is by this blood-shedding that He is the Saviour. Without this He could not have been a Redeemer; but, with it, He is altogether such a Redeemer as suits the sinner's case. In Him there is salvation, -salvation without a price,-salvation for the most totally and thoroughly lost that this fallen earth contains. Go and receive it. Do you ask, How am I to find salvation, and how am I to go to that God, on the blood of whose Son I have trampled so long? I answer, Go to Him in your proper and present character -that of a sinner. Go with no lie upon your lips, professing to be what you are not, or to feel what you do not. Tell Him honestly what you are, and what you feel, and what you do not feel. "Take with you words;' but let them be honest words, not the words of hypocrisy and deceit. Tell Him that your sin is piercing you; or tell Him that you have no sense of sin, no repentance, no relish for divine things, no right knowledge of your own worthlessness and guilt. Present yourself before Him just as you are, and not as you wish to be, or think you ought to be, or suppose He desires you to be. Recount your necessities; make mention of the multitude of his mercies; point to the work of the blessed Son; remind Him how entirely righteous it would be for Him to receive and bless you. Appear before Him, taking for granted just that you are what you are, a sinner; and that Christ is what He is, a Saviour; deal honestly with God, and be assured that it is most thoroughly impossible that you can miss your errand: 'Seek the Lord while He may be found;' and you will see that He is found of you. 'Call upon Him while He is near;' and you will find how near He is. But tarry not, for the day is fast closing, and the thick gloom of evening is at hand. The last woes' are preparing, and the gates of the kingdom shall ere long be shut. The acceptable year of the Lord is running out, and the coming of the Lord draweth nigh. Trifle not with your brief remaining span or inch of hasty time. This earth shall soon shake beneath the footsteps of its coming Judge. Its hills and rocks must soon echo with the sound of the final trumpet. And therefore it concerns men, without delay, to be securing the shelter ere the storm be up. When once the wrath of the Lamb is kindled, who shall escape, save those who are sprinkled with his blood? It is an eternal doom that is preparing for the ungodly, and the time that remaineth is short in which the sinner may escape. He has no moments to fling away; for that which he flings away may be his last. Fool! when wilt thou be wise? Thou art wise for time, and not for eternity. Dost thou not see these thunder-clouds? Dost thou not hear the wild tumult of earth, the cry of nations, the shock of falling empires, the crumbling sound throughout the earth that speaks of universal dissolution and ruin? What are these things? The work of chance? A passing earthquake? The burst of frenzy for an hour? No. They are signs of gathering wrath. It is God coming down to smite the guilty earth,—that earth upon whose surface your feet are treading. Are you ready for his arrival? Are all matters of variance between you and Him adjusted? And has your reconciliation been sealed by the blood of the Lamb? If not, how shall you meet his eye? How shall you abide his awful scrutiny? That scrutiny will comprise much. Nay, it will omit nothing; its minuteness and exactness will overwhelm you. But the most solemn part of it will be that touching the blood of the Son of God, and the good news respecting it which have been so long proclaimed to you. These good news have found no entrance, and the messenger who brought them has been denied all access day by day. Instead of prizing this blood, and making use of it for your cleansing, you have slighted it; and in slighting it, you have slighted Him whose blood it is-Him through whose death there is life for you. And shall not the Lord visit you for such deliberate rejection of his grace? shall not his soul be avenged for such neglect of his 'great salvation?' EARLY PROTESTANTISM. I. DOLCINO-DANTE. TALIAN unity, so long regarded by modern diplomacy as a dream impossible of realization, was for ages the aspiration of Italian patriots; and it was almost invariably associated by them with a reform of the church, and the abolition of the Pope's temporal power. Centuries before the light of the Reformation dawned upon Europe, the ideas which a Passaglia and a Reali have promulgated in our own day were struggled for and suffered for by priests and monks, boldly maintained by scholar and by poet, and valiantly fought for by the Italian people. Civil liberty and the purification of the church were the great objects of Arnold of Brescia in the middle of the twelfth century, and of Jerome Savonarola at the close of the fifteenth. Both of these reformers strove for the emancipation of their countrymen from a twofold slavery-the bondage of civil and religious tyranny. The efforts of each were in one sense local, but their influence was widely