what you will. Ever will you find Luther, like a bear upon your road, and like a lion upon your path. He will fall upon you from all sides, and give you no rest until he shall have ground your iron brains, and pulverized your brazen foreheads."

Language cannot paint the indignation of the monarch on reading Luther's reply written in this strain, though abounding in arguments without anger. Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, the former guardian of the prince, uttered some significant advice to the monarch as follows. "Take us the little foxes that spoil the vines, says Christ in Solomon's song; from this we learn that we ought to lay hands upon heretics, before they grow big. Luther is become a large fox, so old, so cunning, so mischievous, that it is very difficult to catch him. What do I say? A fox? He is a mad dog, a ravening wolf, a cruel she-bear; or rather all these put together, for the monster includes many beasts within him." If Luther's language disgust us by its coarseness, let us remember that the noble-minded and courteous Thomas More, who descended into the arena in behalf of his monarch, used language so far beneath that of Luther, that the perusal of it well nigh nauseates a reader. Henry in his rage left the pen to resort to diplomacy. He sent a special ambassador to the Elector to demand his intervention against Luther. The Elector referred him to the Council.

Large numbers of Augustines and Franciscans deserted their convents and preached in every city, town, and hamlet of the Electorate the doctrines of Luther. The press was busy with its new task. In 1522, Luther published one hundred and thirty tracts; in the next year, when all the Catholic publications amounted but to twenty, he was the author of one hundred and eighty three. The general ferment seemed to have reached its utmost excitement. Luther preached from the balcony of the town Hall at Zwickau to twenty-five thousand persons. Duke Henry of Freyberg, following the example of his Duchess, the princess of Mecklenberg, espoused the new doctrines, and their son Maurice, afterwards so distinguished, was educated in Protestantism. The common people, who heard with gladness any earnest preacher of the truth, resisted all the efforts of nobles and town councils to obstruct the fulfilment of

their wishes. They constructed movable pulpits, which were set up in the streets as occasion called for them, and were borne off in triumph by the multitude, if the magistrates interfered. Francfort on the Maine, after an ineffectual resistance on the part of the public authorities, gave free circulation to the new opinions. The leaven was working all through the empire. Luther surveyed the prospect with a calm joy, regarding himself as but a feeble instrument, and recognising the hand of God, and the power of Christ.

The reformation working from within, outward, now appeared in the public worship, and in the private life of the Church; it began even to affect the political relations of the several states to the Empire. The Emperor and the Pope, though leaguing both their interest and their force against an earnest devotion to a sacred cause, had no equal devotedness to oppose to it. The author here gives us a most graphic portraiture, fully equal to that of Ranke, of the Spanish Knight and Catholic Saint, Ignatius Loyola. Born eight years after Luther, and destined to infuse into the Papacy that new energy of zeal or devotion which alone saved it from utter ruin, Ignatius passed through a discipline of mind, very like that which had prepared Luther for his work. But while Luther swore allegiance to the holy Scriptures, the Jesuit gave himself to dreams and rhapsodies and to a chivalrous devotion to our Blessed Lady. Here is the key to the strange contrariety in the history and labors of these two most remarkable men of the sixteenth century. Meanwhile, Leo X., who had excommunicated the Reformation, died and was succeeded by a grave and pious monk, Adrian VI. Distressed, as the new Pontiff was by the danger which hung over the Church from the Reformation, he began to act upon his honest conviction, that the most effectual resistance he could oppose would be in applying the most rigid discipline to a voluntary correction of abuses existing in the Church. He began faithfully; but the worse than Herculean task of purification soon discouraged him. In March and December, 1522, the Diet assembled at Nuremberg, most of the Princes and Prelates demanding loudly that the Edict of Worms against Luther should be enforced by his death. But the assembly was divided; and by a most strange contrast, while imprecations upon the Reformer were heard in the Senate House, the pulpits of the city were occupied by preachers, who were earnestly enforcing the doctrines of the

outlawed Luther, and monks who had put off their vows were working at useful trades. Yet so powerful was truth, that the Diet, after all its deliberations, availed itself of some fortuitious circumstances to make its decision against Rome, instead of against the Reformer. A list of eighty grievances, aiming at ecclesiastical abuses, was drawn up, and a free council was demanded as the single condition of peace. The indignation of the partisans of Rome at this result was extreme.

