tariff all there still is ; Tetzel the strate, and," as it were, swallowed up Dominican declares that all sins are with horror. “ I, who lived the life of blotted out“ as soon as the money a spotless monk,” says Luther, “ yet chinks in the box." Whatever be the felt within me the troubled conscience crime, there is a quittance ; even“ si of a sinner, without managing to assure Dei matrem violavisset,” he might go myself as to the satisfaction which I home clean and sure of heaven. Un- owed to God ... Then I said to my. fortunately the vendors of pardons did self : Am I then the only one who not know that all was changed, and ought to be sad in my spirit ? . . . Oh, hat the intellect was become manly, no what horrible spectres and figures i longer gabbling words mechanically used to see! Thus alarmed, con like a catechism, but probing them science believes that the terrible day is auxiously like a truth. In the univer- at hand. “ The end of the world is zai Renaissance, and in the mighty near ... Our children will see it; per. growth of all human ideas, the German chance we ourselves.” Once in this idea of duty blooms like the rest. Now mood he had terrible dreams for six when we speak of justice, it is no longer months at a time. Like the Christians a lifeless phrase which we repeat, but of the Apocalypse he fixes the moment a living idea which we produce ; man when the world will be destroyed : it sees the object which it represents, and will come at Easter, or at the conver: feels the emotion which summons it sion of Saint Paul. One theologian, up ; he no longer receives, but he his friend, thought of giving all his creates it; it is his work and his tyrant; goods to the poor; “ but would they he makes it, and submits to it. “ These receive it?" he said. “ To-morrow words justus and justitia Dei,” says nigh. we shall be seated in heaven.” Luther, were a thunder to my con- Under such anguish the body gives science. I shuddered to hear them ; I way. For fourteen days Luther was in told myself, if God is just, He will such a condition, that he could neither punish me. For as soon as the con- drink, eat, nor sleep. “Day and night," science discovers again the idea of the his eyes fixed on a text of Saint Paul, perfect model,t the smallest failings he saw the Judge, and His inevitable appeared to be crimes, and man, con- hand. Such is the tragedy which is demned by his own scruples, fell pros enacted in all Protestant souls-the

Calvin, the logician of the Reformation, eternal tragedy of conscience; and its well explains the dependence of all the Pro- issue is a new religion. testant ideas in his Institutes of the Christian For nature alone and unassisted canReligion, i. (1.) The idea of the perfect God, not rise from this abyss.

“ By itself it the stern Judge. (2.)

The alarm of conscience is so corrupted, that it does not feel (3.) The impotence and corruption of nature. (4.) The advent of free grace. (5.) The rejec the desire for heavenly things. . tion of rites and seremonies.

There is in it before God nothing but "In the measure in which pride is rooted lust.” Good intentions cannot spririg within us, it always appears to us as though we from it. “For, terrified by the vision were just and whole, good and holy; unless we are convinced by manifest arguments of our in- of his sin, man could not resolve to do justice, uncleanness, folly, and impurity. For good, troubled and anxious as he is; we are not convinced of it if we turn our eyes

on the contrary, dejected and crushed 10 our own persons merely, and if we do not shink also of God, who is the only rule by by the weight of his sin he falls into which we must shape and regulate this judg- despair and hatred of God, as it was

And then that which had a fair ap- with Cain, Saul, Judas; so that, pearance of virtue will be found to be nothing abandoned to himself, he can find but weakness.

This is the source of that horror and won. nothing within him but the rage and der by which the Scriptures tell us the saints the dejection of a despairing wretch or were afflicted and cast down, when and as often a devil. In vain he might try to reas they felt the presence of God. For we see deem himself by good works : our those who were as it might be far from God, and who were confident and went about with good deeds are not pure; even though head erect, as soon as He displayed His glory pure, they do not wipe out the stain of to them, they were shaken and terrified, so previous sins, and moreover they de much so that they were overwhelmed, nay swallowed up in the horror of death, and that not take away the original corruption they fainted away."- 'alvin's Institutes, i. of the heart'; hey are only bougbe

ment.

