One brave spirit

"There is much royal ignorance in this volume, but there is also much virulence and falsehood, which belongs to Lee the editor. In the cause of Christ I have trampled under foot the idol of the Roman abomination which had usurped the place of God and the dominion of sovereigns and of the world. Who, then, is this Henry, this Thomist, this disciple of the monster, that I should dread his blasphemies and his fury? Truly he is the defender of the Church! Yes, of that Church of his which he thus extols-of that prostitute who is clothed in purple, drunk with her debaucheries-of that mother of fornications. Christ is my leader. I will strike with the same blow that Church and the defender with whom she has formed this strict union. They have challenged me to war Well, they shall have war. They have scorned the peace I offered them. Well, they shall have no more peace. It shall be seen which will first be weary-the pope or Luther."-"The world is gone mad. There are the Hungarians, assuming the character of the defenders of God himself. They pray in their litanies, ut nos defen sores tuos exaudire digneris-why do not some of our princes take on them the protection of Jesus Christ, others that of the Holy Spirit? Then, indeed, the Divine Trinity would be well guarded."

all those persons and institutions, in favour of | unseen, eternal, and remote. which wisdom, power, and rightful dominion, encountered and subdued a hostile world. An are involuntarily presumed? He lived under intellect of no gigantic proportions, seconded the control of an imagination susceptible by learning of no marvellous compass, and though not creative-of that passive mental gifted with no rare or exquisite abilities, but sense to which it belongs to embrace, rather invincible in decision and constancy of purthan to originate-to fix and deepen our more pose, advanced to the accomplishment of one serious impressions, rather than to minister to great design, with a continually increasing the understanding in the search or the embel- momentum, before which all feebler minds lishment of truth. This propensity, the basis retired, and all opposition was dissipated. The of religion itself in some, of loyalty in others, majesty of the contest, and the splendour of and of superstition perhaps in all, prepares the results, may, perhaps, even in our fastithe feeble for a willing servitude; and fur- dious and delicate age be received as an aponishes despotism with zealous instruments in logy for such reproofs as the following to the men of stronger nerves and stouter hearts. It royal "Defender of the Faith." steeled Dominic and Loyola for their relentless tasks, and might have raised St. Martin of Wittemburg to the honours of canonization; if, in designing him for his arduous office, Providence had not controlled the undue sensibility of Luther's mind, by imparting to him a brother's love for all the humbler members of the family of man, and a filial fear of God, stronger even than his reverence for the powers and principalities of this sublunary world. Between his religious affections and his homage for the idols of his imagination, he was agitated by a ceaseless conflict. The nice adjustment of such a balance ill suited his impatient and irritable temper; and he assaulted the objects of his early respect with an impetuosity which betrays his secret dread of those formidable antagonists (so he esteemed them) of God and of mankind. He could not trust himself to be moderate. The restraints of education, habit, and natural disposition, could be overborne only by the excitement which he courted and indulged. His long-cherished veneration for those who tread upon the high places of the earth, lent to his warfare with them all the energy of self-denial, quickened by the anxiety of self-distrust! He scourged his lordly adversaries, in the spirit of a flagellant taming his own rebellious flesh. His youthful devotion for "the solemn plausibilities of life," like all other affections obstinately repelled and mortified, reversed its original tendency, and gave redoubled fervour to the zeal with which he denounced their vanity and resisted their usurpation. If these indignant contumelies offended the gentle, the learned, and the wise, they sustained the courage and won the confidence of the multitude. The voice which commands in a tempest must battle with the roar of the elements. In his own apprehension at least, Luther's soul was among lions-the princes of Germany, and their ministers; Henry the Eighth, and Edward Lee, his chaplain; the sacramentarians and Anabaptists; the Universities of Cologne and Louvain; Charles and Leo; Adrian and Clement; Papists, Jurists, and Aristotelians; and, above all, the devils whom his creed assigned to each of these formidable opponents as so many inspiring or ministering spirits. However fierce and indefensible may be his occasional style, history presents no more sublime picture than that of the humble monk triumphing over such adversaries, in the invincible power of a faith before which the present and the visible disappeared, to make way for things

The briefs of Pope Adrian are thus disposed of:-"It is mortifying to be obliged to give such good German in answer to this wretched Latin. But it is the pleasure of God to confound antichrist in every thing-to leave him neither literature nor language. They say that he has gone mad and fallen into dotage. It is a shame to address us Germans in such Latin as this, and to send to sensible people such a clumsy and absurd interpretation of scripture."