felt; and ever and anon these opinions found expression,-not unmingled, it is true, with gross and dangerous delusions, but always more or less effective as a protest against the pride, the rapacity, and the uncleanness of the Papal hierarchy. rich and beautiful Tyrolese maiden, first organized It would seem to have been a natural consequence of the means by which the temporal power of the Papacy was supported and extended, that almost all the revolutions which threatened it were preceded by formidable revolutionary movements within the spiritual pale of the church. The Roman Republic which arose from the teachings of Arnold of Brescia was heralded, so to speak, by the revived monastic spirit on the one hand, and the bold scepticism of Abelard on the other. The more brilliant attempt made by Rienzi, in the fourteenth century, to revive the independence of Rome, to re-establish her ancient republican institutions, and place her at the head of a united Italy, was also preceded by violent tumults within the church, determined resistance to its authority, and loud denunciations of its misused temporal power. Those years, in the beginning of the fourteenth century, which saw the persecution of the Templars, and the extinction of their chivalric order by the rapacious Philip the Fair, and the voluptuous Pope Clement v., saw also the rise of a powerful sect of religious enthu-to beat back their assailants. Dolcino and the siasts, whose fanaticism took the form, not only beautiful Margarita were put to death with of discontent with the avarice of the prelates, horrible barbarity; both remaining calm and but of doctrines hostile to the entire hierarchical undaunted while the flesh was torn from their system. These formidable sectaries, connected bodies with red-hot pincers, and the flames of with the mendicant orders, and best known, the burning pile kept down to increase their perhaps, by the name of Spiritual Franciscans, tortures. Margarita indignantly repelled all the held opinions of more than a merely negative attempts made to induce her to recant; and, character. The wealth and luxury of the priest- by her extraordinary fortitude, drew forth the hood were their utter abomination. They pro-admiration even of her executioners. mulgated the doctrine that absolute poverty was essential to holiness; and in the wild regions of Northern Italy, to which many of them retired, they saw visions and dreamed dreams of a new effusion of the Holy Spirit. Prophets and prophetesses rose among them, to delude the superstitious with alleged revelations; and one of the latter went so far as to declare herself the Holy Ghost incarnate. Distinguished among these fanatics were Sagarelli of Parma, and his follower Fra Dolcino of Novara,-the one the preacher of doctrines even more extreme than those of the poverty-loving Spiritualists and Fraticelli, and the other the promulgator of a new gospel, which taught the utter subversion of the sacerdotal system, and the approach of a golden age under the auspices of the seven angels of the churches. Dolcino and his disciples seem, moreover, to have entertained, or at least professed to entertain, hopes of the revolution they anticipated being brought about by the instrumentality of an earthly monarch. Frederick of Arragon, king of Sicily, was to be the head of a new empire, in which the Papacy had no place; for the church, deprived of the Pope, was to be reduced to its primitive poverty, and convert the world by the agency of humble believers. Dolcino and his spiritual sister, Margarita, a While the doctrines of Dolcino and the Spiritualists spread rapidly throughout Italy, and even extended into France, Germany, Poland, and other parts of Europe, greater minds than those from which they emanated were deeply deploring the miseries of their country, and ardently longing for the peace which national unity and a reformation of the church alone could bring. The world-worn Dante,' driven from his native Florence by the intrigues of Pope Boniface VIII., the violence of Charles of Valois, and the tumultuous strife of the Bianchi and Neri, had lost all faith in the Papacy. The only hope which cheered his lonely wanderings, was that of an Italian monarchy centred in Rome, founded on the will of the people; and, while extending its sway over Italy, leaving all her cities free, and in the enjoyment of their municipal institutions. The ancient Roman Republic was, in the great poet's eyes, the noblest, purest, and strongest of earthly governments; and if he desired to see the establishment of a monarchy, it was one animated by the spirit of republicanism, deriving its power from God and the people. With temporal affairs the Pope, he believed, ought to have no concern; the functions of the head of the church he held to be strictly spiritual. More than a century and a half before the birth of Luther, the forlorn and weary exile proclaimed, in his immortal poem, the doctrine of justification by faith; denounced the sale of indulgences originated