Away

and blossoins, the inherited poison is that appeal to the senses, wherewith in the sap. Man must descend to the men wished to replace this intercourse heart, underneath literal obedience and between the invisible soul and the visi. legal rule; from the kingdom of law he ble judge, – mortifications, fasts, cormust penetrate into that of grace; from poreal penance, Lent, vows of chastity forced righteousness. to spontaneous and poverty, rosaries, indulgences; rites generosity; beneath his original nature serve only to smother living piety un which led him to selfishness and earthly derneath mechanical works. things, a second nature must be devels with the mediators by which men have oped, leading him to sacrifice and attempted to impede the direct inter heavenly things. Neither my works, course between God and man, namely, nor my justice, nor the works or justice saints, the Virgin, the Pope, the priest ; of any creature or of all creatures, whosoever adores or obeys them is ar could work in me this wonderful change. idolater. Neither saints nor Virgin can One alone can do it, the pure God, the convert or save us ; God alone by His Just Victim, the Saviour, the Redeemer, Christ can convert and save. Neither Jesus, my Christ, by imputing to me Pope nor priest can fix our faith or for His justice, by pouring upon me His give our sins; God alone instructs us by merits, by drowning my sin under His His word, and absolves us by His par. sacrifice. The world is a “mass of per- don. No more pilgrimages or relics; no dition,” * predestined to hell. Lord more traditions or auricular confessions. Jesus, draw me back, select me from A new church appears, and therewith this mass.

I have no claim to it; there a new worship; ministers of religion is nothing in me that is not abominable ; change their tone, the worship of God this very prayer is inspired and formed its form; the authority of the clergy within me by Thee. "But I weep, and is diminished, and the pomp of ser. my breast heaves, and my heart is vices is reduced : they are reduced and broken. Lord, let me feel myself re- diminished the more, because the primdeemed, pardoned, Thy elect one, Thy itive idea of the new theology is more faithful one; give me grace, and give absorbing ; so much so, that in certain me faith ! “Then,” says Luther, " I felt sects they have disappeared altogether myself born anew, and it seemed that I The priest descends from the lofty posi was entering the open gates of heaven.” tion in which the right of forgiving sins

What remains to be done after this and of regulating faith had raised him renovation of the heart? Nothing; over the heads of the laity; he returns all religion is in that : the rest must be to civil society, marries like the rest, reduced or suppressed; it is a personal aims to be once more an equal, is affair, an inward dialogue between God merely a more learned and pious man and man, where there are only two than others, chosen by themselves and things at work,--the very word of God their adviser. The church becomes as it is transmitted by Scripture, and a temple, void of images, decorations, the emotions of the heart of man, as ceremonies sometimes altogether bare ; the word of God excites and maintains a simple meeting-house, where, between them.t Let us do away with the rites whitewashed walls, from a plain pulpit, * Saint Augustine.

a man in a black gown speaks without “ It is clear that the works of Thomas, Scotus, the Bible, begins a hymn, which the

Mclancthon, preface to Luther's Works: gesticulations, reads a passage from and the like, are utterly silent about the element of justification by faith, and contain many congregation takes up. There is an. errors concerning the most important questions Other place of prayer, as little adorned relating to the church. It is clear that the and not less venerated, the domestic discourses of the monks in their churches almost throughout the world were either fables hearth, where every night the father of about purgatory and the saints or else some the family, before his servants and his sind of dogma of law or discipline, without a children, prays aloud and reads the word of the gospel concerning Christ, or else Scriptures. An austere and free relig ter of food, about feasts, and other human tra- ion, purged from sensualism and obe

The gospel is pure, incorruptible, dience, inward and personal, which, and not diluted with Gentile opinions.' Also Fox, Acts and Monuments, 8 vols., ed. conscience, could only be established

See set on foot by the awakening of the Townsend, 1843, ü. 42.

;

ditions.

among races in which each man found | had been entrusted to them, and is within his nature the conviction that their hands the stern network of law he alone is responsible for his actions, which from the Conquest had com. and always bound to the observance of pressed the nation in its iron meshes, his duty.

had become still more stringent and

more offensive. Venial acts had been III.

construed into crimes, and the judicial

repression, extended to sins as well as It must be admitted that the Refor- to crimes, had charged the police into mation entered England by a side door ; an inquisition. Offences against but it is enough that it came in, what chastity,' heresy,' or 'matter sounding ever the manner : for great revolutions thereunto,''witchcraft,' drunkenness, are not inti oduced by court intrigues scandal,'. defamation,' 'impatient and official cleverness, but by social con- words,' 'broken promises,' 'untruth, ditions and popular instincts. When 'absence from church,' 'speaking evil five millions of men are converted, it is of saints,' 'nonpayment of offerings,' because five millions of men wish to complaints against the constitutions be converted. Let us therefore leave of the courts themselves;'"* all these on one side the intrigues in high places, transgressions, imputed or suspected, the scruples and passions of Henry brought folk before the ecclesiastical tri. VIII.,* the pliability and plausibility bunals, at enormous expense, with long of Cranmer, the vacillations and base delays, from great distances, under a nesses of Parliament, the oscillation captious procedure, resulting in heavy and tardiness of the Reformation, be fines, strict imprisonments, humiliating gun, then arrested, then pushed forward, abjurations, public penances, and the then suddenly, violently pushed back, menace, often fulfilled, of torture and then spread over the whole nation, and the stake. Judge from a single fact; hedged in by a legal establishment, the Earl of Surrey, a relative of the built up from discordant materials, but king, was accused before one of these yet solid and durable. Every great tribunals of having neglected a fast. change has its root in the soul, and we Imagine, if you can, the minute and have only to look close into this deep incessant oppressiveness of such a soil to discover the national inclinations code; how far the whole of human and the secular irritations from which life, visible actions and invisible Protestantism has issued.

