details of the Reformation, but simply to elucidate the principles that were implied, and sometimes directly appealed to, in its origin and subsequent development, and to show how these principles were obstructed in their application by the invincible force of circumstances. The strong necessity which hemmed in the reformers on every side, and must have prevented them from carrying out into practice any large and generous idea of religious liberty, had they been ever so much disposed, could not but react on the idea itself, as it existed in their own minds; and this consideration ought always to be taken into the account, when we charge the Reformers with inconsistency in the application of their principles. The first effect of Luther's bold resistance to authority was to produce a general loosening and derangement of the previous relations of society. All the elements of the moral and intellectual world were thrown at once into the most violent fermentation. Men of the most opposite characters and principles were brought into the field of action. Thoughts, that had lurked in the dark depths of the soul,-convictions, which till then had never found an utterance, were now thrown out before the public, hasty, passionate, and undigested, with all the reckless daring of an awakened enthusiasm, and maddened with fresh elements of strife the Babel of warring tongues and pens. Made bold and decided by the spirit of the times, men clung with tenacity to their own conceptions of the right and the true, and had not yet learned to respect the freedom of other minds. The mass of the people, as yet uninstructed, only just awakened from the slumber of a besotted superstition, and comprehending little in the general confusion around them but the desecration and overthrow of all that they had been taught to revere, unavoidably imbibed the feelings, and obeyed the impulse of the most powerful and energetic mind which rose up among them and brought them under its influence, and addressed to them in plain and forcible language the first principles of natural right and liberty. What parties are now, doctors and teachers were then ; -the impersonation of opinion, the embodying of great principles. The spontaneous association, after the modern fashion, of thousands of individuals for the furtherance of their common views, acting by joint resolutions and through a regularly constituted organization, was a thing unheard of and impracticable in those times; but distinguished men, the commanding spirits of the age, gathered round them a band of devoted partizans, who submitted themselves and their posterity to their spiritual guidance and legislation. It was the natural ascendancy, which in the actual state of society nothing could prevent, of powerful over feeble minds. Our present

danger lies the other way,-in the disposition of the combined multitude to overpower independent individuality. We can already perceive some of the effects of this levelling tendency. We have few great men; there is no one, to whom we can point as an adequate representative, in his character and writings, of the spirit of the age; but in place of these we have immense associations and gigantic parties.

It was otherwise at the period of the Reformation. Individuals then were everything; the multitude, morally speaking, a cypher. Of the principles which it called into operation, and of the various agencies which it set in motion, we may find some representative among the illustrious names with which this page of history is so richly adorned. In Luther's ardent mind we see developed the poetical and enthusiastic elements of religion. Melanchthon represents its moral and philosophical spirit. Zwingle, Ecolampadius, and at a somewhat later period, the Socini, exhibit the first indications of rationalism, and were disposed to place the Church in complete subordination to the State. The stern logic of Calvin, unfolding a system of consequential dogmatism, and the ambiguous phraseology of Bucer, which would have effected a reconcilement among all parties, are equally the expressions of correspondent tendencies in the unsettled and searching condition of men's minds. Carlstadt and Münzer are the demagogues and revolutionaries of the age. Remote from all of these, but impersonating a most important constituent in the spiritual composition of this remarkable period, we recognize the polished, acute, and satirical genius of Erasmus, attacking with the light shafts of his poignant wit the grosser corruptions of the Catholic hierarchy, against which Luther discharged the full broadsides of his tremendous invectives. To make the conflict and perplexity still greater, with these religious elements political motives and interests gradually