The bulls of Pope Clement fare no better. "The pope tells us in his answer that he is willing to throw open the golden doors. It is long since we opened all doors in Germany. But these Italian scaramouches have never restored a farthing of the gain they have made by their indulgences, dispensations, and other diabolical inventions. Good Pope Clement, all your clemency and gentleness won't pass here. We'll buy no more indulgences. Golden doors and bulls, get ye home again. Look to the Italians for payment. They who know ye will buy ye no more. Thanks be to God, we know that they who possess and believe the gospel, enjoy an uninterrupted jubilee. Er

cellent pope, what care we for your bulls? | subject to his control. The Iconoclasts, AnaYou may save your seals and your parchment. baptists, and other innovators, however welThey are in bad odour now-a-days."- "Let come at first as useful, though irregular them accuse me of too much violence. I care not. Hereafter be it my glory that men shall tell how I inveighed and raged against the papists. For the last ten years have I been humbling myself, and addressing them in none but respectful language. What has been the consequence of all this submission? To make bad worse. These people are but the more furious. Well, since they are incorrigible, as it is vain to hope to shake their infernal purposes by kindness, I will break them, I will pursue them," &c.-" Such is my contempt for these satans, that were I not confined here, I would go straight to Rome, in spite of the devil and all these furies." "But," he continues, iu a more playful mood, "I must have patience with the pope, with my boarders, my servants, with Catherine de Bora, and with every body else. In short, I live a life of patience."

imitation of the great Jewish lawgiver, to over- | intense, as to breathe and burn not only without throw and deface the statues with which the the use of vehement or opprobrious words, but papists had embellished the sacred edifices. through a diction invariably calm and simple; Luther strenuously resisted both the opinion and a mass of learning so vast and so perfectly and the practice; maintaining that the Scrip- digested as to be visible every where without tures nowhere prohibit the use of images, ex- producing the slightest encumbrance or emcept such as were designated as a representa- barrassment. To quote from Mr. Hallam's tion or symbol of Deity. But to the war with History of the Middle Ages:-"Nothing, perobjects designed (however injudiciously) to haps, in polemical eloquence is so splendid aid the imagination, and to enliven the affec- as the chapter on Luther's theological tenets. tions, Carlostadt and his partisans united that The eagle of Meaux is there truly seen, lordly mysticism which teaches that the mind, thus of form, fierce of eyes, terrible in his beak and deprived of all external and sensible supports, claws"-a graphic and not unmerited tribute should raise itself to a height of spiritual con- to the prowess of this formidable adversary. templation and repose, where, all other objects But the triumph which it appears to concede being banished, and all other sounds unheard, to him may not be so readily acknowledged. and all other thoughts expelled, the Divine Being will directly manifest himself, and disclose his will by a voice silent and inarticulate, and yet distinctly intelligible. Luther handles this sublime nonsense as it well deserved. "The devil," he says, (for this is his universal solvent,) "opens his large mouth, and roars out, Spirit! spirit! spirit! destroying the while all roads, bridges, scaling-ladders, and paths, by which spirit can enter; namely, the visible order established by God in holy baptism, in outward forms, and in his own word. They would have you mount the clouds and ride the winds, telling you neither how, nor when, nor where, nor which. All this they leave you to discover for yourself."