thoughts, was surrounded and held A hundred and fifty years before, it down by it; how by enforced accusa. had been on the point of bursting forth; tions it penetrated to every hearth and Wycliff had appeared, the Lollards into every conscience; with what had sprung up, the Bible had been shamelessness it was transformed into translated; the Commons had pro- a vehicle for extortions; what secret posed the confiscation of all ecclesiasti- anger it excited in these townsfolk, cal property ; then under the pressure these peasants, obliged sometimes to of the Church, royalty and aristocracy travel sixty miles and back to leave in combined, the growing Reformation one or other of the numberless talons being crushed, disappeared under of the law † a part of their savings, ground, only to reappear at distant in- sometimes their whole substance and tervals by the sufferings of its martyrs. that of their children. A man hegine The bishops had received the right of to think when he is thus down-trolden; imprisoning without trial laymen sus. he asks himself quietly if it is really by pected of heresy; they had burned divine dispensation that mitred thieves Lord Cobham alive; the kings chose thus practice tyranny and pillage ; he their ministers from the episcopal looks more closely into their lives; he bench; settled in authority and pomp, wants to know if they themselves practhey had made the nobility and people tise the regularity which they impose bend under 'he secular sword which

on others; and on a sudden he learns muttered ominously, and was accumu strange things. Cardinal Wolsey lating for a revolt; priests wei 3 yelled writes to the Pope, that “both the at in the streets or “thrown into tse secular and regular priests were in the kenne: ; women would not “receive habit of committing atrocious crimes, the sacrament from hands which they for which, if not in orders, they would thought polluted.” When the ap have been promptly executed ; * and paritor of the ecclesiastical courts the laity were scandalized to see such came to serve a process, he was driven persons not only not degraded, but es away with insults. “Go thy way thou caping with complete impunity.” Astynkyng knave, ye are but knaves and priest convicted of incest with the brybours everych one of you.” A prioress of Kilbourn was simply con- mercer broke an apparitor's head with demned to carry a cross in a proces- his yard. “A waiter at the sign of the sion, and to pay three shillings and Cock” said "that the sight of a priest fourpence; at which rate, I fancy, he did make him sick, and that he would would renew the practice. In the pre- go sixty_miles to indict a priest.” ceding reign (Henry VII.) the gentle. Bishop Fitz-James wrote to Wolsey, men and farmers of Carnarvonshire that the juries in London were “so had laid a complaint accusing the maliciously set in favorem hæretica Clergy of systematically seducing their pravitatis, that they will cast and con wives and daughters. There were demn any clerk, though he were as in brothels in London for the especial nocent as Abel." + Wolsey himself use of priests. As to the abuse of the spoke to the Pope of the “dangerous confessional, read in the original the spirit " which was spread abroad among familiarities to which it opened the the people, and planned a Reformation. door. The bishops gave livings to When Henry VIII. laid the axe to the their children whilst they were still tree, and slowly, with mistrust, struck young. The holy Father Prior of Mai. a blow, then a second lopping off the den Bradley hath but six children, and branches, there were a thousand, nay, but one daughter married yet of the a hundred thousand hearts which apgoods of the monastery; trusting short- proved of it, and would themselves ly to marry the rest. In the convents have struck the trunk. the monks used to drink after supper Consider the internal state of a diotill ten or twelve next morning, and cese, that of Lincoln for instance, at. came to matins drunk. They played this period, about 1521, and judge to cards or dice. Some came to service this example of the manner in whic: in the afternoons, and only then for the ecclesiastical machinery works fear of corporal punishments. The throughout the whole of England, mulroyal "visitors” found concubines in tiplying martyrs, hatreds, and converthe secret apartments of the abbots. sions. Bishop Longland summons the At the nunnery of Sion, the confessors relatives of the accused, brothers, seduced the nuns and absolved them women and children, and administers at the same time. There were con- the oath; as they have already been vents, Burnet tells us, where all the re- prosecuted and have abjured, they cluses were found pregnant. About must make oath, or they are relapsed, stwo-thirds of the English monks and the fagots await them. Then they ived in such sort, that when their denounce their kinsman and them. enormities were first read in the Par- selves. One has taught the other in liament House, there was nothing but English the Epistle of Saint James. down with them !'” What a spec. This man, having forgotten severai tacle for a nation in whom reason and words of the Pater and Credo in Latin, conscience were awakening! Long can only repeat them in English. A before the great outburst, public wrath woman turned her face from the cross