by the cupidity of Pope Boniface; and scathed, with the lightnings of sublime and terrible scorn, the fabric of the Papacy. The Divina Commedia abounds with such powerful condemnations of Romish corruptions, that some of its great author's commentators have concluded that its chief object was the overthrow of the Papal power. Dante felt and saw that over the political and religious life of his country the Church of Rome exercised either a degrading and polluting or a deadening influence. He clung to many of its dogmas, and was a firm believer in the spiritual supremacy of Peter, and those whom he deemed the apostle's worthy successors; but in the Paradiso he makes Peter himself declare the place of his representative to be vacant: 'He who on earth my place, My place usurps,-my place, which in the eyes Of God's own Son is vacant, hath long space Rendered my burial-ground a sink abhorred Of blood and filth, which to the inveterate foe Who fell from heaven, doth high delight afford.' It is from the apostle's lips, too, that we have this denunciation of Papal intolerance and false hood: 'Ne'er was it meant that Christians should be placed By our successors, part on the right hand, Rapacious wolves, in shepherds' clothing dressed, Nor was it only against the avarice and licentiousness of the priesthood that the poet hurled his shafts; he anticipated the awakening of a later generation to the truths of the gospel, and the exposure of those cunningly devised fables, by which so many souls had been beguiled. Much misconception of the purpose and spirit of the Divina Commedia has arisen, from its being regarded either as merely an allegory of the poet's experiences, or as founded, in so far at least as its outline is concerned, on the Romish ideas of punishment, penance, and reward. Looked at only from one or other of these points of view, much of its severe beauty, much of its symmetry is lost; and many of its most powerful truths become little else than invectives or murmurings, expressive of a sense of personal wrong. But Dante had far other and nobler objects before him. His great poem was designed to shadow forth, in its first part, the Inferno,'the miseries of sin; in its second, the Purgatorio,'-the struggles by which those who really desire to reach the region of sacred truth may do so; and in its third, 'Paradiso,'-the supernal glory of divine light, the ineffable beauty of divine love. That the work abounds with political allusions, and, as we have said, proceeds upon a belief in several of the doctrines of the church, does not detract from its value as a testimony against the Papacy. Dante aspired after the unity of Italy under one powerful monarch, able to deprive the Pope of temporal authority, and by this means to free the church, and lead to its reformation. Great as the influence of Dante's poetry must have been in directing the thoughts of his countrymen or the more learned among them at least to the errors and crimes of the Papacy, it was, perhaps, equally powerful in preparing In the most dreadful circles of the Inferno, the the way for the translation of the Scriptures visionary poet placed popes, cardinals, and priests; into the language which it did so much to form, and the forms of those who had worn the tiara elevate, and adorn. The poet had himself deare fixed in the horror of its outer darkness.clared that the light of sacred truth, which had Dante, in short, believed that Rome was indeed Antichrist-the Babylon of the Apocalypse: been so long obscured by the foul vapours arising from the church's corruption, was alone capable of guiding men through the worse than heathen darkness of his time; and, ere long, that light broke in upon the minds of many of his countrymen, enabling them to flee for refuge to the hope set before them, and cheering them to fight the great fight of faith. CHAPTER I. WILLIAM FAREL, THE SWISS REFORMER. N the dark days which preceded the Reformation of the sixteenth century, French Switzerland was preeminent for ignorance and superstition; and it is a remarkable fact, that while German Switzerland sent forth many eminent men to further the Reformation in other countries as well as in their own, French Switzerland is, with one exception (Peter Viret, of Orbe), indebted to foreigners for its emancipation from papal bondage. William Farel, a native of Dauphiné, was the principal reformer of French Switzerland. He was born in 1489, in the little village of Farel, or Fareau, near Gap, the chief town of the High Alps. His home was one of a group of houses, lying at the foot of the Mont de l'Aiguille near the Col de Glaize. Being the manor-house of the village, it stood somewhat apart from the rest, surrounded by orchards and vineyards. This hamlet is still an object of interest to the passing traveller. fire against the storm. Were it not for this, the Farel, among the mountains of Dauphiné, like Zwingle in the Tockenburg, felt the power of Alpine scenery to raise the thoughts upwards, and fill them with desires which life, as he saw it around him, could not satisfy. An ardent thirst for knowledge took possession of his mind, and he asked his father's permission to study. At this time another young man, also a native of Dauphiné (Du Terrail, generally known by the name of Bayard), was astonishing his countrymen by his valour in battle on the other side of the Alps. 