Carlostadt was an image-breaker and a mystic, but he was something more. He had adopted the opinion of Zuingle and Ecolampadius on the holy communion,-receiving as an emblem, and as nothing else, the sacred elements in which the Roman Catholic Church, after the words of consecration, recognises the very body and blood of the Divine Redeemer. He was, therefore, supported by the whole body of Swiss reformers. Luther, "chained down," as he expresses it, "by the sacred text," to the doctrine of the real presence, had ardently desired to be enfranchised from this opinion. "As often as he felt within himself the strivings of the old Adam, he was but too violently drawn to adopt the Swiss interpretation." "But if we take counsel with reason we shall no longer believe any mystery." He had, however, consulted this dangerous guide too long, thus easily to shake off her company. The text taught him one real presence, his reason assured him of another; and so he required his disciples to admit and believe both. They obeyed, though at the expense of a schism among the reformers, of which it is difficult to say whether it occasioned more distress to themselves, or more exultation to their common enemies.

This is the first and greatest of those "Variations" of which the history has been written with such inimitable eloquence. Nothing short of the most obtuse prejudice could deny to Bossuet the praise of having brought to religious controversy every quality which can render it either formidable or attractive; a style of such transparent perspicuity as would impart delight to the study of the year-books, if they could be rewritten in it; a sagacity which nothing escapes; and a fervour of thought and feeling so

The argument of the "Variations" rests on the postulate, that a religion of divine origin must have provided some resource for exclud ing uncertainty on every debatable point of belief or practice. But it must be vain to search for this steadfast light amongst those who were at variance on so many vital questions. The required Ductor Dubitantium could, therefore, be found only in the venerable form of the Catholic Church, whose oracles, every where accessible and never silent, had, from age to age, delivered to the faithful the same invariable truths in one continuous strain of perfect and unbroken harmony.

Much as the real contrast has been exaggerated by the most subtle disputant of modern times, it would be futile to deny, or to extenuate the glaring inconsistencies of the reformers with each other, and with themselves. Protestantism may well endure an avowal_which leaves her foundations unimpaired. Bossuet has disproved the existence of a miracle which no man alleges. He has incontrovertibly established that the laws of nature were not suspended in favour of Luther and his associates. He has shown, with inimitable address and eloquence, that, within the precincts of moral science, human reason must toil in vain for demonstrative certainties; and that, in such studies, they who would adopt the same general results, and co-operate for one common end, must be content to rest very far short of an absolute identity of opinion. But there is a deep and impassable gulf between these premises and the inference deduced from them. The stupendous miracle of a traditional unanimity for fifteen hundred years amongst the members of the Christian Church, at once unattested by any authentic evidence, and refuted by irresistible proofs, is opposed as much to the whole economy of the moral government of the world, as it is to human experience. It was, indeed, easy to silence dissent by terror; to disguise real differences beneath conventional symbols; to divert the attention of the incurious by a gorgeous pageantry; and to disarm the inquisitive at one time by golden preferments, and at another by specious compromises: and it was easy to allege this timid, or blind, or selfish acquiescence in spiritual despotism, as a general consent to the authority, and as a spontaneous adoption of the tenets of the dominant priesthood. But so soon as men really begin to think, it was impossible that they should think alike. When