or

• In May 1938. Froude, i. 194.

They called them" horsyn prestes," Hale, Criminal Causes. Suppression of son, whorson knaves. Hale, p. 99 ths Monasteries, Camden Soc. Favications. quoted by Froude, i. 199. Proude, i. 194-201.

which was carried about on Easter when they th.. k themselves alone ; and morning; Several at church, especial. then, darkly, passionately, their brains ly at the moment of the elevation, work. For, beyond this universal symwould not say their prayers, and re pathy which gathers mankind about the mained seated

“ dumb as

beasts." oppressed, there is the working of the Three men, including a carpenter, religious sentiment. The crisis of conpassed a night together reading a book science has begun which is natural to of the Scriptures. A pregnant woman this race; they meditate on their sai went to mass not_fasting. A brazier vation, they are alarmed at their con denied the Real Presence. A brick- dition terrified at the judgments of maker kept the Apocalypse in his God, taey ask themselves whether, liv possession. A thresher said, as he ing under imposed obedience and cers pointed to his work, that he was going monies, they do not become culpable, to make God come out of his straw. and merit damnation. Can this terres Others spoke lightly of pilgrimage, or be stifled by prisons and torture? Feal of the Pope, or of relics, or of con- against fear, the only question is, which tession. And then fifty of them were is the strongest! They will soon know condemned the same year to abjure, to it: for the peculiarity of these inward promise to denounce each other, and to anxieties is that they grow beneath condo penance all their lives, on pain of straint and oppression; as a welling being burnt, as relapsed heretics. They spring which we vainly try to stamp were shut up in different “mon- out under stones, they bubble and leap asteries; there they were to be main- up and swell, until their surplus overtained by alms, and to work for their fows, disjointing or bursting asunder support; they were to appear with a the regular masonry under which men fagot on their shoulders at market, and endeavored to bury them. In the soliin the procession on Sunday. Then in tude of the fields, or during the long a general procession, then at the winter nights, men dream: soon they punishment of a heretic; "they were fear, and become gloomy. On Sunday o fast on bread and ale only every Fri- at church, obliged to cross themselves, Jay during their life, and every even of to kneel before the cross, to receive the Corpus Christy on bread and water, host, they shudder, and think it a mor. and carry a visible mark on their tal sin. They cease to talk to their cheek.” Beyond that, six were burnt friends, remain for hours with bowed alive, and the children of one, John heads, sorrowful; at night their wives Scrivener, were obliged themselves to hear them sigh; unable to sleep they set fire to their father's wood pile. Do rise from their beds. Picture such a you think that a man, burnt or shut up, wan face, full of anguish, nourishing was altogether done with ? He is under its sternness and calmness a silenced, I admit, or he is hidden; but secret ardor : it is still to be found in long memories and bitter resentments England in the poor shabby dissenter, endure under a forced silence. People who, Bible in hand, stands up suddenly saw* their companion, relation, brother, to preach at a street corner; in those bound by an iron chain, with clasped long-faced men who, after the service, hands, praying amid the smoke, whilst not having had enough of prayers, sile the flame blackened his skin and de- a hymn in the street. The sombre stroyed his flesh. Such sights are not imagination has started, like a womar forgotten; the last words uttered on in labor, and its conception swells daj the fagot, the last appeals to God and by day, tearing him who contains it Chiist, remain in their hearts all-power. Through the long muddy winter, the ful and ineffaceable. They carry them howling of the wind sighing among the about with them, and silently ponder ill-fitting rafters, the melancholy of the over them in the fields, at their labor, sky, continually flooded with rain or

covered with clouds, add to the gloom * See, passim, the prints of Fox. All the of the lugubrious dreain. Thenceforth details which follow are from biographies. See man has made up his mind; he will be those of Cromwell, by, Carlyle of Fox the saved at all costs. At the peril of his Quaker, of_ Buayan, and the trials reported at length by Fox.

life, he obtains one of the books which