'Such sons,' it was said, ' are like arrows in the hand of a mighty man: blessed is the man who has his quiver full of them.' Farel's Farel had three brothers-Daniel, Walter, and father, longing to see his son following the Claude, and, at least, one sister. Their parents steps of Bayard, refused to allow him to study; were wealthy, and firmly attached to the Church but William was not disheartened, and with of Rome, believing implicitly whatever she pre-steady perseverance pressed his demand until it sented to them as truth. As might be expected, was granted. their children imbibed their spirit of blind devotion; and as they grew up, their zeal attracted the attention of their neighbours. William, in particular, whose earnest, ardent character, and vivid imagination, led him to throw his whole soul into whatever enlisted his sympathies, was, even in childhood, regarded with something of reverence, as, with unaffected piety, he knelt before the image of the Virgin and implored her blessing. I am horror-struck,' he said, at a later period, when I think of the hours, the prayers, the divine honours, which I have offered myself, and caused others to offer, to the cross, and such-like vanities.' When only seven or eight years old, his parents took him on pilgrimage to La Sainte Croix, a place in high esteem on the top of a hill, about four leagues from Gap. As they drew near the place, his father, anxious to impress his mind with the solemnity of the occasion, said to William: The cross you will soon see, is made of the wood of the very cross on which Jesus was crucified.' Having reached the holy spot, the pilgrims prostrated themselves before the cross, and a copper basin in which, as the priest told them. our Saviour washed his disciples' feet.' As William gazed in wonder at these relics, the priest, pointing to a little crucifix attached to the cross, said, When the devils send us hail and thunder, this crucifix moves so violently, that one would think it wanted to get loose from the cross and put the devils to flight, and all the while it keeps throwing out sparks of Louis XII., a prince in many respects in advance of the bigoted spirit of his age, now reigned in France, to which empire Dauphiné had recently been added. Justly styled the father of his country,' it was the wish of Louis that his nobility should cultivate an acquaintance with literature and science, instead of directing their attention almost exclusively to field sports. This royal desire afforded great encouragement to young Farel, and he began to study with all the energy of his character, and with so much success, that his brothers were induced to follow his example. But difficulties met, though they did not discourage him. Dauphiné did not provide one good teacher in any department of learning; so, with his father's permission, William left home for Paris, where he arrived at the close of 1510, and immediately entered the Sorbonne.* Among the remarkable men in Paris at that time, was one to whose influence Farel owed much; a man of humble birth, whose appearance was not calculated to prejudice in his favour, and whose education had been but indifferent, yet one whose society was eagerly sought by all who could appreciate genuine piety, deep learning, and true greatness of mind. This man was Lefèvre, of whom Beza says, That good old man was the first who courageously began the revival of the pure religion of Jesus Christ.' Born in The University of Paris, founded by Charlemagne, believed to be the first ever established in Europe. 1455, Lefèvre was advanced in years at this time. In early life he had travelled much, even into Asia and Africa, in pursuit of knowledge; and in 1493, being then doctor of theology, he became professor in the University of Paris, and, in the estimation of Erasmus, was superior to all the doctors around him. Though sincerely attached to the Romish Church, he saw the need of reform, and laboured to promote it. His first step was to revive the study of languages and the classics, hoping thus to raise the moral character of the Sorbonne. But he soon found that, in the work of reformation, philosophy and literature are weak instruments; and laying | aside the scholastic theology of the day, which served only to confirm its disciples in error, he brought forth the long-neglected dusty Bible.' While Lefèvre recommended the Scriptures to others, he diligently studied them himself; and his sermons, earnest and fervent, were listened to with marked attention, while his affability towards his pupils won their hearts. He loves me exceedingly,' said one of them to his friend; he is all frankness and kindness; he