One of the best vindications of the character and conduct of Erasmus, in reference to the very difficult times in which he lived, will be found in Wieland's Kleinerc Prosaische Schriften, I. viii. It amounts in fact to this; that nature had fitted him for a scholar and satirist, but not for a Reformer. Many Erasmuses could not have accomplished the work of one Luther. The constitutional caution of Erasmus sometimes sought refuge in his playful irony. Marheineke has recorded a pleasant instance of this on the authority of Spalatin. The Elector of Saxony was once at Cologne, when he sent to Erasmus to come and visit him at his hotel of the Three Kings. The Elector would fain have conversed with him in the German of the country, but Erasmus preferred retaining his Latin, which he spoke with the greatest fluency and perspicuity. The former then asked Erasmus through Spalatin, whether he thought Luther had hitherto erred in doctrine, in preaching or in writing. Erasmus, before giving any reply, first smacked his lips; whereat the Elector, as if expecting something very important, opened wide his eyes; when Erasmus oracularly answered, "Lutherus peccavit in duobus, nempe, quod tetigit coronam pontificis, et ventres monachorum."-I. p. 225.

intermingled; princes and nobles and free cities took part in the grand controversy of the day; the ruling houses of Hesse and Saxony, chieftains of inferior power, such as Götz von Berlichingen, Ulrich von Hutten, Franz von Sickingen, together with Strasburg and Nürnberg, brought the passions and prejudices of this world into unnatural alliance with questions of religious doctrine and discipline, and espoused with ardour the principles of different theologians.

This confused and disordered state of society disconcerted men, who had hitherto sought for truth, detached from practical considerations, and simply as contrasted with prevailing errors and corruptions, and who had been accustomed from their earliest years to the external order and uniformity of the Catholic discipline; and this circumstance will explain the contradictory views expressed by the Reformers at different periods of their public career. So long as men confine themselves to the regions of speculation, it is easy to work out first principles with a strictly logical consistency; but when the stubborn conditions of existing fact have to be wrought into the solution of the problem, concession to a certain extent becomes inevitable. Truth must be seen, long before it can be acted on. It is only through a slow and gradual process of development that the spiritual obtains a victory over the material world. In the ardour of controversy, when he felt the necessity of justifying his own position, and urging home his arguments with their utmost force against the usurpations of Rome and the abuses of episcopal authority, we find Luther occasionally penetrating to the fundamental principles of religious freedom, and asserting them with a generous recklessness of their possible application against himself. In these moments of inspiration the truth flashed forth from the interior workings of his mind, though it was shortly after closed in again by the returning clouds of worldly perplexity and fear. We think from his various writings, insulated phrases and particular concessions might be collected, out of which a tolerably complete statement of the doctrine of religious freedom, at least within the limits of a reverence for the Scriptures, might be composed. But against these, it must be confessed, other passages might be adduced, that would seem altogether to deprive them of their force.

He more than once broadly asserted, that the root of the Church, the only true basis of ecclesiastical organization, lay in the collective faith and will of a Christian people, who possessed in themselves the power and right to judge all doctrines, and to invite, induct, and set aside their teachers. The same principle he also clearly inculcated in the truly wise and enlightened ad

vice which he addressed, during the Swabian revolt, both to the peasants and the nobles.* In his frequent correspondence with the Elector of Saxony, he appears to have been anxious to establish the great principle, that external force could not promote the cause of the Gospel, which must be left to make its way by the power of teaching and moral influence, and carefully defined the boundaries between civil and spiritual jurisdiction. Constitutionally ardent and enthusiastic, imbibing with intense conviction, in the early studies of his monastic life, the doctrine of justification by faith alone, and having all these tendencies forced back into his mind with redoubled force by the repulsive contradiction to them which he encountered especially during his journey to Rome, in the hollow formalism and legal externality of the Church, what he seems most earnestly to have desired was a revival of the spirituality of religion: he wanted life and faith, where he saw coldness and insincerity. Hence the bishops and the canonists, to whose influence he chiefly ascribed this moral desolation, were the objects of his bitter and unsparing animosity. Though the ground which Luther had taken up against the authority of tradition, necessarily drove him to the Scriptures, as the final standard of truth, yet it is remarkable, that, as compared with some later theologians, he was not servilely literal in his attachment to them, but laid more stress on the correspondence of the doctrines they contain to the inward necessities of our moral nature, than on the array of outward proofs by which it has been the fashion of a more recent Protestantism to commit a sort of logical violence on the reluctant understanding. In his appreciation of the value of the different books of the New Testament, he was evidently guided by this internal sense of their congruity to what he felt to be the spirit