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power was still on the side of the Church. The fiery trial was instituted, the arm of savage fury was raised against unresisting truth, and in Austria, Wurtemberg, Brunswick, but especially in the Low Countries, under the immediate rule of Charles V., the persecution of the Reformers began. Esch and Voes, the first martyrs, died in the flames at Brussels, July 1, 1523. Some of the weak fell away in the bitter trial. The death of Adrian suspended for a season the fury of the strife. The next Diet insisted that the will of the Church could not be enforced without the shedding of oceans of blood; the people would have the Gospel; and nothing but the assembling of a council at Spires, to which all the princes and prelates and doctors might freely offer their opinions and questions, could ensure peace. Such a measure Pope Clement VII. thought would be the ruin of Rome. The Romanist party in a conference at Ratisbon formed a league against the Reformation, enforcing a removal of all novelties, and uttering a feeble protest against undeniable corruptions. Thus a Romanist faction, opposing a general assembly, first dismembered the unity of the Empire, and political interests, especially the rivalry and war between France and Spain, made the Reformation no longer a purely religious question. In the regions embraced by this Catholic League the bloody work of slaughter for opinion's sake was renewed. The details given by D'Aubigné are mournfully interesting, but we have not space to repeat them.

Now a new development of the religious sentiment, as causing even friends and children rocked in the same cradle to differ, appeared in that first element of strife between the Reformers the significance of the Lord's Supper. Luther and Carlstadt, heretofore linked in the warmest love, were found as leaders of hostile phalanxes. Carlstadt, considering that the error of the Romanists was a materializing religion, was unwilling to attribute any efficacy to an outward observance. He denied all presence of Christ's body in the Sacrament, and

regarded a participation in it by faith, as assuring a pledge of redemption. This is the doctrine of Calvin and of the "Reformed Church." Luther in the opening of his career seems to have leaned to the same opinion; but his dread of the Anabaptists, his conviction of the necessity of the outward, and of the danger of relying upon the inward, led him to insist upon the real presence of Christ in the Sacrament. The alienation between the friends was lamentable. Carlstadt left Wittemberg and went to Orlamund, where he hoped to disseminate his views upon this doctrine, and to encourage the people to image breaking. Luther followed him to neutralize his efforts. The aged Elector, approaching his end, was tormented by the fear that the Reformation might go too far, interposed, and banished Carlstadt, though without being encouraged to this severity by Luther. But while this discord divided, there was enough still to bind all the opponents of Rome in one army, which was continually receiving accessions in princes, scholars, and multitudes of an aroused and interested populace. Luther now faithfully carried his principles into the externals of worship, abolishing from the Supper everything which gave to it the character of a sacrifice, requiring communion under both kinds, and enforcing the reading of the Scriptures, and the preaching of the Gospel in every daily or weekly assemblage of Christians. Writing of the Church of All Saints at Wittemberg, with which Luther was especially indignant, as in it 9,901 masses were annually celebrated, and 35,570 lbs. of wax annually burnt, he says, "There are only three or four lazy monks who still worship this shameful Mammon; and if I had not restrained the people, this abode of all Saints, or rather of all Devils, would have been brought down with a crash, such as the world has never yet heard."

Again Luther early saw that the root and the growth of the Reformation depended upon the wide diffusion of the elements of education. He accordingly spent much effort in urging upon universities and town councils the patronage of learning, proving to ecclesiastics, that a thorough knowledge of the languages was necessary to them, and to magistrates, that there was no better use for money than applying it to the instruction of the children of the poor. "The prosperity of a town does not consist in amassing wealth, erecting walls, building mansions, and the possession of arms. If attacked by a party of madmen its ruin and devastation would only be the more sensible. The true