sings, he plays, he disputes, and then laughs with me.' The ordinances of the church occupied much of his time. Indeed, in these and in private devotion, many hours each day were passed. Such a character was well suited to attract Farel, and soon the tutor and pupil were united in the close bond of sympathy, Each understood the other as few around them did; and while Farel remarked with admiration, that he, whose fame for learning was unrivalled, bowed with childlike simplicity before the image of the Virgin-remaining prostrate long after others had risen, Lefèvre was no less delighted to observe the readiness with which Farel left his books to spend hours in adoration of the Virgin, and in adorning with flowers the images of the saints, which both regarded with superstitious reverence. The attachment of Lefèvre and his pupil to the popish system was firm and sincere. They believed that the Pope was ordained by God as the visible head of the church, and was, in fact, a God upon earth, possessed of universal monarchy. Hence they regarded obedience to his commands as essential to salvation. Indeed, however great and impious the demands of the Pope might be, the devotion of Farel exceeded them. Satan,' he afterwards said, 'had lodged the Pope and Popery, and all that is of himself, so deeply in my heart, that even in the Pope's own heart they could have sunk no deeper.' Great, then, was his surprise to learn, upon reaching Paris, that at a recent meeting of the French clergy at Tours, it was decided that the king had a right to go to war with the Pope. How I shudder at myself,' Farel afterwards said, in allusion to this period, 'when I think on it all, and how great and wonderful a work of God it is that a man should ever be delivered from such an abyss!' All the time which Farel could spare from the observances of religion he devoted to study; but while he seemned to be in search of truth, he sunk deeper and deeper into error. 'The light which was in him was darkness;' no peace entered his | heart, nor did his outward life attain to that holiness for which he toiled. Finding no satisfaction from the study of Aristotle, and the other books recommended by the university, he turned to the lives of the saints, and found them equally unprofitable, as 'broken cisterns.' When almost in despair, he remembered that the church acknowledged the Old and New Testaments to be the 'Holy Bible,' and at once determined to read them. But he had scarcely begun, when, he tells us, 'Satan started up in haste, that he might not lose his possession, and wrought in me as he is wont.' His heart became the battle-field upon which the word of God and the authority of the church carried on a desperate conflict. Having been taught from infancy that the church could not err, he feared to interpret any passage of Scripture otherwise than according to her teaching. 'Oh,' he often exclaimed in his perplexity, 'I do not understand these things. I must put a different construction on those passages from that which they seem to bear. I must hold to the interpretation of the church, or rather of the Pope.' While in this perplexity, a doctor of the Sorbonne rebuked him for reading the Scriptures 'before he had taken his degree in arts.' In blind submission Farel closed the book, and turning away his ears from the truth,' he was indeed turned unto fables.' Once more the legends of the saints so filled his imagination, that he almost daily inflicted upon himself the austerities enforced by the Carthusian monks. But the hour of greatest darkness precedes the dawn of day: the true light was now about to shine into Farel's soul. Shortly before this, while Lefèvre was compiling the lives of the saints and martyrs, he was horrified by the impiety of the prayers addressed to them. Closing the book, he opened the Scriptures, and, as he read, the merits of the saints lost their value before the glory of the cross of Christ. They appeared to him 'as brimstone, fit only to kindle the fire of idolatry.' 'We will now,' said he to his pupils, follow what is certain, and abandon what is doubtful; we will cleave to Christ alone, and to the doctrine of the apostles, which points out the way of salvation. There is only one religion; it has one foundation and object, one Head, even Christ, who alone is to be worshipped and honoured.' Full of these thoughts, Lefèvre imparted them to Farel, saying, with solemn earnestness,My dear William, God will change the face of the world, and you will be a witness of it.' These mysterious words at first only bewildered the mind of Farel; nevertheless, they made an impression, and were found after many days.' · St. Paul's epistles now especially engaged Lefèvre's attention, and in 1512 he published a commentary upon parts of them, in which he thus expressed his hopes: God will soon in his great mercy revive the expiring spark in the hearts of men, so that faith and love and a pure worship may return again.' Lefèvre himself, as he gradually emerged from error, contributed to |