* See his Tract, quoted and analysed by Marheineke, ii. 56—8. "Grund und Ursach aus der Schrift, dass eine Christliche Versammlung oder Gemeinde Recht und Macht habe, all Lehre zu urtheilen und Lehrer zu berufen und eine-und abzusetzen :" that is, "Proofs from Scripture that a Christian Assembly or Congregation has the right and power to judge all doctrines, and to invite, induct, and depose their teachers." One of the demands of the Swabian peasants was to have the appointment of their own pastors: a point, in which Luther and even Melanchthon, though more cautious, at one time admitted the reasonableness of their claims. The particulars of this insurrection, with extracts from the documents of the time, are given by Michelet, Livre i. ch. iii. The twelve articles originally submitted by the Swabian peasants are a touching monument of moderation and good feeling under great oppression; and Luther's reply to them, and his earnest remonstrances with the nobles, breathe a spirit of humanity and justice, which do him the highest honour. In his appeal to the latter occurs the following passage: "You cannot refuse to them" (the peasants) "the free choice of their pastors. They wish the Gospel to be preached to them. The civil power neither can, nor ought to put any hindrance in the way of this; it ought even to permit every one to teach and to believe what he pleases, whether it be the Gospel or an It is enough for it to prohibit the preaching of anarchy and revolt.”—Michelet, i. p. 177. The just limits of the civil power could not be more clearly defined.

error.

of the Gospel.* He regarded miracles as a secondary evidence; and thought the principal and conclusive proofs of divine authority must be found in the Scriptures themselves.† In these views, imperfectly as they were developed by Luther himself, we trace the incipient working of a principle, which, followed into all its consequences, would lead to the recognition of perfect liberty of conscience, and place on its proper foundation the title of Christianity to the love and acceptance of every pure mind. In his better moods, before contradiction and disappointment had exasperated him into intolerance, while he desired the universal prevalence of the pure word of God, he was willing that every man's interpretation of it should be free. In the general disorganization of the Church, he sometimes desired a free and truly Christian Council; but coupled this wish with the distinction, that a Council could regulate discipline, but not faith,‡—an observation, which, when stripped of the adventitious associations attached to the word Council, involves a germ of truth, which mankind will perhaps, some day or other, draw out into practice. Amidst the distractions and agitations of his laborious life, there was no object which Luther more steadily and zealously pursued, than the establishment throughout Saxony of a good system, both of the higher and of the lower education; and this he regarded as peculiarly a Christian work. He considered the universal instruction of the people as the only secure foundation of their religious liberties. He used to say, Schools should furnish pastors for the edification of the Church; and that schools and pastors were better than Councils. In this view, he disapproved of the annexation of the confiscated property of the Church to the Crown; and held that the whole of it, which did not go to the support of pastors, should be appropriated to the endowment of schools and universities.§ The earnestness with which Protestantism allied itself from the very first with the cause of learning and education, ought never to be overlooked among the essential tendencies of the general impulse of the Reformation; and the Church, which takes its name from Luther, has always honourably distinguished itself among Christian communities for its devotion to this cause.

The views, which we have now exhibited as announced in various parts of Luther's writings, may be considered a satisfactory evidence of the natural tendencies of the great movement which he introduced into human affairs; that neither he nor his con

*Michelet has collected his opinions on this subject, ii. 93. Compare particularly what Luther says on the book of Revelation, p. 94.

+ Michelet, ii. p. 89.

Michelet, ii. p. 101.

§ Michelet, ii. pp. 106-113.