suffrages were demanded, and not acclama- | reason of man, nor even that it was contrations, there was at once an end of unanimity. dicted by the evidence of his senses; but that With mental freedom came doubt, and debate, no intelligible meaning could be assigned to and sharp dissension. The indispensable con- any of the combinations of words in which it ditions of human improvement were now to was expressed. It might be no difficult task be fulfilled. It was discovered that religious to be persuaded that whatever so great a docknowledge, like all other knowledge, and reli- tor taught, on so high a point of theology, must gious agreement, like all other agreement, be a truth;-just as the believers in George were blessings which, like all other blessings, Psalmanazer may have been firmly assured must be purchased at a price. Luther dis- of the verity of the statements he addressed to pelled the illusion that man's noblest science them in the language of Formosa. But the may be attained, his first interests secured, and Lutheran doctrine could hardly have been his most sacred duties discharged, except in more obscure, if delivered in the Formosan, the strenuous exercise of the best faculties of instead of the Latin or the German tongue. his nature. He was early taught that they To all common apprehension, it appeared nowho submit themselves to this divine ordi- thing less than the simultaneous affirmation nance are cut off from the intellectual repose and denial of the very same thing. In this which rewards a prostrate submission to hu- respect, it closely resembled the kindred docman authority; that they must conduct the trine of the Church of Rome. Yet who would search of truth through many a bitter disap- dare to avow such presumptuous bigotry as pointment, and many a humiliating retraction, to impute to the long unbroken succession of and many a weary strife; and that they must powerful and astute minds which have adorned brace their nerves and strain their mental the Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches, powers to the task, with sleepless diligence, the extravagance of having substituted unattended and sustained the while by singleness meaning sounds for a definite sense, on so of purpose, by candour, by hope, by humility, momentous an article of their respective and by devotion. When this severe lesson creeds? The consequence may be avoided had been learned, the reformers boldly, nay, by a much more rational supposition. It is, passionately, avowed their mutual differences. that the learned of both communions used the The imperfect vision, and unsteady gait, of words in which that article is enounced, in a eyes long excluded from the light, and limbs sense widely remote from that which they debarred from exercise, drew on them the usually bear. The proof of this hypothesis taunts and contumelies of those whose bondage would be more easy than attractive; nor would they had dared to reject. But the sarcasms it be a difficult, though an equally uninviting even of Erasmus, the eloquence even of office, to show that Zuingle and his followers Bossuet, were hurled at them in vain. Centu- indulged themselves in a corresponding freeries rolled on their appointed course of con- dom with human language. The dispute, howtroversy, of prejudice, of persecution, and of ever, proceeded too rapidly to be overtaken or long suffering. Nor was that sharp conflict arrested by definitions; which, had they preendured to no good end. Gradually the reli- ceded, instead of following the controversy, gion of the gospel resumed much of the be- might have stifled in its birth many a goodly nignant and catholic spirit of the primitive folio. ages. The rights of conscience and the principles of toleration, were acknowledged. Some vehement disputes were consigned to wellmerited neglect. The Church of Rome herself silently adopted much of the spirit, whilst anathematizing the tenets, of the reformers; and if the dominion of peace and charity be still imperfect and precarious, yet there is a brighter prospect of their universal empire than has ever before dawned on the nations of Christendom. The eagle of Meaux, had he been reserved for the nineteenth century, would have laid aside "the terrors of his beak, the lightnings of his eye," and would have winged his lordly flight to regions elevated far above those over which it is his glory to have spread war and consternation.

These, however, are conclusions, which, in Luther's age, were beyond the reach of human foresight. It was at that time supposed that all men might at once freely discuss, and unanimously interpret, the meaning of the inspired volume. The trial of the experiment brought to light many essential variations, but still more in which the verbal exceeded the real difference; and such was, perhaps, the case with the sacramentarian controversy. The objection to Luther's doctrine of consubstantiation, was not that it was opposed to the

The minds of men are rudely called away from these subtleties. Throughout the west of Germany, the peasants rose in a sudden and desperate revolt against their lords, under the guidance of Goetz of the "Iron Hand." If neither animated by the principles, nor guided by the precepts, of the gospel, the insurgents at least avowed their adherence to the party then called Evangelical, and justified their conduct by an appeal to the doctrines of the reformers. Yet this fearful disruption of the bands of society was provoked neither by speculative opinions, nor by imaginary wrongs. The grievances of the people were galling, palpable, and severe. They belonged to that class of social evils over which the advancing light of truth and knowledge must always triumph; either by prompting timely conces sions, or by provoking the rebound of the overstrained patience of mankind. Domestic slavery, feudal tenures, oppressive taxation, and a systematic denial of justice to the poor, occupied the first place in their catalogue of injuries: the forest laws and the exaction of small tithes the second. The demand of the right to choose their own religious teachers, may not improbably have been added, to give to their cause the semblance of a less sublunary character; and rather in compliment to